Thread by @WoodwarddianneJ

A thread abt "D" a refuser of Israeli military service, because "D" has seen through the lies and brainwashing of Israeli education. "D" is anonymous, so no images. But do read & share D's story.
#IsraeliOccupation #IsraeliApartheid

I’m “D”. I’m a 25 years old Israeli conscientious objector. I don’t feel comfortable disclosing my name but I want to share my story with you. I have already served 5 days under arrest in an Israeli military base and another 14 days in military prison because.......

.....I refuse to serve the Israeli military. Some people might say I’m a traitor. After all, since I moved to this country a couple of years ago when I was a kid I have been given so much. And, some might say, now that it’s my time to give something in return,

I stab them in the back. Well, it’s not that simple, and if you have one minute I can tell you why.
Like many of the Jewish immigrants who have settled between the river and the sea, I didn’t have a simple life in my homeland.

I lived with a dysfunctional family in a dysfunctional country, and would constantly fantasize about a way out of that misery. So when the Jewish Agency approached me with their smiling faces and full pockets I decided to follow them.

I was put in a boarding school in a kibbutz with scores of other kids like me, who were brought to Israel without their families from all around the world. In the seemingly perfect life of the kibbutz we were taught Hebrew & indoctrinated with zionist narrative & values.

In the bubble where I lived during those years I never met a Palestinian, & the teachers conveniently refrained from talking about certain subjects, for instance what really happened in 1948 or what is happening all around us today.

Little did I know that I was in fact being “educated” in ignorance, indifference & hatred. But after I moved to Jerusalem this illusion didn’t hold up for long, because despite all the efforts of the Israelis to hide reality, it is impossible for them........

......to make the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians that live under oppression in this city disappear, or to conceal the segregation wall which I saw everyday.

As my enlistment day came closer &closer the voices in my head grew. Realizing the hypocrisy of Israeli society wasn’t easy for me, because it involved admitting that I had been wrong all those years. It involved realizing that all of the wealth that I enjoyed was based .....

.....on the plundering of the land of innocent people. Breaking free from the mental chains of the apartheid as a member of the oppressors was a painful process. Zionists brainwash you to think that Israel is the underdog, that the only way Jews can exist .....

.....is if there is a Jewish state, and they make you believe that Palestinians are some kind of inferior and barbaric humans, that must be kept in cages or else they will break out and kill you. But once I had learned the facts I couldn’t go back.

I had finally seen the truth and unmasked the cynical impostors that had brought me here. They didn’t want to help me, they only desired my Jewish presence.

But drunk with all of their power & plans they didn’t think about one very important detail. They treat people as objects, killing Palestinians & brainwashing children.They think they can give us orders and we will follow them like robots. But we aren’t robots, we are humans!

All of their tanks & nuclear weapons mean nothing, because they pale in the face of their biggest menace, the thinking human. Now the future seems bleak. They treat me like an enemy & a traitor for standing up for human rights & solidarity. I am one of the lucky ones, because ...

...instead of being incarcerated endlessly like hundreds of Palestinians in administrative detention, my time in jail eventually will come to an end. But all of their violence & oppression is just a sign of their fear & their weakness.

Because they know that democracy is their sweet demise. That’s why they will persecute all and each one of us. But in these dark times we shall remember Pablo Neruda’s words: “They can cut all the flowers, but they cannot keep Spring from coming.”
In solidarity, D