page_title: Draft evasion
section_title: Israel
hierarchical_section_title: Draft evasion / By country / Israel
caption_attribution_description: Aviv Geffen, performing live with Blackfield on March 10, 2005, at the Canal Room in New York, NY, USA.
context_page_description: Draft evasion is any successful attempt to elude a government-imposed obligation to serve in the military forces of one's nation. Sometimes draft evasion involves refusing to comply with the military draft laws of one's nation. Illegal draft evasion is said to have characterized every military conflict of the 20th and 21st centuries. Such evasion is generally considered to be a criminal offense, and laws against it go back thousands of years.
  There are many draft evasion practices. Those that manage to adhere to or circumvent the law, and those that do not involve taking a public stand, are sometimes referred to as draft avoidance. Those that involve overt lawbreaking or taking a public stand are sometimes referred to as draft resistance. Draft evaders are sometimes pejoratively referred to as draft dodgers, although in certain contexts that term has also been used non-judgmentally or as an honorific.
  Draft evasion has been a significant phenomenon in nations as different as Colombia, Eritrea, France, Russia, South Korea, Syria, and the United States.
context_section_description: There has always been a military draft in Israel.  It is universal for all non-Arab Israeli citizens, men and women alike, and can legally be evaded only on physical or psychological grounds or by strictly Orthodox Jews.  The draft has become part of the fabric of Israeli society: according to Le Monde senior editor Sylvain Cypel, Israel is a place where military service is seen not just as a duty but a "certificate of entry into active life".
  Yet by the middle of the decade of the 2000s, draft evasion (including outright draft refusal) and desertion had reached all-time highs.  Fully 5% of young men and 3% of young women were supposedly failing their pre-military psychological tests, both all-time highs.  Some popular entertainers, including rock star Aviv Geffen, grand-nephew of military hero Moshe Dayan, have been encouraging draft evasion (Geffen publicly said he would commit suicide if he were taken by the military).  In 2007 the Israeli government initiated what some called a "shaming campaign", banning young entertainers from holding concerts and making television appearances if they failed to fulfill their military requirement.  By 2008 over 3,000 high school students belonged to "Shministim" (Hebrew for twelfth graders), a group of young people claiming to be conscientiously opposed to military service.  American actor Ed Asner has written a column supporting the group.  Another group, New Profile, was started by Israeli peace activists to encourage draft refusal.
  University of Manchester sociologist Yulia Zemilinskaya has interviewed members of New Profile and Shministim, along with members of two groups of Israeli soldiers and reservists who have expressed an unwillingness to engage in missions they disapprove of – Yesh Gvul and Courage to Refuse.  Despite commonalities, she found a difference between the draft refusers and the military selective-refusers:
  The analysis of these interviews demonstrated that, in their appeal to [the] Israeli public, members of Yesh Gvul and Courage to Refuse utilized symbolic meanings and codes derived from dominant militarist and nationalist discourses.  In contrast, draft-resisters, members of New Profile and Shministim, refusing to manipulate nationalistic and militaristic codes, voice[] a much more radical and comprehensive critique of the state’s war making plans. Invoking feminist, anti-militarist and pacifist ideologies, they openly challenge and criticize dominant militarist and Zionist discourses. While the majority of members of Yesh Gvul and Courage to Refuse choose selective refusal, negotiating conditions of their reserve duty, [the] anti-militarist, pacifist, and feminist ideological stance of members of New Profile and Shministim leads them to absolutist refusal.
caption: Rock star Aviv Geffen is one of several Israeli entertainers who have encouraged draft evasion.[59]
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