In the middle of July, over 150 demonstrators marched to Habimatorget in Tel Aviv. On the square, Yona Roseman and several other young people stood to burn their conscription letters from the Israeli military.
Several people filmed and the clips spread like wildfire on social media. Two weeks after the action, a single clip has been liked and shared over 850,000 times.
I and my family have received a lot of attention afterwards. One of the largest news channels in Israel made a segment about the protest, says Yona.
Her family supports her, but became worried because the action spread.
Which is reasonable. I am afraid that people will recognize me on the street and become violent, says the activist.
Yona is sitting on a train to her hometown Haifa after a week of intense demonstrations with the Mesarvot movement. Together with other teenagers from the network, she walks the streets of Israel to protest against the war and oppression of Palestinians.
I have been arrested five times this year and once last year, she says.
Other young Israelis have been sentenced to prison
Yona and the other young people in the clips intend to refuse service in the Israeli military and thus risk imprisonment. Fellow activist Soul Bahar Tsalik was present during the protest. He was sentenced to prison at the end of last year, after refusing to enlist.
The first two days were the most frightening, says the Tel Aviv resident, who was released in January this year.
He is one of several young people from the Mesarvot movement who have received prison sentences since the Gaza war broke out, after Hamas' terror attack on October 7, 2023. The day Soul was supposed to report for duty, over 50 other activists were present at the military base. He hugged his friends goodbye and went in.
If you are going to refuse, you have to stand in line with other people who are going to become soldiers, he says.
"Already judged us in advance"
Soul stood in line for hours, military personnel yelled at him and tried to persuade him to change his mind.
In the end, we got to go to our trial and it was like a joke. They had already judged us in advance, he says.
It was in the middle of the night when he arrived at the military prison and was placed in a cell with around 20 other people.
It's ice-cold at night and the entire section shares a shower room.
Officially, Soul was sentenced to 30 days of military prison, but when it was over, he was taken in and out of prison for another month, he says.
The army tries to make it as unclear as possible. It's probably the scariest thing about refusing.
Soul chose to be open with his fellow prisoners about why he was in prison. It was uncomfortable at first, but after a while, he noticed that the fellow prisoners respected him and his opinions.
It means a lot to me, says Soul.
Yona Roseman also expects that she will be sentenced to prison when it's time for her to report for duty on August 17.
It's scary, but I've known I'm going to do it for almost two years. When I think about what the Palestinians are going through, it doesn't feel like a harsh punishment, she says.
Still few who support civilians in Gaza
Since she publicly burned her conscription letter, she has almost every day received messages from others who want to refuse to bear arms.
I think we will become more, but we are still a small, small minority, she says.
Demonstrators walked with signs that said "stop the genocide". Some who passed by tried to stop the demonstrators, while others gave a thumbs up.
The fact that Israel's warfare constitutes genocide is an opinion that is heard more and more internationally, but also some in Israel make that assessment, including the two human rights groups B'Tselem and PHR-I (Physicians for Human Rights Israel).
The issue is to be decided in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, where a legal process has been ongoing since December 2023, in which South Africa accuses Israel of genocide.
I do not apologize for describing it as genocide, says Yona, who intends to continue demonstrating after her possible prison sentence.
Lina Conrad/TT
Facts: Refuse military service
TT
Mesarvot is an organization with people who refuse to serve in the Israeli military.
Since the war broke out on October 7, 2023, people from the organization have refused and ended up in prison – in protest against the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, but also to support civilians in Gaza.
On July 15 this year, a dozen young people burned their conscription orders on a square in Tel Aviv, to show that they will refuse to serve. Video clips from the action have spread around the world and individual posts have received hundreds of thousands of shares.
