Esty Dinur
The author at a Women in Black demonstration against the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, in Haifa, Israel, 2012.
At age 14 I had a revelation and my life changed. I was singing a song I had learned years earlier, probably in my Israeli kindergarten and, for the first time, I listened to the words. A mother, standing at the grave of her soldier son, promises him, “Like you, we will sacrifice our lives for our people.” I thought, why is she telling him this? Why isn’t she saying, “I’ll do anything possible to make sure that no other mother ever has to lose her son in a war?”
I mulled this over and wrote an essay about it. Why aren’t we pursuing peace with our neighbors, I wrote. Why are so many of the songs I was taught as a young child glorifying war and death? I hung the essay on my homeroom’s bulletin board.
I was born in the mid-1950s and the Israel I grew up in was very different from today’s Israel. No one I knew ever imagined that someone like Benjamin Netanyahu could be a prime minister, let alone the longest-running one. The country was largely socialist. My elementary school’s principal, who was also my homeroom teacher, was a known member of the Communist Party; she and her husband both became celebrated authors. I grew up in a lower middle-class neighborhood but our education was mostly stellar. Critical thinking was a pillar of that educational system and the bulletin board in my middle school was part of it. We were encouraged to write our thoughts and be ready to debate them.
As I said, our education was mostly stellar. What we learned about the history of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict was decidedly skewed. I didn’t know that our 1948 War of Independence was the Palestinian Naqba. We were taught that the cowardly Palestinians ran away when our brave soldiers arrived. They didn’t have to, we were told, they chose to. I didn’t know about massacres and that 700,000 Palestinians had to flee their villages and towns, some of which were demolished, so as not to be killed. Those who survived became refugees, often living in dismal poverty in refugee camps in the surrounding Arab countries. Some still live in these camps, 75 years later, and some, in Gaza, have recently died from the recent Israeli attacks or fled their destroyed neighborhoods.
Reaction to my essay came swiftly. Most of my classmates condemned my way of thinking. I had to write responses and engage in oral debates, which forced me to think more deeply about the logic behind my argument. I became more consciously pro-peace. A student who was involved in peace work invited me to come to a meeting. I soon became a supporter of the right of Palestinians to their own country.
By the time I was 18 I decided to refuse the military draft. I had met Palestinians, learned a lot, and I wasn’t going to be part of the Israeli military machine. My boyfriend and I considered ways to avoid the draft — get married or have a child — but neither of us wanted these, so I prepared to go to prison for six months for refusing the draft.
One morning, about three days before my draft date, I woke up to see an endless column of tanks heading north. Combat planes were flying above and the faint sound of bombs could be heard. I left my parents’ home and started walking toward my boyfriend’s house when the siren blared. I ran, looking for a bomb shelter.
The date was Oct. 6, 1973. The Yom Kippur War, as Israelis call it, had started. Israel had not anticipated the surprise attack from a coalition of Arab states and there were heavy losses right away. It looked as though this was the war Israel was going to lose — and it would have, if not for American and other Western support.
What to do? That same moral thinking that guided me toward draft refusal demanded now that I not let others fight for me while I refused to do my share. Three days later I got drafted.
In basic training I refused to participate in weapons training. Any other time I would have been court-martialed but every soldier was needed and I was sent to the mess hall to pack combat rations and write letters to the soldiers in the frontlines. Stationed close to a military airbase, I saw the endless line of huge American planes landing with tanks, armored personnel vehicles, rockets and more making their way out of their bellies. The planes took off as soon as their cargo was unloaded, making space for the next plane.
I later came to regret it, but I did my two years of military service.
So I understand the dilemma of the thousands of peace activists and progressives now swept up in the current conflict. These are Israelis who, on Oct. 7, 2023, were planning to participate in large demonstrations against Netanyahu’s autocratic — some say fascist — legislative overhaul, which guts the independence of the Supreme Court, leaving the government as the final arbiter of all issues.
The demonstrations this year were a first for Israel. There has never been a mass movement of reservists, including high-ranking ones, combat pilots and members of other key units who pledged not to report to duty in protest of a government action. Such is the power of an existential threat to change minds.
Oct. 7, 2023, was a terrible day. Children, women, men, the elderly, the disabled were killed, injured and taken hostage. Families lost their loved ones and will be traumatized forever. Thousands of rockets were showered on Israeli cities and villages. My own family members were affected.
There is no excuse for the brutality the Hamas soldiers displayed that day. I understand the desire for revenge and payback. There is never an excuse for a military force targeting civilians.
Here is some of what I don’t understand: What will Israel achieve by exacting merciless revenge on children, women, the elderly, the disabled and civilian men? How can it justify withholding water, food, medicine, fuel and electricity to an already besieged and impoverished tiny piece of land that serves as a home to 2.3 million people, most of whom suffered from unemployment and poverty before the brutal air campaign? How is it okay to block humanitarian aid and bomb hospitals and schools?
I repeat: There is never an excuse for a military force targeting civilians. It is monstrous, regardless of which military is doing it.
The toll on Gazan civilians, who are not Hamas, will achieve nothing other than inflaming burning hatred towards Israel and Jews among Arabs, Muslims and others everywhere. You don’t end terrorism by engaging in terrorism.
It’s been a long time since I first asked myself why Israelis like me were raised to expect and accept war. I have seen and learned much since but I still hold on to my original understanding: peace is better than war. The only way for Israel to be secure and safe is by allowing its neighbors their safety and security. The choice is between endless bloodshed or peaceful co-existence.
We must find a way to start the long process toward a peaceful co-existence. It will be hard, especially after this immense carnage, but it’s doable. No one in the Israel of my youth imagined that the country would ever live in peace with Egypt, Jordan, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, but here we are. Let’s extend this peace to the Palestinians too.
Esty Dinur is a Madison-based freelance journalist and host of the Friday noontime talk show A Public Affair on WORT-FM (89.9), wortfm.org. She is a founder of the Madison chapter of Veterans for Peace and a member of Jewish Voice for Peace Madison.
