I thought I could promote peace by joining the Israeli army – I was wrong

Five years ago, when I was 19, I was finishing training in the Negev desert region in southern Israel as part of my national service in the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF).  

It was Holocaust Memorial Day. I was standing in uniform for a ceremony, flooded with emotion, thinking of my very recent ancestors who were burned alive in Poland by the Nazis. 

As a Jewish-Israeli, I looked at my comrades with a sense of pride to be in a country that’s become our home, and a place of safety.   

But  the moment the ceremony finished, my thoughts turned to the brutal, bloody conflict and of the occupation I was taking part in by default of my conscription.   

However proud I was to honour my family members, and despite my gratitude for a safe homeland, my strongest feeling was that I couldn’t partake in this cycle of violence any longer.  

This poignant memory was before the most recent escalation of the Israel-Hamas war over the past year – but there was violence long before this.   

Conscription to the IDF is part of a strange normality that young people in Israel experience. 

I was conscripted in 2018, aged 18, as everyone is, men and women both.  

Feelings around service vary from person to person. I remember fluctuating between excitement and a sense of purpose, and deep dread. I didn’t want to be a part of any war, but there’s a strong sense in Israel that everyone needs to ‘share the burden’ of conscription, and I had a very real fear of refusing as it can result in a prison sentence. 

One of my friends declared he was a pacifist in order to appeal for an exemption; he was met with a long, excruciating bureaucratic journey, led by the state, and had to hire a lawyer to help with his case. 

Beyond prison, refusers can encounter hostile behaviour from society, and I was anxious about the damage it might do to my future.

I was also naïve – full of teenage optimism. I convinced myself that I could make positive change from within, that maybe it takes peace-pursuing people to be brought into the army in order to create peace.  

I was wrong. 

My time in the army was composed of roughly a month of basic training, involving rifle training, first aid, communications and other basic army skills. 

I then went on to train in a different base on role-specific skills. The unit I was in is considered elite in intelligence gathering, so many people feel very proud to serve in it, especially as collecting intelligence is more in the realm of defending rather than being offensive. 

I wasn’t involved in combat – and it wasn’t the things I was doing daily that made me come to the realisation I couldn’t be part of the army. 

For me, it was the constant exposure to the bigger picture and the extent to which Israel has control over the basic freedoms of other people. 

Israel’s history is one of constant wars and bloodshed so it only takes a quick glance at history books to see that, like any country, it feels like it needs an army to survive.  

The state faces a constant existential threat by forces like Hamas, Iran and Hezbollah, so having been conscripted, part of me felt I was doing valuable service protecting my home from terror.

Yet another part of me saw how the army, especially over the past year, was being used by the government to and support their own political agenda. The lack of effort from the Israeli government to further a peace deal with the Palestinian people means that the IDF also maintains the Israeli occupation in Gaza.

Hamas is a terrorist organisation, committed to the liberation of the Palestinian people, but thousands of civilians find themselves caught in the middle of a constant war between forces that care little for the loss of life needed to achieve their political goals. 

The current and recent Israeli governments rarely consider peace – or acknowledgment that the Palestinian people have a right and need for a national home just as much as the Jewish people do – as a resolution.

After 11 months of service, I got out of the army.  

I had a long series of meetings with a military psychologist and after a few months of analysis, I got released on medical grounds.  

It wasn’t until 2019, having moved to the UK to study as an actor, that I realised I could bring my own experiences to the stage. 

I had kept a diary during my service and wrote meditations to try and process my experiences and this year, those entries form the basis for my original show, Rebels and Patriots, staged at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. 

The story is not actually about patriots or rebels, but really about people who are neither. It’s about young men like me who want to live peacefully in an impossible violent reality – a theme that, unfortunately, is global. 

I’ve developed the play with Palestinian theatre maker, Tarik Badwan, as an Israeli-Palestinian co-creation, too. 

The violence involved in the occupation was something I couldn’t agree with.  The political situation affected me severely, and I simply couldn’t stay any longer. 

I hope it will offer people perspective and nuance on a complicated reality that they hear so much about on the news. I want to show that national service in Israel and the problems around it won’t change until the militant policy of Israel changes.  

If we start working towards an understanding that war is not the answer, ‘national service’ needn’t have a militant connotation at all; rather, it can be a service that benefits society.

Israelis with an exemption from military service have the option to volunteer with organisations within the social sector, schools, care homes, hospitals and disadvantaged groups, focusing on helping those in society that need it the most. It can be a great way to give back to the community. 

Israel is my national home but it’s clear to me that Palestine should be an internationally recognised national home to the Palestinian people.  

I believe that we should be asking ‘how can we exist together’. Today, this question is now more urgent than ever. 

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk. 

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