This very brave young man is in the same category as Bradley Manning and Julian Assange, but is not at this stage in the same parlous situation that both of them are.
From Mondoweiss 03 APRIL 2013 and Antony Loewenstein 04 APRIL 2013
Meet Nathan Blanc, Israeli conscientious objector
By Annie Robbins
Nathan Blanc is an Israeli conscientious objector. He's getting ready to serve his 8th stint in jail for refusing to serve in the Israeli military. He believes in democracy. From the video:
The main reason for my refusal is the feeling our country is going towards a non democratic condition of civil inequality between us and the Palestinians. There are two people in the same land but only the Israelis can vote in the elections.
Blanc has internalized one state/ two peoples.
Israel is refusing to offer him civil service as an alternative to military service and he doesn't want to get a mental health deferment; "I'm not going to put on an act," he told Haaretz last January. He thinks the army is trying to "wear him down with the repeated confinements until he gives in and enlists."
That was after two months in prison, now he's been in for over 100 days. Harriet Sherwood reports for The Guardian, Israel set to jail teenage conscientious objector for eighth time:
It is a routine Nathan Blanc knows well. At 9am on Tuesday morning, the 19-year-old will report, as instructed in his draft papers, to a military base near Tel Aviv. There he will state his objection to serving in the Israeli army. Following his refusal to enlist, Blanc expects to be arrested and sentenced to between 10 and 20 days in jail. He will then be taken to Military Prison Number 6 to serve his time. And then, following his release, the cycle will begin over again.
The reason why Blanc knows what to expect is that this will be the eighth time the teenage conscientious objector has been jailed in the past 19 weeks. Since the date of his original call-up for military service, Blanc has spent more than 100 days in prison; on one occasion, he was released on a Tuesday and re-imprisoned two days later on a Thursday.
Blanc began to consider the possibility of refusing the draft several years ago. "It was a very hard decision, it took me a long time to get to it," he says.
The turning point was Operation Cast Lead, the war in Gaza that began at the end of 2008 and ended three weeks later with a Palestinian death toll of around 1,400. In a statement issued when he was first imprisoned, Blanc said: "The wave of aggressive militarism that swept the country then, the expressions of mutual hatred, and the vacuous talk about stamping out terror and creating a deterrent effect were the primary trigger for my refusal." The government, he said, was "not interested in finding a solution to the existing situation, but rather in preserving it … We will talk of deterrence, we will kill some terrorist, we will lose some civilians on both sides, and we will prepare the ground for a new generation full of hatred on both sides … We, as citizens and human beings, have a moral duty to refuse to participate in this cynical game."
In an interview with the Guardian, he says: "The war going on in this country for more than 60 years could have ended a long time ago. But both sides are giving into extremists and fundamentalists. The occupation was supposed to be temporary, but now no one speaks of it ending."
The Israeli state, he adds, keeps people "under our control" without democratic rights. Palestinians are subject to "collective punishment" for the actions of a few.
Will our msm write about this? Probably not. Here is a facebook page with updates about Blanc, including video messages for him from other Israeli Refusniks.
War Resistors International:
Repeated imprisonment is a violation of international legal standards. The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in Opinion 24/2003 on Israel came to the conclusion that the repeated imprisonment of conscientious objectors in Israel is arbitrary, and therefore it constitutes a violation of 14 par 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, of which Israel is a signatory.
Natan Blanc refuses to enlist in the Israeli Army based on beliefs and conscience. He claims his human right to conscientious objection, as guaranteed by Article 18 of the ICCPR.
Nathan Blanc Israeli Conscientious Objector
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