Fifty-five alumni from the Jerusalem’s Israel Arts and Sciences Academy (IASA) who have refused to serve in the army of occupation are calling on the school’s current students to do the same. The school, established in 1990, was formed “to serve as a unique school for gifted and talented students from across the country.” The boarding school selects the most outstanding students from throughout the country in a lengthy and arduous screening process that lasts nearly a year. Those who are picked, study the humanities, sciences, art, or music.
A demonstration in solidarity with those jailed for refusing conscription. (Photo: Activestills)
The alumni of IASA, who were joined by former faculty members, are calling on future graduates to refuse to be conscripted into the IDF. In the letter they sent to the school’s students they wrote: “The Israeli military is responsible for the mundane, systematic mechanisms of oppression used against Palestinians in the Occupied Territories as wells as taking part in the oppression and dispossession of non-Jewish citizens of the State of Israel. The military serves as an enabler for a regime of separation based on a notion of ethnic superiority of Jews over Palestinians; a regime which denies basic human rights, enforces separate legal systems to different populations in the West Bank, and which has institutionalized a system of ethnic-based discrimination within the ‘48 territory.”
The letter continues: “Oppression mechanisms are also used against Jews within Israel, particularly against Mizrachi (Oriental) Jews, Ultra-Orthodox, Ethiopians, women, residents of the periphery and the poor wherever they may be. The military is not the only executive power in the current political, social, and economic reality, but refusing to serve in it is a clear expression of resistance against these oppressions. Backed by the military, Israeli governments are exploiting the weakened populations for ethnic cleansing and dispossession projects across the Green Line, in the Negev and the Galilee, using them to fight the so called ‘demographic war.’ The continuous state of emergency [in effect since 1948, Editor] serves the destructive, neoliberal policy of the regime, which involves the state’s rejection of its responsibility for its own citizens, while eroding basic services such as health, welfare, and education.”
