Since the start of the war in Gaza, Israeli society has been caught up in a nationalist frenzy. The massacre of October 7 strengthened already powerful far-right currents and pushed many of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s erstwhile critics to rally around the flag. An overwhelming majority of Israelis stand behind the war, even after the International Court of Justice formally raised the accusation of genocide.
But there are a few who refuse to go along with it. Since the war began, eleven young Israelis have openly refused their mandatory military service in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). They do not want to become part of the machinery of war and are calling on their compatriots to question their government’s war propaganda. The young peace activists, who organize in the Mesarvot network, are regularly threatened, insulted, and held in military prison for months at a time.
One of these courageous young people is Sofia Orr, who was recently in Berlin for an event organized by Israelis for Peace. There, she spoke to Jacobin’s Patrick Lempges about the lust for war in her home country, pathways to peace in the Middle East, and why she will never regret her decision to refuse conscription.
Patrick Lempges
Hi, Sofia, thanks for speaking with us. Can you start by telling us a bit about yourself?
Sofia Orr
My name is Sofia Orr. I’m nineteen years old, and I am an Israeli conscientious objector. On February 25, I refused conscription in the IDF and then spent eighty-five days in military prison.
I made the decision to refuse when I was around fifteen years old, because even then, I saw that the ongoing occupation and apartheid was — and still is — enough of a reason to refuse. It became more important to me after the war and the massacre in Gaza began. It’s important to raise our voices against the war, to raise awareness about it, and bring the Palestinian perspective into the conversation in Israel as well. I decided to make my refusal very public, giving interviews and being vocal on social media to get out my story about why I refused and why I’m working toward a peaceful and just solution for all people between the river and the sea.
That’s why I am also part of Mesarvot, a feminist network of conscientious objectors promoting an end to the occupation. Although we are trying to change Israel from the inside, I don’t know if that’s possible in such a militaristic and racist society. That’s why it’s important to me to reach an international audience and tell people to pressure their governments to stop their unconditional diplomatic, financial, and military support for Israel and to pressure Israel to stop executing this horrible disaster.
Patrick Lempges
Was there a particular event that influenced your decision?
Sofia Orr
I am lucky to have grown up in a non-Zionist, left-wing family that imparted to me strong values of critical thinking, empathy, and equality. That played a big role.
But generally speaking, refusing to serve is not the result of a single moment, but of a process of understanding the full picture. One experience I remember vividly is attending the memorial celebrations for victims of the Holocaust and fallen Israeli soldiers, and their militaristic and one-sided narratives. At one point, something just didn’t make sense to me. Why is the way to honor fallen soldiers or people who died in the Holocaust to kill more people? Why should we glorify soldiers who died in this cycle of bloodshed?
Another important event was going to the West Bank and meeting Palestinians. Then, everything made a lot of sense. Making personal connections is a really important step toward fighting the dehumanization of Palestinians in Israeli society, and I think that has to be our way forward.
I never really thought I would enlist, but it’s one thing to say “I will not enlist” and quite another to say “I refuse,” actually going to military jail and making it public. That’s what I mean by refusing is a process: from understanding the situation to “I can’t take part in this” to “I need to stand against it.”
Patrick Lempges
How did your family, friends, and community respond to your decision?
Sofia Orr
My family and friends were mostly supportive, but Israeli society sees it as very unacceptable and confusing. Each time I publish content in Hebrew, I get a lot of comments calling me a traitor, a self-hating Jew, saying that I should be killed or raped or sent to Gaza and bombed. That’s a common reaction.
From my more immediate community, the two most common negative reactions are that I am ungrateful or naive. Ungrateful, because my friends and my country are fighting to protect me, and I should do my part as well. I think that’s wrong. I feel that refusing is the best way to try and make this a better and more secure place for the people around me. Throwing my body into a cycle of bloodshed will never make us more secure. It’s extremely immoral and unproductive.
They call me naive to even think we can talk to the Palestinians — the enemy. They say the conflict will never be solved diplomatically. I think it’s the exact opposite: we have tried to solve the conflict by force for seventy-five years. There is no military solution to a political problem.
The violent mindset that dominates Israeli society is also present in Palestinian society and is driven by the violence happening on the ground. The support for Hamas or violent resistance in general only grows because of the extreme violence and horrible living conditions Palestinians are confronted with. The Israeli army teaches them that the only language they speak is violence. We need to change the tone and the whole narrative to offer the Palestinians an alternative. This can only happen with diplomacy.
Patrick Lempges
How has the decision to refuse shaped your identity and self-perception? Do you ever have moments of doubt about your decision?
Sofia Orr
I had moments of doubt — not about whether it was the right thing to do, but whether I could do it, and do it well. The more time passed, the more sure I became. Ten, twenty, or fifty years from now, I might regret everything else I have done in my life, but I will never regret this.
I don’t think it has shaped my identity, though, because refusing to serve in the IDF was simply the extension of the beliefs I already held. I feel that my action is close to my heart, and I’m proud and happy that I did it.
Patrick Lempges
What does it mean to refuse military service in Israel, both politically and socially?
Sofia Orr
On my enlistment date, this February 25, I went to the enlistment center and told them I was refusing enlistment. They were really confused because it’s very rare, and they don’t have any protocol for dealing with refusal. So, they just send you from one officer to another until you get to someone who is high-ranking enough to send you to a holding cell. You wait there for a couple of hours, sometimes even a day, and then you get a trial, and you get sentenced to any number of days in military prison.
At my first trial, I was sentenced to twenty days. When I was released from prison, I received a draft notification telling me, “Okay, you served your punishment — twenty-four hours from now, you need to go enlist.” I refused again and the cycle continued.
They can do this forever, it’s part of their intimidation. They don’t want us to know how long we will stay in prison, because it’s scarier that way, and they want to scare people away from refusing. They want us to be quiet. That’s also apparent in prison. When we talk about politics, we get yelled at and threatened with punishment. There is a rule in the army that you’re not allowed to talk about politics, but it’s only enforced against refusers who talk about their “left-wing” politics. That goes on until either you break or they grant you an exemption, which for me was after eighty-five days. I was the second conscientious objector since the war started. The first, Tal Mitnick, spent 185 days in prison.
Still, most of the cost is social. Most people don’t object because they are afraid to lose their friends and family. That’s why we from the Mesarvot network try to be something like a social backbone for people who conscientiously object. You can still get accepted to university after refusing and get a job, but I know people who are terrified that their boss will find out about their political beliefs and fire them.
That said, most of the silencing is done to Palestinians with Israeli citizenship. They are sent to jail for posting a story the authorities don’t like on Instagram.
Patrick Lempges
What were your legal proceedings and detainment like?
Sofia Orr
The trial took five minutes, it’s very short. The second time, it took about thirty seconds for them to send me to jail. The judge just asked me: “Has anything changed? Do you still believe what you believe?” and sent me to prison when I said yes. It’s a typical court-martial, not like in a civil courtroom.
My time in jail was obviously not a fun experience, but it gave me a clearer view of how the military operates from the inside. I experienced the dehumanization up close. They use force and violence to solve any problem. This is not a coincidence: it is designed to work like that.
Most prisoners are deserters or draft-dodgers. They either come from poor backgrounds, because military service isn’t remunerated high enough and they need to work to support their families, or they have medical conditions or mental health problems, or were sexually harassed on base. I met many young women who spoke up about being harassed but nothing ever happened until eventually they had to run away. They don’t get any support from the military, instead they are put into jail.
Most of my time in prison, I tried to help prisoners connect the dots about how the army dehumanizes them and how it’s connected to how they dehumanize the Palestinians. It was not fun, but it was meaningful in many ways, and I will never regret doing it. It’s the only way for me to live with a clear conscience.
Patrick Lempges
Can you describe the role of the military in Israeli society?
Sofia Orr
Israel has always been a very militarized society. We like to say that Israel is not a country with a military, but a military with a country. As an Israeli, you grow up with it from a very young age, the propaganda seeps into you. At fifteen years of age, you visit a military base for five days and learn how to shoot a gun and how great this all is. Soldiers come to your school and tell you about their role in the army. The more combative the role is, the more prestigious it is in society. It’s also one of the first questions you get asked in small talk: “What was your role in the army? What will you do in the army?”
Israelis are consumed by a very one-sided narrative that we will always be victims and nothing but victims, which is why we need the biggest, strongest army in the world to protect us. Being a soldier and the honor of fighting have been vastly glorified in this country. I think that Israel has always been like that, but it’s shifting now, it’s getting worse and moving toward an openly fascist, militaristic society. The streets are filled with pictures of soldiers and slogans like “Together we will win” or “They will bring us victory.”
Patrick Lempges
Has the increased presence of Religious Zionists in the IDF affected the mood in the army more generally?
Sofia Orr
The shift to the Right in Israel affects all spheres of society. One of the biggest changes is the way they now speak openly about their plans. In the past, it was kind of undercover, like, “We are committing war crimes and doing horrible things, but we don’t want to broadcast it to the whole world, or even the whole country.” Now, it’s becoming more and more mainstream and less apologetic. They openly say that we have to kill more Palestinians, that we have to annex Gaza, that we need more Jewish supremacy.
Obviously, not everyone in Israel feels this way, but when you look at how the army changes people to be more right-wing and how [Minister of National Security Itamar] Ben-Gvir is creating his own armed settler units and appointing loyal police officers to leading positions, the drift toward militarism and even actual fascism is evident. The way to fight this trajectory is to implement real change on the ground in the everyday lives of normal people, to show them that a different reality is possible. For this, we need international pressure.
Patrick Lempges
You’re currently conducting a speaking tour across Germany to raise awareness about your movement and build support to oppose the war in Gaza. How does the German support for Israel make you feel?
Sofia Orr
In general, I think all support for Israel and what it’s doing is immoral and counterproductive. It’s moving us in the wrong direction and just further escalates the situation. The German support in particular is obviously driven by guilt for the Holocaust, which is also used politically in Israeli society. “See what it took us to get here! We have to make sure it never happens again.”
In Israeli society, that means, “Make sure it never happens again to Jewish people.” I don’t think that’s the right takeaway from the Holocaust. The only way to look at the Holocaust in a truly respectful and productive way is to ensure something like that never happens again to anyone. Thus, I would ask German society and politicians to stop supporting the Israeli government and to stop using the Holocaust as some sort of justification for what is happening today. One crime cannot justify another.
German support is obviously hurting the Palestinians, but it also hurts Israel in the long run. If you really want Jews to live in peace and safety, then you have to support a just, diplomatic path, not this cycle of bloodshed. We all lose in war. We all win in peace. And supporting this war means standing against peace.
Patrick Lempges
What lessons have you drawn from your experience as a conscientious objector, and what would you want to impart to others?
Sofia Orr
I have to say, it’s not legal to encourage refusal in Israel, but I would encourage people to ask questions! I learned to listen and communicate better. It’s important to know who you are speaking to, to deliver a message that can be digested. This is also connected to using the word “genocide.” Words have meaning and, by definition, genocide is the right term to describe what is happening in Gaza. But in some conversations, if you use the words genocide or apartheid, some people will just stop listening. So, I don’t always use these words, but not because I don’t believe they are accurate, but because I want to reach all kinds of people and try to change their minds.
The same is true concerning the accusation of antisemitism: it’s a very useful tactic to suppress criticism. In Israel, every sort of criticism is denounced as antisemitism — especially Palestinian criticism, of course. As I already said, I myself have also been called a self-hating Jew and even an antisemite. Once you get people to believe that we are being criticized for what we are, Jewish, and not for what Israel is doing, you can block the criticism out and rally around the flag, along the lines of “Everybody hates us, we only have ourselves.”
Antisemitism and Islamophobia are on the rise all around the word, but the vast majority of the criticism Israel is facing is not antisemitic — it’s criticism a country faces when it commits war crimes. I am glad people around the world are calling for an end to apartheid and for a cease-fire. I am sure that for some people, criticism of Israel comes from antisemitism, but on the other hand, I think that a lot of people who support Israel are also antisemites! The correlation between antisemitism and criticism of Israel is much smaller than it’s often made out to be.
Patrick Lempges
What about people on the other side of the spectrum, so to speak, who see Hamas as some kind of decolonial or anti-imperialist force?
Sofia Orr
I think that’s both wrong and unproductive; it’s like they’ve come full-circle and now share the views of the Israeli right but with different rhetoric. I personally lost someone on October 7, nothing can justify what happened that day. But it did not happen in a vacuum. Understanding why it happened is the only way forward.
People who live under constant violence and lose all hope will eventually resort to violence themselves. I just don’t believe that violent resistance will be productive. Killing Israeli civilians or calling for the Jews to go back to Europe is immoral, unproductive, and it’s insane to think it will work. It’s just impossible. It’s also very similar to how the Israeli right talks about the Palestinians: saying there are no innocent Palestinians is the counterpart of saying there are no innocent Israelis.
So, again, we have to understand the kind of life the Palestinians live and the role Israel has in creating those conditions. It is a cycle of bloodshed and violence, in which Israeli violence is the driving force. The only way to weaken the support for violent resistance, then, is for Israel to break the cycle. Israel has both the responsibility and the power to do so.
I would invite everyone to take a long, hard look at the situation and try to visualize a way forward. Ask yourself, will mass killings really solve this? Don’t be driven by revenge. You can’t buy paradise with blood.
Patrick Lempges is a historian with a particular focus on the intellectual history of socialism and the comparative study of fascism.
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