Interesting comparison of the South African Defense Forces to the Israeli Defense Forces, by someone with experience in both:
Why I refused to serve
By Stan Goodenough February 12, 2002
NEWS ITEM: Eighteen-year-old Israeli Yair Khilou says he will go to prison rather than serve in "a large and violent body such as the Israeli army".
Dear Yair,
In some ways I have been where you are; in others our situations have been very different.
Some years ago, I too took a decision not to serve in uniform. A white South African, I recognized that my government was using its so-called "defense" forces primarily to enforce apartheid, a brutal system that kept the majority of my countrymen impoverished while we whites enjoyed one of the highest standards of living in the world.
Unlike you, however, by the time I arrived at that place in my understanding I had already worn a uniform and experienced first-hand what the South African Defense Force was: in very real ways a terrorizing, hate-driven, land-grabbing machine.
In fact, I had gone into the SADF Permanent Force of my own accord at the age of 16, as soon as I was legally able to, because I had been brainwashed by apartheid education into believing that "the communists" were intent on taking over our country, and that they were using the blacks to do so. (As with any really good lie, there was a lot of truth mixed into that.)
I served for three years, during that time rubbing shoulders with thousands of fellow white South Africans. And I can count on less fingers than I have on one hand the total number of my peers who were sickened by the reality of what we were being used to do.
The day came when I stood before the media cameras with a few like-minded friends and publicly declared my intention to disobey any further orders to serve, even at the risk of imprisonment.
Thankfully, apartheid was already crumbling around us by that time, and with South Africa squirming in the spotlight of international censure, the authorities delayed prosecuting us until they ran out of time to do so.
I know something, therefore, about the persistent power of conscience, and how what we believe to be right can, if we let our decisions be governed by it, embolden us to face the unpleasant consequences of doing so.
You are 18 years old. You have not yet donned your country's uniform. The stilted and unnatural language you use to make your case leaves me with little doubt that you too have been brainwashed into adopting an ideological position you think you should pay a price for.
But Yair, I have lived in your country for over a decade, and during this time have scrutinized the situation Israel is in. Sensitized to racism in the ranks, I have closely observed the actions of your country's security forces.
Sure, I have seen excesses; acquainted with the nature of man and the tendencies of young men, I know that there have been, and will be, times when members of the IDF mistreat those they have been given authority over. The abuse of power by individual soldiers is a universal phenomenon.
I have seen, too, that light years separate the IDF from the SADF, and white South Africans from Israeli Jews.
Whereas my SADF officers outspokenly defended all actions committed by the men they commanded, the IDF holds its soldiers up to a high standard of conduct; internal investigations, disciplinary committees and rebuked, demoted or otherwise disciplined IDF soldiers are certainly not the exception here.
Where the bulk of my white countrymen gloated over the sufferings of the blacks, the majority of yours subscribe to a markedly different worldview. Religious or not, it is a Jewish trait to seek to live in peace with the strangers in your midst. I have heard Jewish settlers expressing their longing to live freely adjacent to their Palestinian neighbors, and I have heard Jewish peace activists vociferously defending the "human rights" of the Palestinian Arabs.
Politically your country is torn in two over this issue; not over whether or not to mistreat Arabs, or whether or not to get rid of Arabs, or whether or not to exploit Arabs, but over how best to protect the State of Israel in a sea of hatred, how best to extend a hand of peace to the Arab people around them.
Another enormous difference between apartheid South Africa and Israel - and this is not a reality you can dismiss with a wave of an ideological hand - is the nature of the "other," the distinction between the South African black and the Palestinian Arab.
Black South Africans regarded their white countrymen as oppressors, but not, on the whole, as an enemy to be eradicated. I barely ever encountered expressions of anti-white hatred. Sure, there were blacks who wanted to rid the country of the whites - but they were fringe. The vast majority of blacks sought to live in peace and harmony with the whites, and this is why the African National Congress swept to power. While it resorted to armed struggle and, in some instances, to pure terrorism, the ANC never had as its goal the driving of the whites into the sea.
Unlike black South Africans, the majority of the Palestinian Arabs cannot trace their roots in this land back many generations. And unlike black South Africans, the Palestinians are consumed with a hatred of your people that they take in with their mother's milk and ingest throughout their school lives. In large numbers they demand the Middle East be purged of all Jews, they joyfully applaud acts of heinous terror against Israeli children and elderly people, openly support mass-killings of Jews, elect leaders who have killed Jews, and when Jews fall into their hands, literally rip them to shreds. This Jew-hatred has been around since long before the rebirth of Israel. Its primary target is the Jew - not the Zionist, not the Israeli, but the Jew.
And that means your people.
Now, you may not like many of the things your fellow Jews do. You might not like the social problems manifested among your people. You might find the idea that the Jews are "God's chosen people" abhorrent, reprehensible, embarrassing in the extreme. You might dislike, intensely, the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs living in poverty.
But you cannot deny, if you are truthful, that your people have a fanaticized foe that will stop at nothing to rid the world of them. These people threaten your parents, your peers, your siblings, your way of life, the future existence of the Jewish people.
In my opinion, by refusing to defend your nation against them you will warrant the jail sentence you now seem to consider a badge of pride.
It is just such a shame that your country will lose a defender, and you will lose out on a chunk of your young life, because you have chosen to swallow a pile of political propaganda.
Think Yair. The path you have chosen will not make you a hero. On the contrary, the realities facing Israel could lead you to one day bitterly regret the decision you have taken.
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