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The First REfusenik
Copied from Haaretz.com Sat., July
23, 2005
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Hebrew
version
More Abileah stories
The first refusenik
By Akiva Eldar
Last Update: 22/07/2005 05:06
Despite the
sweltering heat and the distress of war, the courtroom was completely full
on Monday, August 30, 1948. Joseph Abileah
sat by himself on the defendants' bench in the Supreme Court of the
recruiting center in Haifa and listened calmly to the judge's remarks. In a
small bag at his feet were his washing kit, pajamas and books. The
33-year-old violinist was prepared to go to prison. The following day
Haaretz reported that "a Jewish disciple of Abdullah is refusing to be
drafted for reasons of conscience."
Abileah did not use the services of a
lawyer. "If I plan to tell the truth, why do I need my own lawyer?" he asked
his father, Ephraim, a well-known Haifa piano merchant.
Abileah read his defense statement from
his notes, relates Anthony Bing in his biography "Israeli Pacifist: The Life
of Joseph Abileah" (Syracuse University
Press, 1990). He rhetorically asked himself how he could stand by while the
nation was in danger, even at the moment of its birth and while others were
dying so he could live in safety.
And he replied to his own question, setting forth his worldview at length, a
mixture of "Ghandism without the nationalistic component" and Albert
Schweitzer's philosophy of respect for life.
Abileah spoke about music and nature inundating all his senses.
He spoke at length about his travels, undertaken to become familiar with the
land and its inhabitants, travels that brought him close to the Arabs and
distanced him from Zionism. The first pacifist conscientious objector to
make headlines concluded that he could not participate in military actions
against people (Arabs) whom he viewed as his brothers.
In the summer of 1947, his memorandum to the United Nations investigating
committee discussing the question of the land of Israel made headlines for
Abileah for the first time. In it, he
warned that only its annexation to the Kingdom of Jordan, under the
enlightened rule of King Abdullah, could prevent a bloody conflict between
Arabs and Jews that would have disastrous consequences. He reported
extensively on his correspondence with the king, which discussed, among
other things, plans for water distribution and joint development of the Dead
Sea. Abileah's efforts to further the
union of the two banks of the Jordan River distanced him from the Brith
Shalom group, headed by Martin Buber and Judah Magnes, who preferred a
binational state in all the areas of Palestine - the land of Israel.
The defendant wound up his statement with the story of an encounter with an
Arab on the outskirts of the village of Umm al-Fahm during the course of a
hike with his younger brother Binyamin. Joseph passed away 11 years ago, at
the age of 79. Binyamin, a Foreign Ministry pensioner and a volunteer in the
international cooperation division, clearly remembers the large monkey
wrench the Arab was holding. The man cast alarmed glances at the knapsack on
Joseph's back. "What do you have in there? A bomb?" he asked. The older
brother pulled out a sandwich, extended his hand to the Arab and said in
Arabic, "Please have some, brother."
A tolerant verdict
One of the judges of the draft board's court asked whether the defendant
believed that the entire Yishuv (the pre-state Jewish community in
Palestine) could act the way he did. To this
Abileah replied that others lacked the profound belief in
nonviolence, and therefore they had to bear arms. Those who are fighting the
Arabs are not doing it for his sake, but rather for an abstract entity
called "the state."
The emotional speech, apparently, did not convince the public prosecutor.
Attorney J. Halevi said Abileah was a
draft-dodger who enjoyed the state's services and the security afforded to
him by others who defend it. He asked the judges to deal with him with all
the severity of the law, as an example to others. The verdict was brief. The
judges warned that the defendant's path was mistaken and could, God forbid,
if many followed it, bring down disaster on the nation. The court
disapproved of Abileah's refusal even to
carry out missions that did not involve the use of force and were not
contrary to his "conscience", and this at a time when the nation was
fighting for its life. "It is only by the great bravery of our fighters and
soldiers that the defendant, his wife and his children can remain alive and
that he can continue his regular way of living here in this situation," the
court wrote.
Despite these harsh words, and even though the young state was fighting for
its life, the judges wrote that since the whole nation, except for a small
minority, realized the situation, they could allow themselves to treat with
utmost tolerance single cases of erring people. The court fined the
defendant 50 pounds on probation. The condition was that
Abileah report within one week to the
army intake base to perform non-combat duties in sanitation, for example,
essential aid and the like. They ordered that the defendant be exempted from
the use of weapons and military training. Abileah
rejected the arrangement, stating that as far as he was concerned, a soldier
serving in a non-combat role is like a scout whose role is to warn burglars
of the policeman's approach. He warned that if they made him a telephone
operator, he would not put through to its destination any information that
could lead to violence.
The judges sent Abileah to a medical
board. At the end of a series of medical examinations the doctor in charge
looked at him, muttered "Oh, you're Abileah?"
and without bothering to glance at the opinion, stamped "Unfit" on his
health form. Abileah threw the document
into the trash can. However, the military authorities did not bother him
until 1956. Then he was found fit for service and it was agreed that he
would be assigned a civilian position, but a series of postponements brought
him to the age of retirement from reserve duty.
His parents did not attend the trial, but according to Binyamin, his brother
Joseph's refusal to serve, a rare phenomenon in those days of a consensual
war, did not damage the family's social standing. Joseph did not preach to
others, even his brothers, to follow in his footsteps. Binyamin was drafted
a few months before Joseph's trial began and served in besieged Jerusalem,
alongside their eldest brother, Aharon, who attained the rank of lieutenant
colonel in the Communications Corps. Their brother Avshalom had served in
the British Army. Eventually, Joseph's two sons and his daughter were also
conscripted. Binyamin recalls that Joseph was disappointed by his elder
son's decision to enlist and for a while did not open the letters he sent
from the army. His daughter, Efrat Lifshitz, a professor of physics at the
Technion, relates that their father forbade her and her brothers to
participate in the activities of the Gadna Youth Corps when they were in
school. In consideration of his feelings, she asked to serve as a
soldier-teacher.
Legal efforts
In a comprehensive article published in "The Refuseniks' Trials," (Babel
Publishing House, 2004), veteran refusenik Prof. Gadi Algazi notes that the
1948 Trial Law, which served as the temporary legal framework for the army's
activity, included a provision that enabled judges to mete out lenient
punishments to soldiers for acts they committed or refrained from committing
- if they did so for reasons of conscience. A year after
Abileah's trial, the Knesset began to
discuss a new security service law. It was MK Zorah Wahrhaftig, a leader of
Hapoel Hamizrahi (forerunner of today's National Religious Party), who
proposed leniency in punishing a soldier who commits an offense for reasons
of conscience, allowing the military courts to exempt him entirely from
responsibility for the offense. MK Yaakov Riftin of Mapam (a forerunner of
Meretz) proposed recognizing "justification for reasons of defending honor
and conscience" of an act by a soldier "in order to defend his human honor
or his freedom of conscience and his views." Both proposals were rejected.
Five years later, with the submission of a new formulation of the Military
Trial Law, the freedom of conscience provision was eliminated. MK Yitzhak
Rafael, also of Hapoel Hamizrahi, began his speech in the Knesset with
congratulations for the release of conscientious objector Amnon Zichroni and
proposed reinstating the conscience provision and instituting civilian
service for pacifists. No one could have imagined that 50 years later,
extremist clerics and their messianic flocks would invoke freedom of
conscience and human dignity in order to impose "God's will" on soldiers.
Prof. Lifshitz finds an immense difference between the constructive refusal
to serve of her father, who devoted his life to preventing bloodshed, and
the destructive refusal by the right and the Jewish settlers in the
territories.
"My father walked up the stairs on tiptoe, so as not to disturb the
neighbors' rest," says Lifshitz. "When we formed our own opinions, he did
not try to force his beliefs on us and taught us that the principle that
every individual should live by his own beliefs can be realized only if your
belief does not cause harm to the other and to society. Today we are
witnessing wild incitement by people and the preaching of beliefs that are
perhaps entirely foreign to many people. If thousands follow them, they will
lead to total chaos."
Lifshitz is proud of her father and feels blessed with values she absorbed
from him and that she and her husband are passing on to their children. She
believes the most important value of all is the need to accept public
responsibility. At present her son, the grandson of Joseph
Abileah, decided recently, after careful
consideration, to enlist in an elite unit.
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