The Waging Peace Podcast

There Is No Violent Solution: A Young Israeli's Solution to Occupation and Genocide Part 2

• Diana K. Oestreich • Season 2 • Episode 18

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At 18, Sophia chose prison over participating in occupation. "When you recognize you have a choice, you have responsibility for that choice." Her story reveals how militarism dehumanizes everyone it touches. 

 "Violence will only breed more violence." The only future we have is a future together." 


  • Sophia Orr who spent 85 days in military prison for refusing to serve in the Israeli army. 


  • Her courage challenges us to ask ourselves: Are we collaborators or resistors in systems of violence? What choices are we making with our privilege?


  • Her refusal to join Israel's military wasn't just personal—it was a political act to break cycles of bloodshed. How are we using your voice to stand against dehumanization? 


Listen to her powerful story now!


Write a Letter of Support the two Conscientious Objectors who are serving their prison sentence now:

Ella Keider Greenburg: Write to her HERE

Netta Lannes Arbel: Write to him HERE

Find out more about Mesarvot



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Speaker 1:

I am so excited to welcome one of my heroes, Sophia Orr, to the Waging Peace podcast and as we speak, Sophia, you are in Israel right now.

Speaker 2:

Yes, I am.

Speaker 1:

And you just ate dinner and you said you had a lovely pasta. And because you're eight hours ahead, I just ate lunch and I had mediocre soup that I've been eating for three days. Sophia and I met because we were on a conscientious objector call together and we also were honoring October 7th the one year anniversary of that, together with other people who have chosen to refuse to accept violence. So she is one of my huge heroes and I'm so excited for everybody to get to meet you, sophia, welcome.

Speaker 2:

Welcome, thank you. Thank you for inviting me. So I am 19 years old, 19 and a half. I was born in June and I had a very, I think, special and unique upbringings in terms of Israelis. My family is non-Zionist and very left-wing and I was really brought up on values of empathy and equality and being humane and solving problems with dialogue, and I think that I went with those values everywhere in my life and I never really thought I would enlist, because my feelings were always that I didn't have that feeling of nationalistic duty that I think most Israelis have.

Speaker 1:

Could you let people know who aren't Israeli, what that whole expectation is and the enlistment process for those who grow up in Israel?

Speaker 2:

Enlistment is mandatory in Israel for the vast majority of people, everyone except the Palestinian, citizens of Israel, citizens of Israel and it is very ingrained in the society that it's not just mandatory in the law, but it's also the socially accepted thing to do. You are brought up on this from a very, very, very young age, basically from when you're born. It's a very militaristic society and we like to say that Israel is more an army with a country than a country with an army.

Speaker 1:

Wow, an army with a country instead of a country with an army with a country than a country with an army. Wow, an army with a country instead of a country with an army.

Speaker 2:

Yes, because the army is at such a central point in the society, in the culture and in the way that the government operates and how it operates around it and what kind of power the army has in society. It's a very militar, military society where you have soldiers coming to schools to teach you about their role and what are you going to do in the army, and they take you from school for enlist things in the enlistment process and you go for five days of military camp where you learn how to shoot a gun, um, and when you're like 15, 16 years old.

Speaker 2:

But I didn't grow up with that kind of nationalistic duty and like less so in that militaristic mindset, I think because of my family and maybe because of who I am. But I think that we are all very influenced by our families and the way that we are brought up and the same way that so many people are so influenced by other parts in Israeli society.

Speaker 1:

So if you didn't have go along with it, what would it?

Speaker 2:

be so. It's also different depending on your role, but for most people it's three years for men, two years for women, from until when you're 18, until you're 20 or 21. Most people do it without even thinking. Most people do it because they see it as the right thing to do and they are serving their country.

Speaker 2:

It's ingrained in you from a very young age that being a soldier is heroic. Soldiers are heroes and their sacrifices are heroic and you should be a soldier and you should want to be a soldier. And they're protecting you and they're sacrificing their lives for you and you need to continue that tradition. It's like that in the Memorial Days, in the Holocaust Memorial Days, in the Memorial Days for soldiers, in Independence Day everything has so much militaristic propaganda in it. But when I was about 13 or 14, when I didn't have that feeling of nationalistic duty, I didn't really think I would serve, because I didn't see it as the best way to help the people around me. I didn't see it as obvious. It always seemed to me like a choice, which is something very unusual in Israeli society. It isn't treated as a choice.

Speaker 1:

Seeing it as a choice is very unusual. I think that's really profound, because I grew up in a military family and I served and that same idea that it isn't a choice, it's just what you should do. I have two kids that I'm raising and I keep thinking that it's not a choice if people don't know they have options. When I look at people making choices that I disagree with, I also think did they know they had other options? Because then it's not really a choice.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, If you look for it then you can see that it's a choice. But most people are not encouraged to look for it and don't want to look for it. Because when you start to treat it as a choice, then you start to look at the options and then you have to consider things in a more broad way. You can't ignore anymore the political implications.

Speaker 1:

You can't ignore the accountability. When you recognize that you have a choice, then you now have responsibility for your choice. Yes, definitely.

Speaker 2:

I see enlisting as a political choice than refusing. When I was about 13, 14, I started to develop more of a political conscience and starting to question if I go in the military which is what is expected of me and I go and if I go in the military which is what is expected of me and I go and serve two years in the military, what does that time mean? Who am I serving? What am I serving? What cause am I serving? Starting to treat it as a choice and to treat it as a political choice, who are the people in power? Why do they want me to enlist? What do they want to achieve? And starting to ask those questions, I think, is the most important part. It also is what leads to getting answers, and the answers that I got were that if I go and enlist in the Israeli military, I am taking part in a military that is committing a global crime against human rights, that is doing an occupation and an apartheid regime, and that if I go and serve in the military, I throw my body into a cycle of bloodshed that we have to break. And then it became not just I don't want to enlist, I can't enlist, I cannot go to the army with a clear conscience because of the political and ideological behalf.

Speaker 2:

I think that was the second part of it. Refusing is the whole process where I started from not wanting, then I can't, and then to the third part of saying, okay, it's not just that I can't go to the army, I have to stand against it. I have to take an active stand against it and to try and raise a voice against what the army is doing, what the Israeli government is doing, and use that expectation of me of enlisting and trying to gain a voice through it by refusing. And that is why I came to the decision to refuse and to refuse publicly. I refused when I was 18 and I spent 85 days in military prison and tried to use that to make as big a change as I can as just one 18-year-old girl.

Speaker 1:

Can we just say that again, you were 18 when you refused, but even younger when you found your power. You found that you had a choice and then asked questions and then you found that you couldn't do it. You used going to prison as a way to make change and make power. I think that's incredible and from the first time I met you, I was like wow, because I was 23. I signed up when I was 17, 18. And I didn't really see what was happening and I didn't really see that I had a choice and I definitely didn't take responsibility for it. So I was 23 when I was halfway to where you were getting that reality.

Speaker 1:

I think that's so critical for people to see, because so many people, if they even allow themselves to have a conscience about what their country's doing to other countries, being in America that we have sent these bombs to Gaza, we have armed this genocide, we have fueled the Israeli army. I think a lot of people want to hide from that accountability and they definitely don't want to sacrifice to change it. So what was it? How did you get past that point of just knowing that it wasn't right, knowing you would refuse, knowing you would pay the price, but finding that way to say, I want to make the biggest change I can by using my voice through the process.

Speaker 2:

When I think about it back, I don't think I had any other option for myself, for who I am and for the person that I want to be Refusing is a continuation of how I would like to live my life in every aspect of it, and coming to the decision to refuse was also saying, okay, this is what I can do. This is my small part in this thing. It was before October 7th. The occupation was, and is still enough of a reason to refuse. It was my way of doing whatever small part I can to try and bring a Palestinian voice into Israeli society where it isn't being heard. To try and bring a voice for peace into the Israeli society where it isn't being said and it is actively being shut down. Now more than ever, it's difficult for me to imagine doing anything else.

Speaker 2:

I think that deciding to do it publicly was a very big part of doing it at all. Because of the way that I asked myself questions, I know that not many people in the Israeli society ask themselves. I wanted to gain a voice to encourage other people to ask themselves those same questions, because I was surrounded by friends who I begged to ask themselves those questions. Why are you going to the army. Tell me why, and they couldn't tell me why. Trying to raise that voice of critical thinking and of empathy and of resisting dehumanization of Palestinians and to try and treat enlisting as a political choice, to bring it to the political conversation, I think is extremely important for me to try and get other people to ask themselves those questions, to treat it as a political choice For me, doing it publicly and trying also to reach internationally. If I'm in for a penny, in for a pound, if I am doing it, then I should do it all the way. If I am resisting, then I should resist as hard as I can.

Speaker 1:

Well you are, because not many people are raising their voice right now or willing to go to prison for that. It's changing things. When you and I sat on that call, you were there raising your voice for resistance in Israel. Universal truth that I think a lot of our countries and a lot of our religions are trying to shut down that conversation because it centers the best of us, our humanity that wants good for the other person.

Speaker 2:

Yes, definitely. I have a privilege where I'm able to do it, mostly in a safe way, where I have a supportive family and where I have the privilege to see peace as an option, because on the other side of the fence I have Palestinian friends that it's difficult for them to see peace as an option sometimes. For me, it's also part of my responsibility to be that voice for peace and for ending the occupation, ending the war, the genocide, because I have the privilege to be able to see it and to be able to visualize that kind of peace, because I come from a place of privilege. If I can imagine it, then I should try and share it as much as I can.

Speaker 2:

People, especially in Israeli society, they would call me naive for thinking that this is the kind of future that we can have, that we can have any kind of conversation with Palestinians. But I don't think it's naive at all. I think that when we look at the hard facts, at the political situations, at the history, the political history of this place, this is not just moral option. This is our only productive option. This is the only thing that will work. There is no military solution to this. There is no violent solution to this.

Speaker 1:

Because if that was a solution, it would have already happened. My country and I can see your country refuses to accept the failure of their politics. What they've been doing for the last 75 years has not worked. The militarization of America has not created more safety or security in the world.

Speaker 2:

And it never will.

Speaker 1:

My country has been doing it like 250 years. When are they going to stop lying that it's a failure and pivoting to a different?

Speaker 2:

idea. I think it's naive to think that if we try again and again and use more force and more power and just better weapons and try to intimidate them more and use more violence, and if we just try one more time, thinking this time it will work, then we will be able to destroy Hamas. It will never work that way. This extreme violence only makes extreme violent mindset more prevalent in the societies.

Speaker 1:

Can you tell me about where there's interactions between Palestinians and Israelis? Many Israelis say they really don't grow up having much experience about the realities, about how Palestinians are living as second-class citizens in their own country.

Speaker 2:

Israeli society is an extremely racist society and an extremely segregated society where Palestinians and Jewish Israelis very purposefully don't meet each other very often there are mixed cities where people do meet each other.

Speaker 2:

I've met Palestinians growing up, but very, very few, and it's on purpose because that human interaction breaks that barrier of dehumanization that the government tries so hard to enforce. Because when you only think of that person, of Palestinians, as the enemy, when you dehumanize them and turn them into an enemy, into monsters in your mind, it's so much easier to commit horrible crimes against them, to kill them and to occupy them. When that barrier breaks and you see each other Israelis, see Palestinians as human beings equal to them, then it's much more difficult to do things such as enlist in the army and go and do war crimes in Gaza. It's a very, very racist society from in the law, but also in society itself, where people are just very racist. That was one of the hardest things for me in prison is being surrounded by people who said extremely racist things on a daily basis and it's seen as totally normal.

Speaker 1:

Would you tell me about your time in prison?

Speaker 2:

Would you tell me about? My time in prison was difficult. It's a military prison and the conditions are not great, but they're fine. It's much better than anything Palestinian prisoners suffer in the Israeli prisons. It's a military prison so everything works in a militaristic way, but I think that it also really showed me from up close the way that the military operates.

Speaker 2:

Who, for mostly economical reasons or medical reasons or mental health reasons, couldn't enlist or had to run away. Or girls who were sexually abused at their bases and had to run away. But the way the army treats them as not people with problems but as problems. That the way that the army tries to solve every problem with force, to dehumanize the people, that it has power over the way that this system works. It's meant to work that way. It's not an accident, it's not. Oh no, the army just screwed me over. No, this is the way that the military is supposed to work.

Speaker 2:

This is the way that the military has been tried and true on Palestinians for decades in the West Bank and in Gaza. The kind of system that dehumanizes some of the people that it comes in contact with will eventually dehumanize all of them, and that was very noticeable in military prison and it really showed me how the military operates. Having those kinds of conversations and trying to make change in whatever way I can, while also being told that I cannot talk about politics and being threatened with punishment if I will talk about politics, was also, for me, part of my refusal. Trying to make change also in whatever way I can inside prison.

Speaker 1:

You had mentioned that when you were in prison, one of the big moments for you was noticing how prison and the military dehumanized not just the prisoners which you were, but also the guards. The whole thing was taking away people's humanity by forcing them to be and do things the guards- some of them were younger than me.

Speaker 2:

They are 18, 19-year-old girls and it's like a game. The way that it works in the military which is very different than how it works when the army operates on the ground in the West Bank is that it is like a game. None of us are going to get shot. Yeah, it does take away their humanity as well, where they have to treat us a certain way, where if we met outside on the street, they would never treat me the way that they treated me in prison.

Speaker 1:

The same things are true, I think, for any military. People look at it from the outside, but from the inside it's a pecking order and the person on top. If you give them the mindset that they can absolutely shoot to kill everybody else's beneath them, they are terrorizing the people in their own ranks. And in the US we know that 60% of female veterans have been sexually assaulted by their superiors. So their leaders, the people in charge and actually the most amount of people who've been sexually assaulted are all males. So it's this harmful culture that is created to kill their soul, kill their bodies. This is such an awful thing that we look up to and think is going to solve our problems, when we're just creating the worst of us, celebrating it and then paying them and then saying it's a career.

Speaker 2:

Saying it's an honor to go and kill someone in the name of your country.

Speaker 1:

I had been to basic training and I had enlisted and I'd been in a war for 397 days and then I'd been in for eight years, and it's these experiences that you can't tell anybody about, really how horrible they are to each other, what I saw soldiers do to each other Until I watched a TV show and it was about prison. It was called Oranges of the New Black and it's about a woman in prison and all of a sudden'm like oh, why does this look so familiar? Just the way that you live, the way that you have a number, like when I walk in, I don't have a name, I am 4241. And you carry your toilet paper with you to the bathroom. I never knew why. Seeing people live in prison was absolutely the most familiar, and the only way I could ever describe what it was like to live in the military was a prison.

Speaker 2:

So a military prison? Is that plus I'd assume a lot more yeah, because it's both a prison and a military. Orange is the New Black. My driver told me you should watch this movie before you go to prison.

Speaker 1:

Did you or did you pass? I did not. Yeah, maybe you don't want to.

Speaker 2:

I mean now I have the real experience for myself.

Speaker 1:

Now it might look like Disneyland compared to what you lived through, but thank you for sharing your experience about how these accepted things the military, prison and also the war that this is the only way there will be peace is by accepting and harming people. If we can just bomb them, kill them, it'll be peace. Thank you for sharing that. That's the culture you grew up in and also how you chose not to. What do you want people to hear now? You went to prison because you know there's something better. You went to prison to gain a voice. What do you want people to know? That the future is possible.

Speaker 2:

I think that people need to understand life is not black and white. We have to look to a future that is possible, not black and white. We have to look to a future that is possible. We have to work in productive ways in the most moral ways, and I will always say this, but also the most productive ways, and trying to promote a real future for everyone living on this land, because it is possible, and staying centered around finding an actual solution. People call me naïve or I'm idealist. I think that I am very pragmatic in the sense that I will always say that the only real moral solution is the one state solution. But I do not think that the first step that we can take to find a solution and that we have to stay centered around improving the lives of Palestinians now and taking steps to improve their lives and their freedom and equality and independence now, so we can take bigger and bigger steps in the future. All of us take responsibility for the voice that we have to try and raise it as much as we can and our privilege to be able to dream about peace, because Palestinians not all of them have the privilege. Their life conditions don't allow them to have that kind of privilege of dreaming about peace. I can vision that and I need to spread that message as much as I can, because that is our only way forward.

Speaker 2:

Violence will only breed more violence.

Speaker 2:

This will always be the cycle that we are stuck in. It has the responsibility and the power to break this cycle because it is the much stronger side in this equation, and that is also why I, as an Israeli, have the responsibility to try and raise that voice inside Israeli society. Israel is the oppressor and it has the responsibility to stop doing what it's doing the horrible, horrible crimes that it's doing, and to break this cycle and to promote an actual future and an actual alternative for Palestinians, because extreme violence will only breed extreme violent mindsets, which is what things like October 7th and Hamas are built on those violent mindsets that are born from the Israeli violence. That is also why I think that I am an Israeli, have the responsibility to do it, and also Americans and people in countries that are supporting the Israeli government have the responsibility and the power and it's important to do it to raise a voice against and with us to promote that real future, because that is the only future that we have. The only future that we have is a future together.

Speaker 1:

The country doesn't really believe that. They think they can keep committing inequality and injustice as long as nobody resists. One of the things that war taught me is that there's no such thing as a bystander, only collaborators or resistors. We just have to choose what we are going to collaborate with or what we'll resist. Choose what we're going to collaborate with or what we'll resist. Even if we can't change it overnight, resisting our country's violence and raising our voice is our responsibility, definitely.

Speaker 2:

We are stronger when we do it together, and I think that for me also, uplifting Palestinian voices is extremely important, because things are not stopping and things are not slowing down. It may seem like that.

Speaker 1:

Can you tell me about what you see happening right now? I was supposed to be interviewing a Palestinian this morning. She's in Gaza and it just didn't work out. I think she couldn't get to an internet, but I do believe that we have to have the voices who are being affected by it, so I wanted to interview her. She is running a peace and freedom camp. She's 22 and is a teacher and just got a whiteboard and sets up a tent in the camps because she believes that every kid, it is their right to be educated and she refused to let them lose learning during the genocide. That's wonderful.

Speaker 1:

It's called the Peace and Freedom School and it's just a tent and her and a whiteboard. She is somebody who keeps standing for the human rights, that says it is their God-given right to exist, to be educated and to work together. For that it says there's a ceasefire. But what can you tell me about living in Israel right now, what you're seeing and what you're hearing In?

Speaker 2:

Israel, things have been mostly the same for a very, very long time. Around me, you might call it a war, but are we really affected? If it is a war, it's a very, very, very one-sided war. We haven't had alarms where I live since the ceasefire with Hezbollah, but right now it's all still very much on fire. A ceasefire technically, but it's very fragile and Israel keeps breaking it and there keeps still being crimes made and still violence happening, where people just ignore the fact that the army is committing horrible acts in the West Bank, in Jenin.

Speaker 1:

So you see in Gaza and the West Bank. It's just like the genocide is still happening, like bombings, and they're killing people. And yet on the national stage, israel gets to say they're doing a ceasefire, but you continue to see tanks and people being killed.

Speaker 2:

Yes, in Gaza. It's less than it was before, but it's still happening. The way that the Israeli narrative is formed is always by being the victim. We are always the victim, we are always defending ourselves. Always they broke the ceasefire or they planned to break the ceasefire. We are the victim and we are protecting ourselves and we are just a small country surrounded by enemies.

Speaker 2:

And that is always the narrative that Israel is a victim, the only victim and nothing but a victim, is the narrative that is being fed to Israelis from a very young age and it's a very comfortable narrative for people to believe in.

Speaker 2:

It's always nice for people to believe that they are the victim, that they are doing something right, that they are fighting for the right cause, and it's a comfortable narrative to believe in that is being encouraged by the media, by the government, by the education system, and it can be hard to break out of that narrative and understanding that there are Israeli victims, but Israel is not the victim.

Speaker 2:

People who were killed on October 7th are victims, but Israel is not a victim, and those people on October 7th have been killed by a cycle of violence that Israel is the one that keeps going and has the power to stop Understanding that and I think that understanding, for example, why October 7th even happened and the years and years of occupation and oppression and extreme violence that happened before it is our only way forward. Understanding what caused it is our only way of making sure it never happens again. And I think that is of finding that narrative not as comfortable. That narrative they don't like to sit with. That is a harder pill to swallow. Then you are still the victim. I think that fighting dehumanization is one of the things I try to do the most and I think one of the things that we need to do the most, because it's easier to see yourself as the victim when the only thing opposing you is an enemy and not thousands of children you've killed.

Speaker 1:

Right, that narrative that anybody has to believe in in order to make murdering thousands and thousands of babies and children okay. No matter what that narrative is, the reality is who does that make you when you're part of that? What kind of country and humanity does that? I think that's worth fighting for. I don't think anybody should have their goodness taken away from them, their humanity, by accepting and collaborating with a narrative that makes that justified.

Speaker 2:

That makes that justified. I also think that people from outside sometimes may be hard to grasp how militaristic and how racist the Israeli society is. It's extreme. I believe in real human change and I obviously have people here that are very important to me and I love, and I think that real human change is possible, but I don't know if that change is possible from the inside, because that narrative is so prevalent in Israeli society and so comfortable to believe in. I think the Israeli society can change, but I don't know if it will do it on its own. We need real change on the ground, where the violence level drops and we see real progress for an alternative solution, the only solution, so people cannot ignore it anymore.

Speaker 1:

With South Africa, they were still doing apartheid and they wouldn't change.

Speaker 2:

It took an outside force, it took them not being in charge, for them to decide that apartheid was unjust and that is definitely, and that is why it's so important to protest also outside, in countries that are still providing Israel with military aid, with financial aid. It's important that it's not just coming from inside, because we are very few. We are trying our best, but I don't think we can do it alone.

Speaker 1:

If the countries that are using Israel for their purposes by arming them, I feel like it's ours to do and it's ours to stop our country from doing that, and it will help the society of Israel narrative that, instead of it being a country who has a genocide and an occupation and segregation, they grew up hearing that it was a religious injustice. So could you speak to why it is not a religious thing? That is?

Speaker 2:

happening. I think, definitely, religion is used in this world for justifications and as motives for many people, but it's definitely not a war between Judaism and Islam or Muslims and Jewish people. Muslims and Christians and Jewish people have lived on this land many years before Israel. Anyone even thought of making this thing called Israel. It's part of a fascist government and, as the Zionist ideas, this has nothing to do, at its core, with religion. This conflict is a conflict about occupation and genocide and right-wing movements and extreme violence that is motivated by power, and I think that definitely you cannot ignore that there is strong religious motives and justifications moving the pieces on the board where justifications for settling another place in the West Bank will be oh, because this is the holy place. I don't see it as a religious conflict at all and I don't feel any more connected to a Jewish person than a Muslim person, depending on the religion by God, then we're going to make sure Israel, like it was just this very accepted thing because the name was the same.

Speaker 1:

In the Bible it was equated that the creation to say to Israel was actually the same thing. It was very much they're our guy and no one really knows why. No one knows, but it's definitely self-serving. Now there's this reckoning of what is Zionism and what has it produced, what's its aims. That's why I do a lot of my activism and work, because my group, the Christians, are the ones who have been exporting this violence of Zionism and I want to take responsibility for that. I want to inspire people to ask questions and to look at what is it doing and who does it dehumanize.

Speaker 2:

And I think that Israel also tries very hard to erase that line between Judaism and Zionism, to try and make Zionism a Jewish thing and to try and erase the line between Zionists and Jewish people. And that is, I think, one of the things that is a big reason why there is a rise in anti-Semitism around the world, because there is a blur of the line between Judaism and Zionism and that line is being that erasure of that line is being promoted by the Israeli government and the Israeli narrative and Israel is trying to make itself the home of the Jews and to take a kind of stance where this is the only place Jewish people are safe. This is like the safe haven for Jews and this is. And we have the authority over Jewish people and over Judaism and we have the authority to decide who gets to be a Jew and who isn't, and the law of return, where a Jewish American can come and settle in the West Bank but a Palestinian that has the key to their house in the West Bank cannot come there.

Speaker 2:

Israel is using that also line of any criticism towards Israel is anti-Semitism, using it very strongly to try and take that narrative of they don't criticize us or hate us because of what we do, it's just because of what we are, it's just because we're Jews. And the moment that it's because we are what we are and not what we do, then the criticism is null and it doesn't actually mean anything and we can actually do whatever we want and they would hate us no matter what and when. That is the narrative and any criticism is anti-Semitic. Then you can do whatever you want and you can justify it however you want, and any criticism means nothing. Not every criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic and you have anti-Semites that support Israel. Criticism of Israel and criticism of Zionism is a duty that we all have. This is something that we have to do. Anti-semitism is a crime and those things are not connected.

Speaker 1:

So can you explain a really cool thing you said about how you think that Zionism is actually creating more anti-Semitism?

Speaker 2:

Definitely the narrative that is spread Israel as the safe place for Jews and Israel as the authority over Jewish identity, the narrative that Israel is obviously trying to spread and the fact that Israel is committing those horrible crimes in the name of Judaism. But it's actually based on the Zionist ideologies and the way that the country is built, on Zionism. It's very easy to take that narrative and that blurs the line between Jewish people and Zionists and to treat it as the same and all Jews are Zionists and all Zionists are Jews. All Israelis are Zionists and all Israelis are Jews. And when those three things all mix together and, of course, vast majority of Israelis are Zionists, then vast majorities of Jewish Zionists Israelis are also Jewish, but, especially on the outside, there are so many Jewish voices for peace who are absolutely not Zionist and there are people, for example, donald Trump, who is definitely Zionist and he's also anti-Semitic and is not Jewish.

Speaker 1:

There are more Christian Zionists in America than Jewish Americans, and so to take responsibility as an American and as a Christian saying we are exporting the violence of Zionism on Jewish people around the world, in our country, in Israel, by our own Zionism. I think that's really important for people to understand that their beliefs are exporting violence against people that do not deserve violence. Jewish people do not deserve any violence, like nobody does, but these violent ideologies of Zionism definitely create more or give people some justification.

Speaker 2:

And I think that Israel is one of the main actors that making the anti-Semitism stronger, making anti-Semitism narratives stronger. It's like impossible to say that there isn't a connection between the religion motives and what Israel is doing, but treating it as a religious conflict. That's wrong and that's the kind of narrative that Israel is trying to feed you. That narrative is harmful.

Speaker 1:

You just even saying that, I feel like, is changing people's minds, Like you are giving a voice to the fact that Zionism is not being supportive of Jewish people or a healthy Jewish state.

Speaker 2:

I don't believe that there should be a Jewish state. The fact that Israel is defining itself as a Jewish democratic state, that is contradictory. I don't think that can coexist. A country cannot be an ethno-state and also democratic. Defining a country as a Jewish state is like defining a country is like saying, yeah, we should make America a Christian state, the US a Christian state. I think that is inherently racist, especially in a country like Israel, where Israel borders of 67, 20% of the population are Palestinians. Defining it as a Jewish country is making them second-class citizens.

Speaker 1:

We can't have countries that define racial hierarchies that is inherently unequal and unjust. No matter how much we're fed that narrative, it will always create tension because it always is dehumanizing and people will always refuse that. You are refusing that. I think that is so hopeful for people to see you, sophia, refusing something because you believe in something better. That forces people to be critical about the choices that our leaders are making today and why they continue to say the same thing when we know it is never giving us what we want.

Speaker 2:

It's sometimes hard to stay optimistic, but I definitely do believe that a peaceful, justful solution where everyone, from the river to the sea, is living in security and freedom and dignity and equality, that is our only way forward. That is our only solution. It's not the most viable solution, it's the only solution. There will be no other real solution. This is our way forward and I believe that it will happen. I just also hope maybe it will happen in a time when I'm alive to see it.

Speaker 1:

I totally think it will, sophia. I have a dear Palestinian friend who is 84. He grew up during the Nakba and he has been working for Palestinian rights for his family. He grew up in Galilee and he said, despite the incredible loss and the genocide and the occupation since October 7th, he said this is the most he's ever heard people being willing to listen to the Palestinian story, even in heartbreak. He has hope, and so I just want to tell you that you are making change. We are having this conversation and people know that Palestinians are people and they're knowing that Jewish people deserve to live in a country that is not a racial hierarchy. There's no future in that. It's dehumanizing to them.

Speaker 2:

And it is our responsibility to hold that hope. I think we should move it forward.

Speaker 1:

We're going to hold on to that hope, sophia. I absolutely believe it. Before we wrap up, I wanted to ask you what is one way that people can support you or support resistors, support people having this conversation. So.

Speaker 2:

I am part of a network called the Messervot Network and it's an amazing, amazing network. It is the network that helped me refuse. It's a network built from conscientious objectors and it helps people make their refusal journey as safe and as productive as possible. We help make the campaign around the refusal and we have a lawyer and and a spokesperson and we try to make that that action safe as possible and we do all sorts of activism anti-occupation, anti-genocide and promoting peace and we are all doing it voluntarily. So any kind of donation is of course.

Speaker 2:

We always need money to make bigger and bigger projects, amplifying our voices and the voices of our conscientious objectors that are, in just a few days, a conscientious objector going to prison. There was just one that got out after 197 days. So it's it's. It's still happening. I refused more than a year ago but we have had since then, I think, more than five conscientious objectors after that. We are still trying to raise our voice and supporting us and uplifting our voices and donating if you can is, of course, always helpful and uplifting other voices of peace and resistance um palestinian voice. That is extremely important. And listening truly listening and fighting dehumanization and raising your own voice where you are and fighting for real change and for real solutions and for real people in living in real conflicts, under real occupation. That is the most that we can do right now.

Speaker 1:

As Americans, we are privileged to be not in conflict and at the same time we are fueling that conflict. So we have so much we can do. We can support you. Can we send letters of support to people who are in prison?

Speaker 2:

Yes, that is also a very nice way to support conscientious objectors. Through the network, through the Mestravot network, you can send letters of support to conscientious objectors sitting in prison. You write the letter and our lawyer, when she visits the conscientious objectors in prison, she brings that to them. I know that for me it was very impactful and very nice to always read letters from all around the world in support and it's always uplifting. You are stuck for a month in a place where you feel like you are doing nothing and no one is seeing you. And why am I even here? You are an activist until you get into prison and then you're just a prisoner and it's very difficult to continue to have that kind of bigger picture in your mind. So that kind of support from the outside and reminding you why you're there, it can be very helpful.

Speaker 1:

Well, we're going to do it because there are people from 36 countries who listen to this podcast. So 36 countries. We're going to try to get a letter from every country and 368 cities. It's shocking to me. So everybody tell me where you're from, where you're listening. This is a challenge. So if everybody who listened to this podcast from those 36 countries and 368 cities will mail a letter of support because I know it means so much when I was away and I was in basic training and you're in this kind of horrible place where you don't even feel like you exist as a person, You're just a number and you're kind of scared all the time To have a real letter from somebody who says that they remember you and they see you and that what you're doing matters, I think that's going to be so, so powerful.

Speaker 1:

So, Sophia, thank you so much for sharing your story and the way that you are waging peace right now. We are not going to let you down. This is a real challenge. The Waging Peace Podcast is going to come through and you're going to get to see some letters, their conscience, and they're objecting to the militarism and the war and the conflicts that our countries are doing, because people matter and you're 19. And I truly believe that we can make a world where your country is an equal, safe and secure place for Palestinians and that your kids are going. You're gonna have to tell them how it used to be.

Speaker 2:

I hope so.

Speaker 1:

Because, Martin Luther King. He envisioned something that had never existed an unsegregated America and he did it. So I think, when I look around and I think no one's going to change the bad guys are too big and bad, and then everybody else is too scared or doesn't care I still think that he changed a whole nation and our future, that now we have to tell our kids that 57 years ago there were two different water fountains, but we don't have that today. You are part of envisioning something that isn't here yet, but it's coming, sophia. So thank you so much for being on, and we can't wait to continue to keep up with you and support the conscientious objectors.

Speaker 2:

Thank you. Thank you so much and yeah, change is possible, it will happen, we can do it, thank you.

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Diana K Oestreich

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