Three weeks after Amir Rosenfeld finished his graduate exams, he walked to his local recruiting station and, like every other Israeli youth, joined the military. As an army officer for more than four years beginning in August 1991, he entered the service during the heart of the first Palestinian Intifada.
Rosenfeld shared his experiences as a young Israeli officer yesterday afternoon at a lecture and discussion hosted by the student organization Jews for Justice and Peace.
Last year, Rosenfeld, then a reserve officer, told his soldiers he could no longer command them in good conscience in any occupied Palestinian territory.
Along with more than 500 other Israel Defense Force reserve combat soldiers and officers, he signed his name to a document first published in the Ha'aretz newspaper last January, which inspired a new organization opposing military action in Palestinian territory, called Ometz Le'Sarev — The Courage to Refuse. For his actions he was banished from his military unit.
As a candidate for flight school more than a decade ago, Rosenfeld completed his advanced infantry training while patrolling Ramallah, a Palestinian town north of Jerusalem.
"We arbitrarily entered people's homes in search of terrorists [and other] suspects. We violated these persons' privacy, property rights. Our word was the law; we didn't need documents, we didn't need lawyers," he said. "We were following orders, we weren't bad soldiers. We thought we were good soldiers."
Candid
Rosenfeld is one of several members of Ometz Le'Sarev lecturing across the country. Tall, casually dressed and soft-spoken — at least until addressing the actions of Ariel Sharon — he spoke candidly about his feelings on the military strategy employed by the Israeli government, and suggested an alternative for a unified and more secure Israel.
He said fear and hatred work against both sides of the conflict. "[There is] no such thing as a moral occupation, a benign occupation. It's an oxymoron," he said. "Very early you realize you shouldn't be there, you're not helping Israeli security."
Rosenfeld pointed out that the children throwing rocks at his troops are the suicide bombers of today. "They have no future, they have nothing to lose," he said, "no running water, no education; their parents are unemployed."
But he said the Palestinians shared blame as well, by creating a "profound hate" with repeated terrorist attacks, and bypassing opportunities to normalize the political situation.
He suggested a pullback of settlers and the military from occupied Palestinian lands and the erection of a border between the two. That, he said, would give the Palestinians two choices: either building up their own country, or continuing to fight, in which case "they will be fighting for our homes . . . I will be the first one on that line fighting to defend [Israel]."
Elliot Ratzman, a graduate student in religion and the organizer of yesterday's event, said it is important that the campus Jewish community "talks about these things and be responsible for the variety of opinions on Israel."
He said two graduate students at the University, Guy Geltner and Yoav DiCapua, were among the signatories of the Courage to Refuse document, ten of whom are currently studying in the US.
Alexandra Snyder '03, one of fewer than ten undergraduates present, said she thought the lecture and discussion were "absolutely fantastic."
"I really feel like Amir told it like it is," she said, adding that she "wished more people had been here, the people who need to listen to this."
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