When the UN was founded in 1948, the General Assembly adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It’s opening paragraph is based on the ideas of the enlightenment, embodied in the French Revolution:
“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”
Any country that claims to be a true democracy, certainly must embrace this declaration. But today, the Israeli Supreme Court rejected Ometz’ appeal to recognize the right of soldiers to act on their conscience and in the spirit of the Universal Declaration, and refuse to serve in the occupied territories. Why? Because Israel is not a country based on the values of the Universal Declaration. It is not even a country based on Jewish values. It is a country based on one supreme value: service in the Army. As I heard one CO put it: Israel is not a country with an army; it is an army with a country.
Say the justices:
“…the recognition of selective conscientious objection might loosen the links that hold us together as a people.” And what holds us together? “The people’s army.”
Justice Dorit Beinisch went even further: “the considerations of state security and the integrity of Israeli society must be considered against the arguments of conscience and belief, however sincere.”
Apologists always point to Israel’s Supreme Court as proof of the strong roots of democracy in Israeli society. But today the Supreme Court (not for the first time) explicitely condoned violations of human rights and once again defied international laws and norms.
By the way, the UN Commission on Human Rights issued a clear declaration that states that the Universal Declaration implies the right of every individual to declare conscientious objections to military service, as a legitimate exercise of the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. Moreover the Commission explicitely condemned as a violation of basic human rights, the kind of repeated imprisonment that Israelis COs are subject to.
“The Commission…emphasizes that States should take the necessary measures to refrain from subjecting conscientious objectors to imprisonment and to repeated punishment for failure to perform military service, and recalls that no one shall be liable or punished again for an offence for which he has already been finally convicted or acquitted in accordance with the law and penal procedure of each country.”
Tags: CO, Feature, Human Rights, Israeli Army
