Opposition in Israel: Seeds of Resistance 

An Interview with Yona R, an Israeli activist in the Mesarvot conscription refusers network, by Philip Locker and Maria Franzblau

Overcoming the Fortress Truce in Israel, Supporting Refusniks, and Building an Anti-Occupation Bloc Within the Anti-Judicial Coup Protests 

Philip: We are doing this interview in mid-January when over 25,000 Palestinians have been killed by the IDF, 85% of people in Gaza have been displaced, and most of the civilian infrastructure has been destroyed or damaged. As an Israeli socialist activist, what are your views on Israel’s role in this ongoing war, and what is your solution? 

Yona: Since October 7 and Hamas’s attack, Israel has launched a massacre against Palestinians in Gaza and beyond. They’ve committed atrocities and created a humanitarian disaster with the indiscriminate bombing of civilians and civilian infrastructure. 

I, along with my fellow activists, have argued since the beginning of the war that there is no military solution to this conflict. Hamas cannot be deposed militarily, nor would it solve the underlying issue given that October 7 – as unjustified and horrible of a massacre as it was – did not happen in a vacuum. It happened after decades of apartheid and siege and ethnic cleansing. These must be addressed with a political solution in order to provide security and justice and safety for everyone between the river and the sea.

In the short term, Israel should end the war, accept a ceasefire, and get a hostage deal with Hamas to release the captive Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners and hostages – what we call an “all-for-all” deal.

In the medium term, while I am an advocate for a one-state solution as an end goal, I do believe that a two-state solution is necessary as an intermediate step. I think it’s more attainable, and the priority is ending the war, the conflict, and the suffering that is caused by it and the occupation. 

This view is my own, not representative of Mesarvot, but it is one shared by the Israeli Communist Party and Hadash. To be clear, I’m not a member of the Communist Party or of Hadash, but the Communist Party has advocated for a two-state solution. It’s the party that has been advocating for it for the longest time, post 1948. Even before Israel got into negotiations with the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the PLO, the Communist Party had already held that view and it’s been very adamant about sticking to it despite some people claiming that the two-state solution has died. 

Hadash is the major genuinely left-wing political party within Israel. It is more accurately not a party, but a front mainly composed of the Israeli Communist Party and different figures and organizations. It originally consisted of groups like the Israeli Black Panthers as well. The leader of Hadash in the Knesset is not a Communist Party member, but all other members of the Knesset from Hadash are from the Israeli Communist Party. 

Hadash frames itself as the Jewish Arab or Jewish Palestinian political movement within Israel. It’s the only one in the Knesset with that self description. It’s one of the most sizable organizations with Palestinian citizens in Israeli politics but a more marginal force within Israeli Jewish society. 

Maria: How did you start organizing in the anti-war and the anti-occupation movements in Israel? 

Yona: I’m a 17-year-old activist mostly in the Mesarvot conscription refusers network and I originally started getting involved in activism around 2020. 

That was the era of the anti-Netanyahu black flag and  Balfour protests over his corruption, which were calling for his resignation. (Balfour is the name of the prime minister’s residence). I used to frequent the protests that were on the intersection close to the community in which I live. 

In 2021, during the war in Gaza that happened in May, and with the corresponding tensions and violence within the Green Line, I went to some protests against the war and for the shared co-existence of Jews and Palestinians. I had already been left-wing for a while, but that’s when I started doing anti-occupation activism and going to protests against the occupation. 

Then, in 2023, the protests against Netanyahu and his government’s judicial coup developed. This law would have transferred almost all of the judicial authority to the Israeli government, the most right-wing government in Israel’s history. This was also the biggest protest movement in Israel’s history. 

I became a real activist then and joined the movement with a coalition called the Anti-Occupation Bloc. The Anti-Occupation Bloc is a collective of many different organizations that fight against the occupation. We participated in the anti-judicial coup protests with a particular message: that you cannot talk about democracy without talking about the occupation. There is no democracy while keeping millions of people under occupation. The motives for the government to erode democratic liberties within the Green Line comes from the occupation.

I was already somewhat against the occupation back then, though I still identified as a Zionist. It was from there that I became active in a collective of people called the Teen Bloc Against the Occupation. It’s that group through which I became more politically aware of the reality of the conflict and radicalized as a result. That’s when I joined Mesarvot. 

Mesarvot means “we refuse.” It is a network of people who refuse to conscript into the army, often publicly. Mesarvot provides support to people trying to get out of conscription, whether by exemption or publicly refusing and going to jail. We provide refusers with solidarity and media training, and campaign for their release. The network also serves as a platform from which we participate in other types of activism and anti-occupation protests. For example, we visit communities in the West Bank that are under threat of displacement and try to prevent them from being displaced. We try to stop settlers from acting in violence against them. 

Philip: There were a number of reports in the US left media about Tal Mitnick being the first Israeli to refuse to serve in the IDF during the siege on Gaza. Is it correct that he is the only one who has refused so far? 

Yona: Israel has conscription for both male and female citizens. The army doesn’t keep track of how many refusers there are. So I can’t give you exact figures. I can tell you that every year there are a couple of refusers who go to jail. 

Tal is not the first person to refuse joining the current war, but he’s the first one refusing publicly, for political reasons, and going to jail for it. 

Back during the movement against the judicial coup, we in the Mesarvot helped write a letter of refusers, signed by over 280 teens, pre-conscription, who said that they won’t serve dictatorship within the Green Line or outside of it. The signers of this letter, of which I am one, were known as “Youth Against Dictatorship.”

This movement is looked at within Israeli society as something extremely, extremely taboo and treasonous, especially during times of war like this.

Maria: What are the consequences of refusing to serve? 

Yona: Primarily, going to military jail for an unknown amount of time – usually around three to four months – there’s no official protocol. In the past it has been as high as two years. 

That said, military jail is not the same as criminal jail and certainly not the same as security prison. It’s definitely not what Palestinians have to go through, but it’s not something to laugh at either.

But the consequences go beyond just going to jail. For some people, refusing would mean getting kicked out of their home, or it would put them in danger of violence. 

Philip: We hear a lot about the horror in Gaza and the brutal situation for Palestinians in the West Bank. What’s the situation for Palestinians within Israel?

Yona: There’s a regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea – in the West Bank, in Gaza, and within the Green Line. Obviously its most brutal form takes place in Gaza and the West Bank, but that does not mean there isn’t discrimination and oppression within Israel. 

Especially since the war started, Palestinian citizens of Israel have been faced with extremely heavy political persecution, with hundreds of arrests and oppression in universities and workplaces. To a lesser extent, this has also been extended to Israeli Jews who have been active against the war. 

Maria: Since October 7, how hard has it been for leftists to organize in Israel? 

Yona: For the first few weeks of the war, protests, or what the police have described as political protests, have been completely banned. And the small attempts that took place to protest against the war, for a ceasefire, or in solidarity with Palestinians being massacred in Gaza, have been met with heavy police violence.

The few protests that occurred were all immediately and quite brutally suppressed by police with many arrested. Two people that were arrested at a protest that took place in Umm al-Fahm  more than three months ago, Ahmad Khalifah and Muhammaed Taher Jabarin, are still incarcerated, and they’re being held in a security prison which has much harsher conditions. 

Even some protests against the Netanyahu government have been banned, but the government realized that it could not go that far and backtracked. There was an appeal to the Supreme Court about the ban on protests in Palestinian towns and cities. And the Supreme Court – with the caveat that it’s not a complete ban, but a conditional  one – actually did let the police suppress protests in Palestinian cities. 

The National Student Union has been lobbying the government and universities to persecute Palestinian students who express their dissent and opposition to the war, which they describe as “support for terrorism.” And many students have been suspended. Some of these suspensions have since been lifted, though not all. In multiple Jewish schools throughout the country, there have been attempted attacks on teachers and principals who merely voiced sympathy for the people of Gaza. There has even been an attempted lynching of an anti-occupation journalist.

Under these circumstances, we – as anti-occupation activists – have slowly tried to regain the rights to dissent against the war. There have been small unauthorized protests, many of which have faced police suppression. There have also been a couple of large protests in Tel Aviv and in Haifa mainly organized by Hadash and by Standing Together that have managed to obtain police approval after appeals to the Supreme Court.

Hadash has consistently been against the war. And for that, when Hadash tried to host its 10th National Convention, the police threatened the venue owner into canceling, trying to ban Hadash in its basic functioning as a party. 

Philip: Is Hadash the only party in parliament who has been openly against the Israeli assault on Gaza?

Yona: In parliament, Hadash has a joint group, Hadash–Ta’al. Ta’al is a different party, the “Arab Movement for Renewal.” It’s a smaller Palestinian party and it’s also been against the war. Ra’am, which is an Islamic party – the “United Arab List” – has been somewhere on that line. 

But none of the Jewish parties oppose the war.Philip: What was your approach to the massive protests against Netanyahu earlier last year, before October 7? These protests were not challenging the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and Jewish supremacy. Was there room to use those protests to raise consciousness and build the forces of a more radical left that stands in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle? Or was it better not to participate in them?

Yona: There was a lot of discussion about this within the Israeli left. But my own entry into radical leftist activism was through the Anti-Occupation Bloc within the protests.

The first rally, the protest that started the weekly protests against the judicial coup, was organized by Standing Together. There were a couple of Palestinian flags there in the crowd and some reactionary media figures pointed out the Palestinian flags and said, “Look, it’s a radical leftist protest.” And as a reaction to that the centrist groups which took over organizing the protests pushed to make the Israeli flag the symbol of these demonstrations. Then it looked like a nationalist protest, and it certainly had those elements. 

What we as the Anti-Occupation Bloc pointed out is that just opposing the judicial coup meant fighting for democracy for Jews only. That message did not resonate well with the main organizers of the protest in Tel Aviv. In other places, such as Haifa and Jerusalem – which were usually the second and third biggest protests every week – the organizers were much more receptive to allowing speakers from the Anti-Occupation Bloc. 

They would often bring Palestinians or  leftist speakers, but it still wasn’t perfect. For example, they wanted to censor the speech of the secretary of Hadash in Haifa.

I don’t want to give you the wrong idea that this was the main message of the protesters. It was very nationalist and still very Zionist. However, the message of the Anti-Occupation Bloc consistently grew from week to week. 

Philip: How much presence and participation of Palestinian Israelis was there in the anti-Netanyahu protests last year?

Yona: Not a lot. There are a multitude of reasons for that. The protests were usually in Jewish cities, not in Palestinian cities. There were some protests in the Negev and some conferences in Nazareth, but not many. Within the anti-occupation block in Haifa and in Tel Aviv and in other places there was an evolving Palestinian presence. 

The fact that every protest had a sea of Israeli flags and ended with the national anthem was understandably not something that was enticing to Palestine citizens.

Philip: What role do you think socialists in the US, for example in DSA, could play in helping bring about a permanent ceasefire, to end the siege on Gaza, and end the Israeli occupation?

Yona: I think in order for Israel to change its course and end the occupation and this conflict, international pressure needs to be applied on Israel. That’s where the BDS movement and Palestinian groups, alongside organizations like DSA, come into play – putting pressure on Israel to stop being an apartheid state. 

The other thing I’d say is that international solidarity is an extremely powerful tool. I think activists around the world can gain a lot from providing each other with support, learning from and critiquing each other.

When Hadash faced the issue with holding its convention, I tried getting DSA to release a statement of solidarity with Hadash, and with other activists facing repression by the Israeli state. Hadash got a lot of different parties and movements from around the world to send these statements of solidarity. But when I tried to get a similar statement from DSA, I faced a wall from DSA’s International Committee. 

 Ultimately, I think it was a missed opportunity. I think DSA could stand to gain from showing principled solidarity with activists both Palestinian and Jewish, within Palestine and within Israel. And that’s not to say that it should agree with everything that Hadash says, or not acknowledge the other organizations that exist between the river and the sea. 

Once that connection is established, I feel that we could learn a lot from each other.