The Alumnus Who Refused to Serve in the Israeli Army

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – Moriel Rothman-Zecher ’11 returned to Middlebury last week to give an impassioned talk infused with his own spoken-word poetry on the subject of the Israeli-occupied territories and his own conscientious objection to serving in the Israeli army.

Born in Israel and raised in Ohio, Rothman-Zecher holds dual citizenship and, in the years since he graduated summa cum laude with a BA in political science, he has emerged as a powerful voice in opposition to some Israeli policies. His op-ed piece “Why I Won’t Serve Israel” was published in the New York Times in January, and his essays have appeared on The Daily Beast, Sojourner Magazine, and Haaretz, Israel’s oldest daily newspaper. He also makes public appearances at colleges, conferences, and synagogues in the U.S. and Europe.

Rothman-Zecher was introduced by Assistant Professor Tara Affolter, whose program in education studies was the lead sponsor of his talk. With more than 100 people assembled in Dana Auditorium, Affolter set the stage for Rothman-Zecher saying, “Moriel’s conscientious objection and continuing nonviolent protests against Israeli occupation [in Gaza and West Bank] offer a model for the transformative power of love, while demanding that none of us simplify or essentialize this complex struggle.”

Over the next 80 minutes Rothman-Zecher delivered a powerful, rapid-fire lecture mixing his poetry with prose, all without the benefit of a note or cue card. The bearded 25-year-old recounted his confrontations with Israeli soldiers, his standoffs with bulldozers poised to destroy a Palestinian village, and his state of mind in the days leading up to his time behind bars in Israeli Military Jail #6.

In December of 2011 Rothman-Zecher had a transformative experience while attending a protest in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh – a protest that coincided with a funeral for a Palestinian man who had been shot and killed the week before.

Rothman-Zecher explained how the man died: “During the protest some of the young men were throwing stones, and Mustafa Tamimi was throwing a stone at an armored Jeep that was closed and sealed off and driving away. And as the Jeep was driving away a soldier poked his gun out the back of the Jeep and shot a tear gas canister directly at Mustafa Tamami’s face, and he was killed.

“So the next week I went to the protests at Nabi Saleh, and if I ever had any doubt in my mind about whether the Israeli soldiers waited for provocation before shooting, before firing tear gas, before arresting people, or before shooting rubber bullets – all that doubt dissipated in a moment, because as soon as this protest had assembled there in Nabi Saleh, tear gas cannisters started falling out of the sky and the soldiers were screaming and people started being arrested.”

Rothman-Zecher said that as he stood amid the violence and chaos, all he could think about was Mustafa Tamimi, the murdered Palestinian, “lying there on the ground, his handsome face still intact except for one huge red flowering chasm where his eye used to be.”

Rothman-Zecher referred to each of his personal experiences as “layers” that affected his psyche. When he confronted a column of soldiers, that was a layer. When he met a Palestinian man whose sole livelihood, his grape vines, had been wantonly cut down by Israeli Defense Forces, that was a layer. And when his fellow Israelis showed complete indifference to the plight of Palestinians, that was another layer. Each layer contributed to his decision to refuse service in the military.

A critical layer occurred during his extended stay in a Palestinian village in the north of Israel. (Rothman-Zecher is fluent in Arabic after studying the language at Middlebury.) Israelis are remarkably “uncurious” and “disinterested” in the lives of the non-Jews who make up 20 percent of the population of their country, he said, so he decided to live with a Palestinian host family to see what their lives were like.

“The most shocking takeaway I had from those few weeks there was how radically normal it is, which was a completely jarring thing for [an Israeli] to realize at this juncture. Of course on a theoretical, hypothetical level you know that life is normal everywhere, and people have normal lives in all places, but it didn’t feel like that. It felt like a foreign place to me, just some minutes away from where I had lived and become so familiar in northern Israel.

“It was a completely different world. Some people were nice, some were kind, some were boring, and some were goofy. All these adjectives you would never hear Israelis use to describe this entire group of people.”

Rothman-Zecher described himself as “terrified” on the day he reported to prison. He would ultimately serve about one month’s incarceration until he was released on a mental health exemption known as a “Profile 21,” which he explained is how most “public refusers” are freed.

He currently is a leader in an organization called All That’s Left: An Anti-Occupation Collective and has a blog of his writings, videos, and performances called the Leftern Wall. His presentation was sponsored by Education Studies, Wonnacott Commons, Arabic Department, Middle East Studies, and the Academic Enrichment Fund.

— With reporting and photography by Robert Keren