From the Salem-News, today, here is Tai Matalon, an Israeli woman who is said to have been imprisoned for refusing to serve:
"And then Efrat calls. ‘Remember Adi? Who was in our class till the middle of 11th grade? She was killed in the suicide attack.’ Adi!? What!? What is she talking about?? I didn’t even say anything, just hung up and started crying. I called Netta and told her. She came over to my place and we sat down and tried to think what we’re supposed to do now. Then Barel called. I was just trying to phone someone else. Netta answered the phone and suddenly she’s sitting on the floor in my living room, screaming. Ofer was killed too. Ofer. He studied architecture. I can’t remember one person who didn’t like him. We went to his best friend’s house.
His whole class was there, and most people from our year, too. I sat with some of them in the kitchen. Everything was full of cigarette smoke and photo albums from school trips. And then one of them said that all Arabs should be killed. And when everyone agreed, he went on and said that after we finish the Arabs off, we should kill all lefties too. Maybe even before, so that they don’t interfere. Only one of them noticed me sitting there and told him to shut up."
From this website, November 2009:
Last night at Columbia, 20 students gathered to hear a young Palestinian woman and a former Israeli pilot, under the auspices of the peace organization One Voice, tell of the situation in Israel/Palestine. At the end, the two, who had politely disagreed about a number of issues, were asked for a final statement about their hopes. Aya Hijazi, the Palestinian, who had long dark hair and a downward gaze, said, “It’s not necessarily about hope. It’s about not wanting another best friend to die. It makes me tremble just to think about that. And I decide that I cannot shape a Palestinian identity around violence. So it’s really about compromise. It’s not about hope.”
The former Israeli pilot, Seffi Kedmi, blue-eyed, his shirt sleeves pushed up around his biceps, said, “In Hebrew we have a word, Amal. ["Ain Mash-hoo Acher L’Geed"] It means, I have nothing to add. I agree with her completely.”
From this website, January 2007, on Elik Elhanan, whose sister was killed by a suicide bomber:
One day his unit commander came to his house to tell him to come back to the army. A big operation was coming up in Lebanon. “I think it will do you some good,” he said. “Maybe you will run into some terrorists, and you will have a chance to even the score.” Elhanan was shocked and disturbed by the statement. The commander was a good, smart man. Yet he was describing a solution that sounded to him like “perpetual war—beyond history and politics and geography.” Avenging a murder in Jerusalem by murdering someone in Lebanon.
…After a process of reading and thinking, he came to a new understanding. Elhanan’s voice became passionate.
“My sister didn’t die for the security of Israel. She didn’t die because the Arabs are a lower breed, or because Islam is a fanatic religion or because of a clash of civilizations. She died very simply because there is an occupation. Over a disputed piece of land…I should struggle against the occupation, is what I should do.”
