Serving their conscience

By Tal Hassin in Ha\'aretz

What Prof. Avi Sagi saw on the Conscience Committee of the Israel Defense Forces \"made me explode with anger,\" he says. \"They take kids of 17 and 18 and throw trick questions at them. I\'m not sure all the members of the committee understand their task, or know the meaning of pacifism that grants exemption from service.\" Sagi is not speaking as a critic on the sidelines or a worried parent. He is neither; he is a member of the committee. 

Six months ago, a momentous event occurred in the IDF. A civilian was added to the Conscience Committee, which is responsible for exempting inductees and reservists who are conscientious objectors from military service. Sagi, a professor of philosophy and a veteran warhorse, joined four career officers on the panel, which had been run like a military secret. Now he argues that members of the various conscience committees don\'t know what they are doing, thus causing damage to those who apply to them. 

It\'s not clear that this is what the army had in mind when it chose Sagi. Shortly before he was called to the flag, the judge advocate general, Major General Menahem Finkelstein, drew on his services in connection with a court petition filed by eight reservists, headed by Lieutenant David Zonshein, who refused to serve in the territories for reasons of conscience. Sagi, who is head of the department of philosophy at Bar-Ilan University, wrote - without receiving payment - an opinion rejecting the right of the eight to an exemption from serving in the territories. The High Court of Justice turned down their petition. Not long afterward, Sagi found himself on the Conscience Committee. 

The co-option of a civilian to the committee, which during its eight years of existence was run like an exclusive army club, was not done voluntarily. A year ago, Supreme Court Justice Mishael Cheshin recommended the army consider whether it would not be proper for a committee whose decisions are so significant to people\'s lives, to have civilian members, too - \"both in terms of its substantive judgment and in terms of appearances.\" It cannot be ruled out that the IDF turned to Sagi because of its prior familiarity with his opinions. 

Were you chosen because of the position you put forward in the Zonshein case? 

Sagi: \"No. Am I not allowed to have opinions? And if I were of the opposite opinion - exemption for all - would that be all right? I am there as a professional. If I did not have the proper qualifications to deal with ethics, I would be suspicious of the army\'s motives in choosing me.\" 

The judge advocate general (JAG) also does not see a problem in the fact that \"a person who expresses his opinion about selective refusal [to serve] should sit on a committee that deals with freedom of conscience.\" 

But the fact that Sagi represents an opinion that suits the army on one subject does not make him a convenient appointment. The fact is that two weeks ago, Finkelstein convened a special discussion on the work of the committee, in no small measure because of questions raised by the two new members - Sagi and philosophy professor Daniel Statman, who shares the civilian slot on the committee with him. Serious questions were discussed at the meeting. For example, what should be the committee\'s composition? What are the criteria according to which the committee should make its decisions, and should the criteria perhaps be formulated in written form? \"If the committee has a policy, I haven\'t heard about it,\" Sagi says. 

Almost a decade after the committee began operating and a year after serious allegations were voiced against it in the High Court, the JAG decided to see what was what. The discussion was preliminary in nature, Finkelstein says, adding, \"There will be more [discussion] and changes will be made. Flaws have to be corrected and I am not ashamed of making improvements.\" 

The seriousness of the flaws can be gleaned from what Sagi said after reading, at the request of Haaretz, the minutes of the three meetings of the conscience committees that dealt with the case of Yonatan Ben-Artzi, who has become the symbol of conscientious objection and has already spent more than six months in prison because of the army\'s refusal to recognize him as a pacifist. Sagi\'s opinion is clear-cut: \"I would release him. His pacifism is proved at a level of probability of 70 to 80 percent. All the committees before which he has appeared are filled with blunders and mistakes.\" 

Mystery panel 

The Conscience Committee - officially known as the Advisory Committee to the Minister of Defense on Exemption from Service - was established in 1995 as part of an international commitment Israel assumed when it signed and ratified the International Convention on Human Rights in 1966. Prior to 1995, the subject of exemptions was in the hands of the head of the Induction Directorate, to whom the defense minister delegated the authority that was vested in him under the Defense Service Law to exempt males from service on grounds of educational needs, family, security-related settlement \"or for other reasons.\" This so-called \"basket\" of arguments was interpreted as including reasons of conscience and since the establishment of the state, had been used sweepingly to release various groups from military service, including Arabs, Druze and Circassian women and, until the legislation that was enacted in the wake of the Tal Commission in 2002, yeshiva students as well. 

\"Israel had to fulfill a duty to which it committed itself internationally,\" says attorney Michael Sfard (from the law office of Avigdor Feldman), who refused to serve in the territories, specialized in international law and represents conscientious objectors. \"So Israel went and set up a committee. Fine. The army never gave this committee a minute of thought, and it shows.\" 

The data supplied by the IDF show that the committee invokes its power with extreme caution: Of 178 requests by male soldiers from 2000-2003, 14, or 8 percent, were released from service. Five of them were about to be inducted and none were soldiers and officers in the reserves. (The IDF has no figures on the number of people who apply to the committee but are rejected in the pre-interview stage.) Among women, the picture is radically different. In the same three years, 273 of 367 women who requested exemption on grounds of conscience were released from service. The sharp disparity is due not only to the fact that the IDF needs males more than females; women\'s right to an exemption on grounds of conscience is enshrined in the law. Women who are rejected by one of the conscience committees can turn to a national appeals board. 

In addition, the women\'s board\'s members are all civilians. The reason for the difference between the make-up of the bodies that deal with women and men is \"historical and is derived from the law, which makes this distinction,\" says the JAG, \"but there should not be such a difference.\" 

\"We are working so that there will be no difference in the make-up of the committees that deal with cases of conscientious objection,\" adds the prosecutor in Ben-Artzi\'s case, Captain Yaron Kostelitz. 

In 1998, an international advocacy organization for conscientious objectors published a comparative survey that aimed to map the way different countries dealt with the subject. As of that year, only 24 countries had set up panels with the specific task of addressing the issue. Israel did not provide the organization with data. The survey found that Poland had the toughest attitude toward conscientious objectors: Only 60 percent of the applicants were exempted from service. It also turned out that only in Israel and Ecuador was a military body responsible for dealing with pacifists. 

There is a fundamental problem in the fact that the power that the legislature vested in the defense minister - a civilian entity from the executive branch - was transferred to the army, says Dr. Dov Hanin, a lawyer who is currently representing five of the signatories of a letter sent by high-school graduates to the defense establishment declaring that they would refuse to serve. 

\"The army is meant to manage what lies within its boundaries, and not to set those boundaries,\" he says. 

What qualifies army officers to decide who is a pacifist and who is not, wonders Dr. Anat Matar, who teaches philosophy at Tel Aviv University. Matar\'s son, Haggai, is one of the five refuseniks now on trial in a military court. \"A civilian panel as against a military panel is a cardinal difference,\" she notes. 

Sagi agrees: \"The committee should not be a military one. The question on the agenda is not in which units soldiers will serve; it has to do with the values of the society as a civil society, to which the army, too, is subordinate. The fact that the committee has four officers and one civilian [position] means that the considered opinion of the civil-social level becomes a minority. That is not healthy.\" 

The JAG, Finkelstein, who urged that civilians be added to the committee, says the \"civilian weight\" of the panel needs to be increased. \"Half and half, or two versus three, that\'s already a question of price. We have agreed on the principle.\" 

The fact that the committee operates within the framework of the army also affects its procedures. Until two years ago, the committee operated almost in secret, like all military bodies, which are subject to the instructions of Field Security. Before the publicity about the battles being fought by Yonatan Ben-Artzi and other conscientious objectors to be released from army service, few people had heard of the committee. There are no written guidelines defining the committee\'s task or explaining how to apply to it. The excellent Web site that the IDF\'s Human Resources Branch has prepared for inductees makes no mention of the panel. 

Nor, according to candidates for service, is the existence of the committee made known at the countrywide induction offices, to which youngsters report when they receive their first call-up notice. Nothing is said about the panel at the National Induction Center (NIC), either. Yoni Yehezkel, 19, a Buddhist, arrived at the NIC in the knowledge that he had no intention of joining an arms-bearing organization. He had heard about the Conscience Committee and had applied to it before his induction date, but the date set for his interview clashed with a Vipassana meditation course. No new date was set. 

He reported to the NIC last August. \"I watched a film for inductees, about what a great thing it is to be in the IDF, and then I took part in a talk with the commander of the Ground Forces, and then came the induction process - injections, bank account and so on. I approached the senior authority there, the soldier who was directing people in line. I told him I was not willing to be a soldier and that I didn\'t know how to proceed. He didn\'t know, either. He told me to wait by the side. 

\"A few hours went by and I was directed to another soldier, who told me that if I didn\'t want to be inducted I should go home. I didn\'t argue. I went home and the next day I sent a thank-you letter to the NIC. Two days later they called me and told me to return immediately. No one could find the soldier who released me. I was sent to military prison.\" 

At the beginning of June, after having been hauled before a disciplinary court four times and spending three months in prison, Yehezkel was recognized by the Conscience Committee as a pacifist and exempted from service on grounds of conscience (see box). 

A month ago, in the trial of Yonatan Ben-Artzi, the commander of the NIC, Colonel Devora Hasid, was asked whether policy guidelines exist for dealing with candidates for induction who arrive at the NIC and refuse to be inducted on grounds of conscience. \"In my opinion there are,\" the senior officer at the base replied. \"For certain we have orders that deal with those who refuse. I am not familiar with them in detail.\" 

Amir Givol, 29, from Haifa, was released from reserve service a year ago, after adopting a pacifist worldview in the years since his army service (in Intelligence). \"It took me 20 minutes to get an exemption, but six years to get to the committee,\" he says. \"I didn\'t know there was such a body. A kaban [mental health officer] told me there is a committee that grants exemptions on grounds of conscience that meets once every three years. My unit never heard of it. I was transferred from one unit to another. No one in the army was able to refer me to the committee. Every time I reported for reserve service, which was accompanied by pressure and hysteria that I was being called up and I would refuse and go to jail, they told me the subject was being dealt with. Finally I met a classification officer who was sufficiently polite to tell me to get along by myself. Within five minutes I found the Web site of the New Profile organization, which has conscientious objection as part of its agenda and was able to give me all the explanations I needed.\" 

Shmulik Sheintoch, 32, a social worker from Jerusalem who sought a release from reserve service because he is opposed to violence and to service in an occupation army, located the committee within six months. However, during that period he received a letter from the IDF stating, \"In response to your request to have your application dealt with by a Conscience Committee, I wish to inform you that in the IDF there are conscience committees dealing with religious reasons only, and therefore you will not be referred to such a committee.\" The letter was signed by Major Hagit Falk, from the Human Resources Branch, which is directly in charge of exemptions. 

The mysteriousness doesn\'t end even for those who manage to overcome the obstacles and reach the committee. The names and positions of its members appear only on some of the transcripts of the hearings, and those are made available to applicants only after an explicit request, preferably by a lawyer. Yehezkel says his request to be informed of the names of those who interviewed him was rejected. Givol was not allowed to take notes during his interview. 

Anat Matar says she accompanied her son to the committee in order to testify about his worldview but was told to leave. Similarly, Matanya and Ofra Ben-Artzi were not allowed to accompany their son to the second panel he faced, and documents they wanted to submit were also rejected. Ben-Artzi\'s petition to the High Court of Justice paved the way for legal representation before the committee (\"a lame right of representation,\" says attorney Avner Pinchuk, from the Association for Civil Rights in Israel: The lawyer can address the committee before and after the applicant for exemption, but he is not allowed to be present when the applicant is questioned). Thanks to Ben-Artzi, applicants can now bring witnesses to testify on their behalf and introduce evidence, though the state, in its response to the court petitions, claimed this was always possible. 

Since the committee is not statutory, there are no regulations about how to apply to it or about the rights of the applicants. A refreshing innovation is the presence of a stenographer in the hearings - this, too, only after the High Court addressed the committee\'s mode of operation. Before that, one of those present scribbled a few sentences in handwriting. 

\"The committee does not view its role as being to conduct an open, transparent procedure,\" attorney Hanin says. \"The public is not meant to know it exists, how it works or what the procedure is. The result is that an institution that makes critical decisions is run in a completely shoddy and offhand manner.\"