It is part of our program during our 3 months stay in Palestine to spend 1 week in Israel. I have to say I was pretty upset having to leave Jayyous but it was worth because it gave us the chance to meet really interesting Israelis people. One of them is a woman who created an association named new profile. She came to Israel as a Zionist, strongly believing this was the place for her to be and not questioning what was happening until her 15 years old son told her “Mum, I am a pacifist, I can not serve in the army” after sawing a documentary about the first intifada. That put her in a rather difficult situation knowing that in Israel if you are not an orthodox Jew neither a Palestinian you must serve in the army or you will be jailed. She decided to stand with her son, she hired a lawyer, went to the high court and after several years of struggle she finally succeeded and her son’s was recognised the right of consciousness objection. She decided after that to create an association called New Profile to change the military legal system to allow for conscientious objection but also to change mindsets within the Israeli society. She explained us how every parents educate theirs children in order to become soldiers, because it seems natural for them, even though many of them profoundly disagree with Israel’s politics of war. To encourage Israelis citizens to question themselves about the militarisation of their society the volunteers of New Profile have created a photo exhibition showing how the military is present in their everyday life. Astonishing! From a monument in a roundabout to commercials for medicine, mobile phones, you find soldiers and bulldozers everywhere, including the children’s colouring books.
You can see the exhibition here:
http://www.newprofile.org/images/exhibition/exhibition-extracts-
english.pdf
This is a picture I took while walking around Akka, Gallilea, in Israel.
