Conscientious Objection in Israel between Civil Society and State: An Overview

This chapter provides an overview of the history of conscientious objection to military service in Israel from just before the foundation of the State (1948) to the present. One of its aims is to reintroduce this subject in a historical narrative where it has been marginalized. Conscientious objection is seen here not only as an individual process, but also as a collective experience; it is considered as a phenomenon marked by historical continuity, rather than as a series of responses to one or the other contingency. In this chapter, conscientious objection is considered in the framework of the relations between state and civil society, where the latter should be understood as a network of national and international agencies and associations negotiating with the state on this subject with different intensity and frequency in different historical moments. The primary sources for this study come from the International Institute of Social History (Amsterdam, NL) and from oral history interviews.