Refusal to serve in the IDF

Shministim is an Israeli youth movement for the total denial.

Background

The name literally means Shministim: twelfth graders. These are young people between 17 and 19 who are still in school or those who have just completed and now have to serve their two - to three-year military service in the Israeli army.

2001 sent hundreds of military service Israelis convened an open letter to Ariel Sharon, in which they stated not to serve in the occupied Palestinian territories. This movement Shministim arose. It refers to a tradition that has existed since the early 1970s, when a group of students from the Prime Minister Golda Meir wrote.

Who in Israel withdraws his military service, you can expect a prison sentence. In Israel, there is hardly a right to conscientious objection, so that peace activists remains almost only the total resistance as an alternative to military service.

So the 20 -year-old activist Omer Goldman says: "I believe in a service in the society of which I am a part, and that is why I refuse to take part in the war crimes committed by my country. Violence will bring no solution, and I will not force it, no matter what happens. "Your first detention lasted from 22 September to 10 October, their second detention from 12 to 24 October 2008.