The rite of refusal: among the Israelis who refuse to serve in Palestinian territories are gay soldiers who say they're taking a stand against oppression. (World).

During the 3 1/2 years he served in the Israel Defense Forces, beginning at age 18, Eshel Herzog was assigned to a tank artillery gun, serving in both southern Lebanon and in the Palestinian territory of the West Bank. Now 23 and no longer on active duty, the openly gay man is required by Israeli law to report for annual terms in the reserve army--sometimes for as long as 45 days--until he turns 45. But Herzog is refusing to do so. "I sent a letter to the army and also to the minister of defense [saying] that I am not going to serve in any way," he says.

Herzog is just one of hundreds of Israelis, many of them gay men and lesbians, who are illegally opting out of their required military duty in opposition to Israel's presence in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which are home to more than 3 million Palestinians. For most of these men and women, their protest extends to service only in the territories, but Herzog says he won't participate in any mission, regardless of where he is ordered to serve. "There is no difference," he says. "When I serve inside Israel, they will send someone else [to the territories]. That is not making a political statement.

"My politics says that minorities should feel connected with any struggle against oppression," he continues. "I cannot see myself, as a gay [man], contributing to oppression [of] other minorities, including women, Palestinians, transgenders, whatever."

If any group of people can understand Herzog's position, he says, it should be his fellow Jews, who have suffered oppression for centuries. "Every Jew should feel responsibility of the oppression he is being part of," Herzog says. "As an oppressed minority we should feel also a connection in our hearts. It's not only a logical connection, it's an emotional connection."

Similarly, Lior Kay, a 27-year-old refuser, says he feels a special responsibility to oppose Israel's actions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. "We are not only individuals," he says. "We are the gay community. As a community [we have] a power. We must have opinions about many issues, not about only gay issues. If we want rights, we must take part in the political process, not only the gay political process."

So far, Kay has served five reserve terms, two of them in the Palestinian territories. Scheduled to report for his sixth term three days after being first interviewed for this story, he planned to tell his commanding officer that he would not serve in the territories and that he would not guard Palestinian prisoners. "I will refuse to go. I will go to jail. [The occupation] is destroying the Israeli society from the inside," he said at the time. Interviewed a week later, Kay happily reported that he was serving within Israel's borders excluding the Palestinian territories.

For its part, the army has promised to jail any refusers. The Advocate's telephone calls to the army's press offices in Israel and to the Israeli consulate in New York City were not returned.

Protest by refusal is not new to Israel. A group called Peace Now launched a similar campaign in 1982, in response to the country's invasion of Lebanon. The latest incarnation, called the Courage to Refuse, was prompted by an anonymous letter posted on the Internet earlier this year. "We hereby declare that we shall not continue to fight this war of the settlements," the letter states. "We shall not continue to fight beyond the 1967 borders in order to dominate, expel, starve, and humiliate an entire people. We hereby declare that we shall continue serving in the Israel Defense Forces in any mission that serves Israel's defense. The missions of occupation and oppression do not serve this purpose--and we shall take no part in them."

It's difficult to say just how many men and women have become refusers. At press time, 471 men and women had signed their names to the Courage to Refuse Internet posting. And according to Yesh Gvul, a refuser support group, as many as 600 soldiers have refused military orders to serve. As a result, 10 people are currently in jail, and, altogether, about 150 people have served some prison time.

Still, this may not be an accurate reflection of the breadth of the movement, says Danny Kaplan, who interviewed 22 gay IDF soldiers in preparation for his forthcoming book, Brothers and Others in Arms: The Making of Love and War in Israeli Combat Units. Many refusers have taken action outside the organized campaign and without the help of groups such as Yesh Gvul. Kay's name, for example, is among those connected to the Courage to Refuse letter. Herzog's, however, is not.

"I think you have to differentiate between public and private refusal," Kaplan says. "I'm sure there are many more who do it on an unofficial level," he says. "There are many ways you can come to an agreement with your commander, and I'm sure that many people do that. The phenomenon that I am seeing now in the media is really people who want to stress and make a statement of their political agenda. The political aspect of refusing to serve is very extreme."

When it comes to gay men and lesbians, the Israeli military has one of the most progressive policies in the world. With a few exceptions, the country requires every man to serve three years in the service upon turning 18 and every woman to serve two years. Mandatory reserve duty follows for most citizens. Since 1993 the IDF has made no distinction between straight and gay soldiers.

"At least officially, gays are less oppressed in Israel than in almost any country in the world," says Glenn Mones, a board member at the New York gay synagogue Congregation Beth Simchat Torah and the former national director for Likud USA, the American branch of Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon's political party.

At the same time, Mones says, "Arabs and Muslims enjoy more freedom in Israel--because it is a free society--than they would in almost any other country."

For those reasons, Mones says, he disagrees with the refusers' tactics--because, he believes, they are endangering the very society that makes their refusal possible. "I've met some of these [refusers] over the years, and, frankly, some of them have appeared to me to be very troubled individuals," he says.

Herzog, of course, disagrees. He says supporters of the country's current policies regarding the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are the ones who are most opposed to the individual freedoms Mones speaks of.

"The connection between militarism and chauvinism is quite obvious," he says. "We feel it every day in what the people say to us at demonstrations. They shout `Lesbians!' and `Cocksuckers!' and `Go bugger Arafat's ass!'"

For Herzog, it's the ongoing Middle East conflict that poses the biggest threat to gay and lesbian rights and to Israel as a whole. "Palestinian terrorism is not a real threat to Israel," he says. "What is a real threat to Israel is not acknowledging that we live inside the Middle East. We cannot keep on living by our swords. Sooner or later we will have to make peace with our neighbors."

Osborne also writes for New York City's Gay City News.