Over the next several months, Greenberg refused enlistment and received five additional sentences of varying lengths. [Getty Images]
An 18-year-old Israeli was released from prison this week after serving six prison terms for refusing his mandatory conscription orders over “Israel’s crimes against humanity” in Gaza.
Itamar Greenberg was freed on March 4 after spending a total of 197 days in prison, making it the longest imprisonment for a conscientious objector in two decades.
“I refused to join the Israeli army… because of the crimes that they are committing,” he told The New Arab on March 5, less than 24 hours after his release.
“I just learned more and more about the reality of what the army is doing. I can’t be part of it. We can’t continue with the killing and the apartheid. We have to change it. And if I were to join the army, I would just be part of the problem, and I prefer to be part of the solution.”
On August 7, at the Tel Hashomer base near Tel Aviv, Greenberg publicly stated his refusal to serve in the Israeli army, which calls itself the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), in protest against the country’s occupation of Palestine and the indiscriminate killing of innocent people. As a result, he was sentenced to 30 days in prison – just four months after turning 18.
According to Israeli law, every citizen aged 18 or older who is Jewish, Circassian or Druze is required to serve in the military, the Israeli army website states. Men are expected to serve for a minimum of 32 months, while women are expected to serve for 2 years. Military service is considered a fundamental part of Israeli national identity.
Members of the ultra-Orthodox community, which makes up around 13% of Israel’s population, were exempt from mandatory military service; however, in June, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled that the defence ministry could no longer allow blanket exemptions.
“When I was 12, I understood that my way to become an Israeli and to be proud of Israeli society as an ultra-Orthodox kid was to serve in the army,” Greenberg said. “I wanted to join the army, but it wasn’t like in the fascist way. I just wanted to be… proud, to be regular and not strange.”
Although conscientious objection has been around since the Lebanon War in the 1980s, Greenberg is part of a growing movement amongst young Israelis who publicly object to conscripted military service. “Most of those who want to refuse publicly contact Mesarvot in Israel,” Greenberg said, in reference to the Israeli refusenik group.
Mesarvot, which means “refusers” in Hebrew, is a network established in 2016 as an anti-militarist movement of Israelis opposed to Israel’s occupation of Palestine. “It’s a network of past refusers, present refusers and future refusers who are working together to promote anti-occupation, anti-apartheid politics, anti-genocide politics and we help out young people who want to refuse and to make a political campaign of it,” a spokesperson told TNA.
But some choose not to go public with their objection – often referred to as the “grey refuseniks” – who claim to have mental health or general health issues to avoid being drafted and the possibility of serving jail time.
“I didn’t want to lie,” Greenberg said.
His first few days in military prison were spent in solitary confinement as conspiracies had spread about his “support of terrorists and terrorism”, which made him a target. “There was a risk to my life at the start. People wanted to hurt me,” he said.
While in prison, the 18-year-old heard firsthand accounts from those who had murdered Palestinians. “People were saying to me: ‘Yeah, I killed them. You want to hear a story about how we executed innocent people that just wanted help from us?’ But it’s not so special. I live in a society where a lot of people are soldiers, or were soldiers, or will be soldiers, and I have to get used to it,” he explained.
Over the next several months, Greenberg refused enlistment and received five additional sentences of varying lengths. Israeli sentencing of objectors has seen a dramatic increase over the last 18 months in what appears to be a clamp down on those unwilling to be drafted.
In 2023, then-18-year-old Tal Mitnick was sentenced to 30 days in prison for refusing to serve in the army in protest “against the war in Gaza.” He was the first Israeli conscientious objector to be imprisoned since the war against Hamas began. He served a total of 185 days in prison.
“These are record-breaking periods of time. It’s the longest they have held refusers since the early 2000s. They have been giving harsher sentences for refusers and not letting them go,” the Mesarvot spokesperson said.
The Israeli army said in a statement that it treats conscription refusal “very severely”, with each case “reviewed and handled on a case by case basis by the IDF commanders.”
Israel’s war in Gaza, which the ICJ ruled presents a plausible case of genocide against Palestinians, affected Greenberg, who turned 18 six months into the war. “One time between the imprisonment periods, I watched a video of a child burning in a tent in a hospital. I remember she was shouting for help or something. Well, it moved me… it moved me,” he said.
Mesarvot applauded Greenberg’s actions, telling TNA that he showed “courage and perseverance in the face of repeated prison terms,” adding: “He was finally released after the army realised he would not give up on his struggle for justice for both peoples living in the land, and for human values.”
Since gaining his freedom, Greenberg has continued his activism – attending anti-war protests in Tel Aviv and acting in solidarity with Palestinians in the West Bank.
“In Israel, we are the minority. We are trying to change it, but for now, we are failing. It’s sad. I think maybe we don’t know still how to change it, but we will succeed because there is no other way,” he said.
