‘I refuse’: Israeli draft resister and trans activist Ella Keidar speaks out

'Gather, organize, resist!' Ella Keidar is featured in this poster issued by the Communist Youth of Israel.

EDITOR’S NOTE: 18-year-old Ella Keidar Greenberg, a member of the Communist Youth of Israel, has been imprisoned for refusing mandatory conscription and declaring she won’t serve in Benjamin Netanyahu’s military. Before being sent to military prison, she released a public statement, published under the title, “The Imperative is Refusal.” We present here an English translation.

For more information on Keidar’s fight against the draft, see our related story in People’s World.

My name is Ella Keidar Greenberg. I was raised to be a man and a soldier. At the age of 14, I came out as a trans woman and rejected society’s dictation of gender. Now, at the age of 18, I am refusing to enlist in the Israeli military and reject society’s militaristic dictation.

Shortly after coming out, I found The Communist Manifesto in my grandmother’s library. I spent the next two years reading books about political philosophy and Marxist theory. Through reading, I developed a deeper understanding of the bloody history and present of the place I live in.

With the protest movement against Netanyahu’s judicial coup, a path opened for me to convert the frustration I felt into hope and political action. I quickly joined the struggle against the occupation as an activist and organizer—first in the anti-occupation bloc and the weekly protests against the war, and later in the Mesarvot Network [draft objectors], in Communist Youth, and the Communist Party of Israel.

Since then, activism has turned into the central focus of my life. I organized a mass protest against transphobic propaganda, protested with Palestinian activists against land theft as soldiers shot stun grenades and rubber bullets at us, blocked roads, got injured by cops and from violent evictions by Magav [border police], organized a mass refusal campaign under Youth Against Dictatorship, did protective presence, and joined co-resistance in West Bank, and now—I am refusing to enlist in the Israel Defense Forces.

The main reason for this act is that my country is committing a genocide in Gaza. Hundreds of thousands have been killed in bombings, intentional destruction of infrastructure, starvation, and indiscriminate fire. Millions were torn from their homes and continue to exist in a state of displacement since. This has been the daily reality in Gaza for the past 18 months.

All of this has been for a war that was supposedly meant to bring the hostages back home, but in practice, abandons them. The war of annihilation has carried over to the West Bank as well, with escalating settler violence, supported more than ever by the army. Dozens of villages have been ethnically cleansed, as if they never even existed, and entire neighborhoods destroyed and depopulated as part of the destructive operation in Jenin and Tulkarem.

Now that the government has returned to its campaign of destruction in Gaza, this situation is expected to continue and worsen.

In 40 years, when our grandchildren ask us what we did during the Gaza genocide, during the collapse of the old order, if we gave up or if we put up a fight, how will you answer?

I know what I’ll answer. I chose to resist. This is why I am refusing.

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CONTRIBUTOR

Ella Keidar Greenberg

Ella Keidar Greenberg is a member of the Communist Youth of Israel. She was sentenced to prison for refusing to enlist in the occupation army.