dot orgAnti Conscriptionism
With all the world’s trouble, it seems to be as if nobody’s actually taking care of a serious breach in many people’s freedom - forced conscription. Being forced to serve in the military by the government with no non-combatant alternative and no regard to one’s beliefs and such.
My main target is of course Israel, who has a record of imprisoning people with conflicting opinions who refused to serve in the army. I will allude to the Social-National (AKA Nazi) party here, who after being elected often was known for imprisoning protesters and such, as well as Stalin’s reign over the Soviet Union, which showed similar behavior.
This is a serious breach of human rights, and apparantly also biased towards Jews, who can much more easily choose not to serve under the definition of being conscience objectors, as shows this Amnesty-issued document. Also, if we look under the section dubbed “Case Histories”, the example of Ali Said Naffa shows that the IDF simply lacks flexibility. Did the imprisonment convince him? No.
“The only democracy in the middle east” my ass. If democracy means “getting minorities sent to prison because they refuse to join an organized mass murder”, I guess democracy it is.
Tagged as: amnesty, annoying, human_rights, imprisonment, israel, jews
I agree that Israel’s policy of forced military-servitude is not very ethically correct, but it is some what nessesary for Israel’s survival. Israel is a small country, and a voluntary army would probably not have kept it from being conquered by the surrounding Palestinian countries.
I cannot completley verify this, but I heard it is occasionally possible to exchange a fighting job for a longer-serving non-fighting job. I only read a post by someone on the internet, who said he had exchanged a combat-job for a army-programmer job that was two years longer. Again, since it was on the internet I can’t completley garuntee its validity.
Also I think we might have varying definitions of democracy. I was always under the impression that democracy was defined as a type of government where the people vote for elected officials who then vote on the decisions that direct the country. The definitions of democracy from several dictionaries (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=democracy&x=0&y=0) agree with me.
I do not know the inner-working of the Israeli government, but I think it would be possible for them to change that policy if there was mass disapproval.
Comment by meltingwax — September 4, 2006 @ 4:23