Every year, as we write out our annual report, we say, “This year was undoubtedly our most challenging”, and 2009 was no exception to the rule. As you will read in the pages below, not only were our continued activities against the militarization of Israeli society demanding, we in fact managed to increase them. We found that in spite of all the critical political events during this year, some of which were specifically aimed to interfere with our activities, we were able to maintain work on our regular projects. We kept steadily in stride with the fast pace of the events of the day which most notably included:

• The war and ongoing blockade against Gaza
• The election and formation of an ultra right wing government led by Benjamin Netanyahu, which has since led a public and legislative campaign to delegitimize the work of human rights and (left-wing) social change movements in Israel in general.

And pertaining more specifically to our own work:

• The police investigation into New Profile’s activities, the subsequent interrogation of several New Profile members, and the confiscation of their private computers and some of those of their family members.
• The attempt to discredit us and the threat to strip us of our NGO status by the “Forum for an Equal Share of the Burden”.
• The banning of New Profile from public high school premises by the Ministry of Education.

Having survived these critical obstacles, New Profile, now into its twelfth year, is recognized as one of the movements that may effect social change in Israel. We continue to produce and express our unrelenting critical analysis and to insist on our right to voice a different opinion.

Through our perseverance and belief that change is possible, and having stood up against the serious obstacles of 2009, we find that we have gained more acceptability internationally and to some extent nationally. We have strengthened our networks and have become a source of reference.

Yet, not unlike a large family, throughout all these challenges, we faced new internal tests too. The police investigation brought with it an intense need for containment and as much mutual support as possible. By rallying together, we confirmed the power of grassroots movements and how they are capable of shaking the pillars of the establishment.

Throughout 2009 we continued to review our internal processes and provided congenial settings that stimulated shared brainstorming. We held a weekend retreat to discuss feminism and to provide a space for free dialog. We held a workshop on consensus decision-making. We held several meetings on how an organization such as New Profile, some of whose members receive salaries (in this case, almost everyone who works in the projects directed at youth), and with a majority of volunteer activists, can maintain a just balance that is acceptable to all. This led to a discussion on fair employment, part time employment and organizational efficiency; an ongoing dialogue in 2010.

We believe that cooperation with politically like-minded individuals and organizations outside Israel is vital to our activity. The need for this is especially underlined by Israel’s dangerous tendency, which sadly increases and deepens each time it engages in more military violence to maintain the illegal and unjust occupation, to consider itself internationally isolated and surrounded by enemies. Working together with supportive critics of Israeli policies worldwide we believe we maintain and build the basis for political and social change in our region.

And already 2010 is proving to be as challenging as 2009. However it is important for us to note that nothing of what New Profile accomplishes can be done without your kind and ongoing support. We truly appreciate your interest and backing. Thank you all.

New Profile Activists, June 2010

[Click here to read the full report]

This report, entitled NGO Answers to the List of Issues, compiles data provided by seven organisations* and was submitted to the Committee in December 2009, ahead of the review of Israel’s compliance with OPAC in January 2010. It includes thorough and up-to-date information on the recruitment practices of the Israeli state armed forces, and Palestinian and Israeli non-state actors. It also expands upon the militarisation of Israeli society at large.

[Read the full report] [Read the CRC Concluding Observations on Israel] [Also on the same topic: The New Profile Report on Child Recruitment in Israel, 2004]

More specifically, the 41-page report is based, inter alia, on: Adalah’s expertise on the legal and practical aspects of the Israeli military’s use of civilians as human shields; DCI-Palestine’s research and field documentation of the impact of Operation Cast Lead, and its experience of representing Palestinian children accused of security offences in Israeli military courts; New Profile’s expertise on Israel’s recruitment laws and practices, its knowledge about the administration of military schools in Israel, and its research on the militarisation of the Israeli education system; Yesh Din’s expertise on the Israeli military court system; and UNICEF’s perspective on the Israeli government’s support towards the implementation of the child rights monitoring and reporting mechanism set up by UN Security Council Resolution 1612.

On 19 January 2010, Israel’s OPAC implementation was reviewed by the Committee on the Rights of the Child. Committee members probed the Israeli government delegation on the following topics, among others:

• Applicability of the Convention in the OPT
• Use of Palestinian children as human shields
• Detention of Palestinian children by Israeli authorities
• Israeli military juvenile courts
• Age of minimum recruitment in Israel
• Israeli military schools
• Operation Cast Lead
• Construction of the Wall in the West Bank
• Israeli landmines in the Golan.

On 29 January 2010, the Committee on the Rights of the Child issued its Concluding Observations to Israel.

*Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Right in Israel (Contributor); Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers (Contributor); DCI-Israel – Defence for Children International-Israel Section (Author); DCI-Palestine – Defence for Children International-Palestine Section (Author); New Profile – Movement for the Civilization of Israeli Society (Author); UNICEF – United Nations Children’s Fund-OPT (Contributor); Yesh Din – Volunteers for Human Rights (Contributor).

BACKGROUND INFORMATION – OPAC Timeline

On 18 July 2005, Israel ratified the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict (OPAC). As a State Party to OPAC, Israel was due to report to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child – the body in charge of monitoring implementation of the Convention and its Protocols – two years after ratification.

In March 2008, Israel submitted its Initial State Party Report, one year late. The report made no mention of the situation of children – Palestinian or Israeli – living in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT).

In July 2009, DCI-Israel and DCI-Palestine submitted a joint Alternative Report to the Committee in order to provide Committee members with complementary information relating to implementation of OPAC in the OPT.

On 6 October 2009, at the end of its 52nd Session, the Committee held a pre-session meeting on Israel’s OPAC Initial State Party Report and invited representatives of DCI-Israel and DCI-Palestine to present the contents of their Alternative Report to them. The Committee had many questions on Israel’s child recruitment practices in the OPT.

On 15 October 2009, shortly after the pre-session meeting on Israel, the Committee sent its List of Issues (22 questions) to the Israeli government, expressing its concern and requesting further information on a range of issues, a majority of them connected to the OPT, over which the Committee considers that Israel has jurisdiction. The government was given until 19 November 2009 to send its responses in writing.

On 7 January 2010, Israel forwarded its Written Replies to the List of Issues to the Committee on the Rights of the Child.

On 28 December 2009, NGOs sent their own replies to the Committee. The List of Issues had also benn forwarded to NGOs in Israel and the OPT, to encourage them to submit updated and complementary information to the Committee. Expert contributions from Israeli, Palestinian, international and UN organisations were compiled in the NGO Answers to the List of Issues.

On 19 January 2010, from 3:00-6:00pm, an Israeli government delegation met members of the Committee in Geneva in order to answer questions on the implementation of OPAC in the territories over which Israel has jurisdiction.

On 29 January 2010, the Committee on the Rights of the Child issued its Concluding Observations.

March 2, 2010

It’s no coincidence that the non-profit created to enhance the funding of Israel’s army is holding an event at the New York Waldorf Astoria Hotel.

It was just last October that Israel’s State Comptroller investigated the outrageous bills run up at lavish hotels by the thirty-nine Israeli army and security officials who attended the Air Salon in Paris. Defense Minister Ehud Barak topped the list in a deluxe 2,500 Euro a night hotel suite.

Two months later, in December 2009, Israeli media revealed the equally lavish pension deal – approximating some 3 million Shekels – struck by a retiring general with the military after arranging a prematurely hiked up salary. “Everything connected to the terms of military pensions remains unknown,” wrote The Marker’s Meirav Arlosoroff, in her report on “these shady deals regarding senior officers’ leaving conditions.” These deals, she said, were “beyond any kind of external supervision. … [as] no one … can bring the IDF to disclose its data.”

The Waldorf Astoria is just another glimpse of this entrenched regime of extravagance and corruption.

Israel’s national security budget, 50 Billion Shekels in 2010, with 10 Billion more in US aid, coming from US taxpayers, is by far the largest portion of the public coffers allocated to any single government ministry. Itself a symptom and a benchmark of the state’s extreme militarization, it is moreover insulated from detailed examination by Israel’s elected representatives. The people entrusted with the dispensation of public funds towards implementing policy are in fact denied a transparent breakdown of this major portion of the budget. This has been the case for over sixty years, a perfect hothouse for corruption.

For decades now, Israel’s army and its security administration have enforced a brutal and criminal occupation upon the Palestinian people. At the very least, this choice of ostentatious venue reveals an arrogant, callous indifference to the intense human suffering inflicted by the military organization being honored by the Waldorf Astoria event. The Palestinian people withstanding this suffering are largely disregarded or viciously stereotyped and demonized both within and outside of Israel. In rallying to support Israel’s military, the “Friends of the IDF” align themselves with those acts of erasure and oppression. Their funding and fundraising help uphold the impunity with which such criminal acts continue to be committed. Perhaps less obviously, the “Friends of the IDF” also align themselves with a force that systematically undoes the democratic values and rights of all the people living in the state which the so-called Israel Defense Force claims to protect.

The gala event at the Waldorf Astoria, described on the “Friends of the IDF” website is “themed around the concept of education.” Indeed, education is one of the most militarized areas of civil society in Israel. The state education system, designed to perpetuate obedience to conscription law, produces and maintains the systemic militarization of state and society as it aggressively channels minors from a very young age towards enlistment. The end result – a population of young people with little critical capacity to make informed choices about conscription – is largely achieved by integrating a polarized, militarized world view into almost every aspect of school curricula. The system imbues youngsters with military-centered views, effectively entrenching paranoia while presenting the army as attractive and exciting. Students and teachers are commonly required to participate in lessons offered on school premises by uniformed officers and to visit a variety of military units in programs designed to naturalize armed conflict and enthuse future candidates for conscription. Enormous pressures both convince and oblige teachers to legitimize and normalize the militarized policy choices of warfare and to justify mandatory conscription. Precluding the encouragement of critical thinking, this means, in effect that Israeli youth are being educated as executors of the ongoing occupation of Palestine.

As a feminist movement that has been working for over a decade to challenge and reverse Israel’s militarization, its onslaught of destruction and self-destruction, New Profile: Movement for the Civil-ization of Israeli Society, is honored to stand with all of you today. Thank you for raising your voices against Israel’s impunity, against Israel’s war crimes, against Israel’s affront to human rights and democracy.

Diana Dolev & Rela Mazali
on behalf of New Profile

“If the United Nations and wider international community are to meet their responsibilities in upholding the rule of law,” New Profile wrote the U.N. Secretary-General, among others, “then concerted, effective and prompt action must be taken at the highest level to end the impunity and ensure the accountability of the State of Israel.”

Based on its long years of research-based, oppositional praxis, New Profile stated in conclusion, that, “the militarized system in place in Israel renders the State of Israel incapable of conducting its own implementation of the U.N. Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict.”

To read the entire analysis corroborating New Profile’s claim and first-hand information on recent silencing measures encountered by the movement, please see the full text of the letter (PDF).

The most recent information on imprisoned conscientious objectors in Israel appears under “In prison now“. Older information can in the meanwhile be accessed on the War Resisters’ International website.

If you wish to contact our Counseling Network for those who choose to refuse or avoid military service, you can visit the Counseling Network website (Hebrew only), leave a post on our forum, or write us.

You can also read our charter, our latest annual activity report, view our flier, have a glance at excerpts from our exhibition (with additional images here), and read the New Profile Report on Child Recruitment in Israel. Other items will be available again on our new website. If you need access to them sooner, or indeed for any other concern, please contact us by e-mail.

We, a group of feminist women and men, are convinced that we need not live in a soldiers’ state. Today, Israel is capable of a determined peace politics. It need not be a militarized society. We are convinced that we ourselves, our children, our partners, need not go on being endlessly mobilized, need not go on living as warriors. We understand that the state of war in Israel is maintained by decisions made by our politicians – not by external forces to which we are passively subject. While taught to believe that the country is faced by threats beyond its control, we now realize that the words “national security” have often masked calculated decisions to choose military action for the achievement of political goals.

We are no longer willing to take part in such choices.We will not go on enabling them by obediently, uncritically supplying soldiers to the military which implements them. We will not go on being mobilized, raising children for mobilization, supporting mobilized partners, brothers, fathers, while those in charge of the country go on deploying the army easily, rather than building other solutions.

It is hard to express this type of opinion in Israel today. In a soldiers’ state there are equal and less equal citizens: the social ladder is topped by those who fight. And those are unfailingly men. In addition, in Israel, they are Jewish men. As warriors, they are held to have privileged knowledge, giving them precedence in decision making. Attitudes casting doubts on “security” related decisions, questioning the state’s enormous military budgets, or its ongoing policies of military confrontation, are branded “naive,” “hysterical,” “ignorant.” An attitude that dares question the fundamental principle of willing enlistment, is almost incomprehensible in a soldiers’ state. It is rejected as illegitimate.

Our position – the “ignorant” one – is free of the mindsets responsible for perpetuating war in Israel for decades. It is a position prioritizing life and the protection of life. It condones painful compromises in the interests of preserving life. The hegemonic culture in Israel nurtures admiration for might and physical prowess, an aggrandizement of Jewish nationals, and a devaluation of the lives of Arab nationals.

The militarized consciousness imbued with this message sees opting for war as reasonable. Young people enlist putting their trust in the wisdom and honesty of those who bid them to serve. Each of us is accountable to them and to ourselves. Every parent takes an active part in educating sons or daughters to become soldiers. And yet, there are many women and men, parents and youngsters, who object profoundly, morally to Israel’s continued wars-of-choice. We oppose the use of military means to enforce Israeli sovereignty beyond the Green Line.

We oppose the use of the army, police, security forces in the ongoing oppression and discrimination of the Palestinian citizens of Israel, while demolishing their homes, denying them building and development rights, using violence to disperse their demonstrations. Given the widespread opposition to the kind of roles assigned the Israeli army for many years, thousands of young women and men are currently avoiding conscription or avoiding combat duty. Some 25% of the annual candidate recruits are presently exempted for health-related reasons or found “unfit” for service. It is common knowledge that a large proportion of these in fact choose not to serve. They feel unable to identify with the implications and meaning of military service in Israel today. Faced with no legal option for conscientious objection, a discharge on grounds of unfitness or poor health is virtually their only way out. Opting out is even more widespread among reservists. Army spokesmen have stated that only a third of the reserve forces in fact do active service. We all know how pervasive the intentional avoidance of duty (“twilight refusal”) is among reservists.

To date, Israeli law does not acknowledge men’s basic human right to conscientious objection. We regard Israeli conscription law as discriminatory and non-democratic, and call for the recognition of the basic right of every person, men included, to act in accordance with their conscience. Young women too undergo difficult, degrading interrogations by the military Exemption Committee. We urge the examination and revision of exemption procedures on grounds of conscience for women too.Acting on one’s conscience is the fundamental right of every man and woman. We call for the recognition of men and women’s right to express their social commitment by means of alternative civic service, conducted through a broad array of community services including work with non-governmental, voluntary organizations.

For our part, we refuse to go on raising our children to see enlistment as a supreme and overriding value. We want a fundamentally changed education system, for a truly democratic civic education, teaching the practice of peace and conflict resolution, rather than training children to enlist and accept warfare.

A study day, organized by the “New Profile Movement” on October 30, 1998, offered a first ever public forum for openly discussing these matters, to about 150 men and women, adults and youngsters. The many letters and phonecalls we have been receiving since, clearly indicate the real need for further action and discussion. If you share these opinions, help give our vital movement a public voice. Write us, call us, add your name to the growing list, along with address & phone numbers (+ fax and e-mail address, if available).

We proudly present our annual report for the year 2007.

Every year different New Profile teams come together in order to produce our annual report. The first team gathers facts and figures of last year’s activities from our members and compiles an outline in Hebrew. It is then given to another team which translates it into an English outline, A third team, using this outline, compiles the comprehensive English report which you now receive. The task, however cumbersome, is truly reflective of how New Profile functions as an organization and how we adhere to our organizational commitment of sharing responsibility and power.

At the time this report was being complied and written, New Profile was –and is still being – confronted with new challenges, some very complex and unexpected, and others that are integral part of a growing movement. Most notable is the present threat of being taken to High Court as our status as a nonprofit organization is being questioned.

New Profile is being accused of conducting acts of incitement by encouraging refusal to conscript. We face these charges because we provide information about draft refusal options to individuals who are considering not enlisting into the military. The charges are brought by the Parents Forum for an Equal Share of the Burden”, the initiators of the campaign “A True Israeli does not Dodge the Draft”. They demand that New Profile be closed down as a nonprofit organization and our members prosecuted for conducting illegal activities. Also named in the petition are the Fellowship Societies Registrar, and the Attorney General’s office.

We are quite aware that this legal action against us may prove costly, both financially and in terms of work and emotions. We are confident that we will be able to turn to you in our hour of need.

Rest assured, these actions have not deterred us from our goals and we have created a counter campaign, “Think before Enlisting”. This campaign reflects New Profile’s ongoing efforts to create a new public discourse while encouraging critical thinking and emphasizes the movement’s focus on the effects of militarism on society.

As we raise new questions and find occasion to introduce them into the mainstream discourse we also experience more attempts to keep us silent. We realize that this is to be expected especially when creating a new dialog that deals with questions of personal security, occupation and equality. We are not discouraged and cannot be deterred. We are actually witness to growing numbers of individuals and organizations contacting us in order to learn more about us and what we do.

This report not only reflects on the processes and activities within the organization but hopefully provide our readers with some insight into the present political and social climate in Israel.

Needless to say that none of this would have been possible without your ongoing encouragement and support. We are truly grateful.

Respectfully,

Ruth Hiller,
New Profile.

Download New Profile’s annual activity report for 2007