Refusal to serve in the Israel Defense Forces

Also refusing any Israeli military service are people affiliated with various Hasidic anti-Zionist groups (most notably Satmar), the Brisk Yeshivas, and the Neturei Karta.

A 2007 incident that garnered international headlines focused on revelations in the press that Israeli Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue cover model Bar Refaeli had married a family friend in 2004 and divorced him soon after in order to avoid military service.

[7] Refaeli received widespread criticism, including from the Israeli Forum for the Promotion of Equal Share,[8] to which she responded, "I really wanted to serve in the IDF, but I don't regret not enlisting, because it paid off big time.

The conscientious objectors, or refuseniks as they call themselves, found support within left-wing and the Arab parties, Hadash, Balad, Raam and parts of Meretz (Zehava Galon, Roman Bronfman and Shulamit Aloni).

The Israeli Labor Party and other Meretz members have condemned the refuseniks and said that although their protests against the occupation are justified and understandable, the means they are taking to manifest it are wrong.

This viewpoint was given some support when the book The Seventh War, by Avi Yisacharov and Amos Harel was published in 2004; it contains extensive interviews with Hamas leaders, at least one of whom explicitly stated that the actions of the commandos' and pilots' letters encouraged to promote and continue the use of suicide bombers.

The court accepted that the five acted in accordance with their conscience but "ruled that they did not refuse to serve as individuals, but rather as a group, with the explicit goal of bringing about a change in Israeli policy in the territories.

A Palestine branch of War Resisters' International was founded in 1946 by one such conscientious objector, David Engel, who in 1943 had been expelled from Kfar Ruppin for refusing to enlist in the British Army.

[15] In 1948, the year of Israel's declaration of independence, another member of the group, Joseph Abileah, was the first conscientious objector to be put on trial before a military court for refusing to serve in the IDF.

[16] Haredi Jews were exempt, so long as they did study in yeshivas (up to a maximum of 62,500 individuals), based on an arrangement worked out with David Ben-Gurion in 1948 and the Tal Law, though small numbers volunteer to serve in the IDF, especially in the Netzah Yehuda Battalion.

On April 28, 1970, a group of high school seniors about to be drafted sent a letter to Prime Minister Golda Meir expressing their reservation about the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, the War of Attrition and the government's failure to take steps to avoid conflict.

On December 18, 2008, a worldwide campaign was launched in order to request the freedom of Shministim, including the delivery of more than forty thousand letters, to Israeli embassies, appealing for her cause.

We, who were raised to love the state of Israel and contribute to the Zionist enterprise, refuse to take part in Air Force attacks on civilian population centers.

In 2005, as a reaction to the Israel's unilateral disengagement plan, a group called "Mateh Chomat Magen" (the name referring to Operation Defensive Shield) published a letter with 10,000 signatures of soldiers who signed a petition saying that they would refuse to uproot and remove Israeli settlements.

In what The New York Times called, "the first public collective refusal by intelligence officers rather than combat troops"[29] to serve, on September 12, 43 veteran reserve army mid-ranking officers and soldiers (33 soldiers and 10 officers, including a major and two captains, mostly in their late 20s and 30s)[29][30][31] in the IDF's top intelligence electronic surveillance corps, Unit 8200,[32] Israel's equivalent to the NSA,[31] published a letter in Israel's most widely read newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, directed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz, Moshe Ya'alon[31] and Aviv Kochavi,[31] the head of Military Intelligence, in which they registered their refusal to participate, on the grounds of conscience, in any action designed to "harm the Palestinian population in the West Bank.

[32] The letter, originally written before the recent 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict,[36] was initially reported to be unrelated to it,[37] but does mention "the collective punishment of residents in Gaza", that war being, according to one of the group, "just another chapter in this cycle of violence", and calls on the Israeli public to speak up against injustices.

[29] While the incidents they allude to have no relation to Operation Protective Edge, in which none participated, several avoided service during the 2014 war in Gaza by refusing to answer a call to do reserve duty, employing a variety of excuses.

[39] The soldiers also alleged that cases existed where IDF intelligence hindered just trials for defendants, from whom evidence in the prosecution's hands was withheld, in military courts.

Opposition leader and head of the Labor Party Isaac Herzog, who served as a major in the 8200 unit, also hailed its work and said he was opposed to, and repulsed by, so-called "conscientious objectors."

[29] Another said a turning point occurred when he watched at the unit's headquarters as a figure in an orchard was blown up in an airstrike, and, when the smoke cleared they could see his mother running to the body of what was evidently then just a small boy.

[45] Another incident related concerns an operation where it was surmised that a person on their wanted list appeared to be standing by a weapons warehouse in Gaza, the time and location suggested it would be him, and he was assassinated.

[45] Another witness said that booty taken during arrest operations was stacked in a storeroom, photos, flags, weapon parts, books, Qurans, jewellery, and soldiers were told they could take whatever they liked out of this Palestinian memorabilia, the idea being to 'poison the students'.

[45] Another interviewee contrasted the huge outcry caused by the 14 collateral civilian casualties in the targeted assassination of Salah Shehade in 2002 with the insouciance that met the continual bombing of buildings, with hundreds of innocent deaths, during the summer conflict with Gaza.

[44] A number of signatories expressed regret for their collaboration in providing input for airstrikes prior to the 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict that, while targeting Hamas military commanders, also killed innocent bystanders.

[44] The letter, according to Elior Levy, has tapped into wider concerns regarding the ethics of state surveillance, in the wake of Edward Snowden's NSA leaks.

[35] In an op-ed, Gideon Levy praised the 'courage' and ethics of an elite group which, he claimed, when interviewed on radio and television, was dismissed by commentators in unison with descriptive language ranging from "trippy," "scandalous," "negligible," to "spoiled brats," "politicos" and "lefties".

[51][52] In February 2024, Sofia Orr was also jailed for refusing to serve in the IDF, explaining that she had made the decision when she was 15 because "if I enlisted, I would be taking part in and normalizing a decades-long cycle of violence".

Brigadier General Shay Tayeb who announced the warrants also stated that those who continued to not cooperate would be summed immediately or declared a draft dodger and banned from foreign travel and risk of arrest.

[56] The warrants come after a June 2024 ruling by the Israeli Supreme Court stating that the government must enlist draft-aged ultra-Orthodox Jews into the military, who had been previously exempt in order to study the Torah.

The ruling had caused officials in the ultra-Orthodox Shas party to urge potential conscripts in July 2024 to ignore any call-ups from the IDF and protests which at least one resulted in protestors attacking both law enforcement and the vehicle of Minister Yitzhak Goldknopf.