One of the many "Real Israelis Don't Shirk the Draft" campaign banners, this one displayed on a city bus driving through a Tel Aviv neighborhood.
An aggressive public relations campaign against military draft
evaders is currently being waged on billboards, television sets and computer
screens throughout Israel. Entitled “Real Israelis Don’t Shirk the Draft,” the low
point of this campaign is a brief video clip featuring secular, European Jewish
Israelis in their early twenties, sitting around drinking chai during their
post-military trip abroad. A thoroughly unsophisticated method of social shaming
and discipline is employed in the clip as each Israeli in turn brags about what
s/he did in the military, while the obvious question of “…and what did you do?” is aimed at the only
quiet, ostensibly non-veteran in the group. Even if you don’t know Hebrew (and
some of it is in English), watching this brief clip is most
instructive in how the political and military elites of Israel would like to
portray their society:
What the promoters and designers of this campaign—purportedly Tel
Aviv public relations professionals acting out of concern for Israeli society—fail
to grasp is that amongst the many results of the Oslo political process of the
1990’s, is the successful integration of Israel into the global economy and
Israelis (at least the middle and upper middle class Jewish society to which
this campaign aims) into its associated neoliberal ideologies of individualism
and consumerism. Ideologically and practically, there can be no return to the mythological
Israel of earlier decades, which featured a highly motivated Jewish society for
which sacrifice, and specifically service in the military, was a personal and
communal rite of passage without which future education, social status and
professional employment were unattainable. Enlistment in the Israeli military is
no longer a given for today’s Jewish citizens of Israel, at least a quarter of
whom do not enlist in the military according to the military’s own statistics.
Israeli social activists responded to the aforementioned video with
one of their own, dubbed
“Real Israelis Don’t Shirk (the Truth).”
Based on the format of the original
clip, this video features Israelis sitting around and discussing why they did
not serve in the military, or did not complete their military service. All of
the reasons cited (and a reason is always cited, for, apparently, one is still
needed after all) relate to a wholly internal Israeli discourse: the “state”
does not care about me or my family or the military does terrible things to
soldiers, about whom it also does not care. Ideological, political reasons are
not cited by any of the ‘actors’ in this well-intentioned film clip,
well-reflecting the current lack of socio-political alternatives to replace the
splintered and cracked Zionism of the 21st century. Palestinians—as
a people with individual and collective rights, our neighbors whom we have been
oppressing and occupying for decades already—have no existence in this internal
Israeli discourse. They do not exist and are not mentioned.
Military Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi was quoted
by Haaretz on 1 August 2007 as saying that “There
was also draft-dodging in the past... What’s new is that the draft dodgers have
lost their shame. Our mission is to make these shirkers blush with shame, and
return the pride to serving soldiers.” What
Ashkenazi does not relate to, however, are the reasons Jewish Israeli society
is more accepting of non-conscription than in the past, and how “to make these
shirkers blush.” It is no coincidence that the Israeli military lacks a
formulated policy for dealing with this issue. Barring a comprehensive
socio-cultural and political alternative that will end the Israeli occupation
of the Palestinian and Syrian territories and bring about social justice and
peaceful joint living for both Israelis and Palestinians, public relations
jingles and catchy slogans are all mainstream Israeli society can muster.
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