Gershom Gorenberg on selective disobedience in Israel:
Driving through the West Bank recently, I picked up two hitchhikers. Both wore the long, thick sidelocks and extra-large skullcaps that have become the mark of young men on the religious right, especially among settlers. Since they were what Israelis call army age (what Americans would call college age), the conversation turned to military service.
Despite Israel’s universal draft, the hitchhiker in the back seat said he didn’t intend to serve. The Israel Defense Forces, he argued, hurts Jews — a point he presumed was obvious from the “uprooting” of settlements in Gaza four years ago and the occasional dismantling of tiny, illegal settlement outposts in the West Bank more recently. Besides that, he said, the IDF “doesn’t want to kill Arabs because it wants to look nice in the world.” He didn’t want to die because commanders were too concerned with Arabs’ lives. As a student at a yeshivah — a religious seminary — he had a deferment, and he intended to keep it till he was past draft age.
