War Refusenik Ella Keidar Greenberg has been finally released from military service after two months in jail. “I received an exemption from the army. My incarceration was difficult. For most of it, I was locked alone in a cell for 21 hours a day, almost fully isolated from the other prisoners,” she said.

“Ella is free”, in Hebrew and Arabic. Ella Keidar Greenberg during a demonstration in front of the Military Jail number 10 (Photo: Mesarvot)

According to Keidar, “Under international law, solitary confinement is considered torture and prohibited, but we all know how much the army cares about international law. My imprisonment wasn’t easy, but I passed it thanks to the support of my family, my friends, the lawyers who aided me, the Mesarvot Network, my comrades in the Communist Young League, and everyone who wrote me a letter from the outside.” “Now, I am free and I will continue, and we will continue to struggle against apartheid, the genocide in Gaza, and for a safe and free future for us all.”

Ella Kedar Greenberg, an 18-year-old transgender refusenik and leading young Communists member in Tel-Aviv, said after she was imprisoned, “Before the war, there was something very symbolic about refusal: we refuse to serve a regime that does this and that, and we do it publicly. After the war started, it became much simpler: there is a genocide happening in Gaza, and you don’t enlist in an army that’s committing genocide.  Everything feels both more urgent and more hopeless at the same time, but politically, it’s much clearer and requires less deliberation. It’s very obvious what the right thing to do in the face of genocide is: to refuse.”