Downloaded from YTS.MX
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
(light orchestral music)
- [Atalya] I find it ironic that my name is Atalya.
Atalya was a queen who ruled the Jewish people
at the biblical times.
They wrote her as evil.
She was the only queen who appeared in the Bible,
who was the ruler by her own right
and not the wife of a king.
In the end, she was beheaded and thrown to the dogs.
I don't think I'm like Queen Atalya.
But when people write my story,
they might show me as a traitor,
the same way they showed her.
(light orchestral music)
(speaking foreign language)
(laughing)
(speaking foreign language)
(laughing)
(all speaking foreign language)
Since you're little, you want to grow up and be a soldier.
That's what they teach you.
I was sure I would be like a fighter,
that I'd be in a fighting unit.
My idea was always that, if I'm in the army
at least I'll be on the frontline.
- My mother was an officer in the army and my sister and I,
of course, were in the army.
And then all the women in the family.
So it's like the whole family
is really very much connected through the army
and they all see the benefits of it
and they're all professionals.
We have this mission to build a state and to keep it safe.
And you're asked about it everywhere you go.
What did you do?
- Ah.
Maybe not the one I'm sitting on!
- Okay.
(light orchestral music)
- [Woman] At the age of 18,
it is compulsory to join the army.
But throughout Israeli history,
there has also been a handful of people
who refused to serve for ideological reasons.
And some end up wiling away their
would be army days in prison.
19-year-old, Tair Kaminer, has now broken the record
for the longest imprisonment of a woman, refusing the draft.
(speaking foreign language)
- [Woman] Tair has been branded a parasite,
as was Sahar Vardi
who has served a number of prison terms
for refusing to serve.
- It was obvious to me after seeing
what the realities occupation
actually look like, I wouldn't want to be part
of the forces that are implementing it.
(dramatic orchestral music)
(speaking foreign language)
- [Atalya] Tea, tea.
(speaking foreign language)
♪ But I didn't shoot the deputy ♪
(speaking foreign language)
So what are your hopes for your kids military service?
- He will go to a computer unit and this is going
to be good to him.
- I think it's just your fantasies.
I want them to do what they want to do.
- When I wanted to not do the military
and I was kind of wondering how do I get an exemption?
You know, you were really there
for me around the dinner table.
You stood up for me and you're like if Amitai
doesn't want to do it, he shouldn't do it.
It is as simple as that.
- I think that it is not so simple.
Now, also being a mother and having children,
and though it came from kindergarten,
he asked me, where is the safe room in our house?
And I told him, okay it's your room,
just lying to him because I didn't want to tell him
that we don't have a safe room.
Because it's not nice to feel that you're at home
and you don't have a safe place to go
when the alarm goes on.
I think Palestinians in Gaza want to kill me,
and I don't need the army to defend me.
I mean, jumping ship is one option.
And you can also do good if you draft.
(light acoustic guitar music)
- [Atalya] I know they're out of teachers.
But I know they're out in the West Bank.
It's very, very important to go there
to see things for myself.
I believe that in order to achieve peace,
we need to have communication.
(speaking foreign language)
- [Atalya] So why did you start the group Visit Palestine?
- For three reasons.
First thing was to show the Israelis that,
come on, we are human beings.
We have shops, we have schools for our kids
and we want to live.
The most important one for me was
to show the Israelis my life under occupation.
It's policy to kick people out of their land.
It's policy to take all these lands, to give it to settlers.
And this way, you will never protect Israel.
This way you are creating more and more fighters.
- You know, most of the soldiers in the Israeli army
don't do that.
I think it's like 10% of the soldiers
that this is their word and those 10%, I think,
I don't know.
- People don't know the difference
between the good occupier and the bad occupier.
For me, the Israeli army,
the Israeli government are destroying my home.
Then they complain Palestinians teach their children hate.
No one knows that your soldiers
are teaching our children hate.
- I really don't want to be that soldier, that soldier.
I want to be something else.
I want to be a different voice.
- Yeah.
Israeli activists in the West Bank are showing our kids.
There is Jewish people are human beings,
not only full armed soldiers who wanted to attack us.
Judaism is not evil.
The occupation is evil, but not Judaism.
And that's very important.
All these houses around you have demolition orders,
and every few months Isreali to enter
and destroy the houses.
They destroyed in this area 12 houses last month.
(coughing)
(speaking foreign language)
(light acoustic guitar music)
- All you know is about the wars we've had.
So you imagine the Arabs, this big enemy,
and you don't see that that's not the reality right now.
Our big enemy, they don't even have an army.
It's not two armies fighting each other.
So there's like this big distance between what you hear
and what you see, when you go to the Jordan Valley.
(man vocalizing)
How did you decide to get out of the army?
- I was looking, I was looking for the fastest way out
because I was afraid for my own mental health.
And I went to a public psychiatrist.
And when I told him I have anxiety about getting drafted,
he wrote me a letter of diagnoses
that I sent to the military and I got an exemption.
- I was really afraid of how you drifted apart from family.
So in a way, I wanted you to enlist
just so you'll be a part of the family again.
- There is social shame.
So I think our family in a way experienced that.
It's like as if there's either there's something wrong
with me or I'm a liar, you know.
- [Atalya] Yeah.
- Getting an exemption enabled me to befriend Palestinians
and avoid all of the trauma that I see.
My friends who did go to the military go through
as they're getting disillusioned.
- [Atalya] Like you don't regret it?
- I don't regret it at all.
It's the best decision I've made in my life.
- Yeah?
Yeah.
I don't know if that's helpful, but...
- See what Amitai did, besides being cowardly,
was abuse of my profession.
Yeah.
You know, there's so many people
who avoid military conscription.
If you have an ideology, you have to be willing
to pay the price.
- If you could go back to being 18,
would you still go to the Army?
- I heard there's still bad guys
and I think we need an army.
And that's why I would go to the army.
I would probably go to be a combat soldier again.
- You were a soldier for so long.
- Yes, because there's a vicious circle of violence
between us and the Palestinians.
If the Palestinians stay in a nonviolent course,
I'm sure they'll get an advantage.
- Why shouldn't we use nonviolence?
I can't decide for them what they use,
but I can decide for myself.
- Nonviolence is the weapon of the weak, yeah,
because the weak don't have the power.
The Palestinians don't have tanks.
The powerful will never be nonviolent
because the powerful have power.
Why should they be nonviolent?
But I think you have to have a right perspective
on what's happening, that the Israeli army
is acting very morally.
(light acoustic guitar music)
- Settlers from the new outpost came and beat them up.
(speaking foreign language)
- There's nothing they can do?
(speaking foreign language)
How many people attacked him?
(speaking foreign language)
- [Amitai] And since and since he was attacked,
he could not go back to school from that time.
- What is he doing now?
(speaking foreign language)
- [Amitai] He is sitting at home.
The problem is with his sight.
(dramatic orchestral music)
(speaking foreign language)
- I think about many of my friends are now in the military.
Some of them are doing things
that they can say like this is amoral.
And they still do it and they find a way
to adjust their own moral perspectives.
So they'll be nice at the checkpoints.
They'll smile.
But the checkpoint will still be a checkpoint.
(speaking foreign language)
- Right now, the situation in Israel is very hard
and it's getting harder.
And more and more people are afraid
to say what they believe.
The public sphere has become dangerous.
A lot of people know that if they will speak their mind,
they might lose their jobs, lose their career,
lose their circle of friends, sometimes their family.
We need to find a way to bring hope.
And I think that this brave action of the people
who declare publicly, saying out loud,
I refused to serve in the army because of my objection
to the occupation, can give hope to the greater public.
And without hope, there's no struggle.
So thank you very much, all of you.
(audience applauding)
(speaking foreign language)
(laughing)
- As a movement, if users manage to make people react
to something that they didn't even talk about.
I mean, they're making a change inside of Israel.
- If you want occupation to end,
you have to be where the people are.
You have to know the army and understand the army
from the inside.
- If you want to be involved in the political discourse
in Israel, the years to come, Israeli society
is something that you, you know,
only from certain viewpoints.
And the army gives you-
- [Atalya] That's not true.
You know, that's really not true.
- Okay.
That's what we think.
- I never had a good day in three years of regular service,
and I don't know how many years of reserve service.
But on the whole I don't regret having been in the Army.
I think it's an important human experience.
- What would you think would be the best outcome,
to spend the rest of your life in jail?
- Not the rest of my life.
- Well, I would rather not see my daughter sit in prison.
I think there are probably better ways
to reach over to Israeli society on these issues.
- It would be hard to act against what the army does
and the occupation
when you're a kind of advocating something
that you don't know enough about.
And you have one chance to get to know the army.
And that's when you join it.
- You know it, it's kind of heartbreaking because
I'm really scared of not being part of this society because,
that you're right.
They've never moved.
This is my home.
This is where I see myself living my life.
And I don't want to abandon it
because I'm not part of the military.
- Everybody knew somebody who got killed
or was missing in action or was a prisoner of war.
You know, I remember sitting in the bomb shelter
and my other sister was born during the war
and my father was away and he didn't even know
he had a daughter.
He came back like two weeks after the war
and realized he had a new daughter
and she already had a name.
And he didn't know anything about it.
And for us as kids, it was very frightening
because my mother was in hospital,
my father was away and we were sitting in bomb shelters.
So this is something that my children,
these kind of feelings, you know, they never had.
- What did you want to be when you grow up?
- A nuclear physicist.
(laughing)
- Well done.
I wanted to be Xena the warrior princess.
No, I didn't want to be Xena.
I just wanted to be a warrior princess.
Which I think I am on the way of becoming.
(all speaking foreign language)
This and also this was built on top of the village.
It's crazy.
There was a village here.
They just came and built the settlement.
The settlers made a complaint that the smell
from the cooking stuff is disturbing
their quality of living.
So the army came and tore it down.
The army and the settlers,
they have a really close relationship.
- What is it?
(speaking foreign language)
(dramatic orchestral music)
- In my mind, I kept thinking like, of course they hate us.
Why wouldn't they hate us?
Look what we're doing to them.
So when you, when you see all that,
you can sort of understand why,
why there are terrorist attacks.
People feel cornered and when people are cornered,
they get violent.
So if we want to stop the violence,
we shouldn't use more force and more violence.
We should take them out of the corner.
(singing in foreign language)
- It's a tough song.
- What is it about?
- It's about, just to give courage to the people in jail,
and not to give up and not to be disappointed.
(speaking foreign language)
- Yes.
(speaking foreign language)
- That was good.
- I'm losing it.
- Stop here.
Stop here, stop here Amitai.
Stop here.
Usually it's something like hundreds of Palestinians
used to come here.
Barbecues, sit around, and swim.
Since the number of the settlers raised in Jordan Valley.
Now they are taking all the water from the spring itself.
Not only the people that keep occupying your land.
It's people controlling your life.
The problem is discrimination.
Look how green is their settlement
and how yellow is our land.
(speaking foreign language)
(all chattering)
(speaking foreign language)
(laughing)
(speaking foreign language)
- Recently I have been going a lot to the Jordan Valley
and to South Hebron Hills, and I was seeing
what was really going on in the occupied territory.
It is not equality in any way.
- It's true because it's, what happened is the two sides
became more extreme.
Between us and the Arabs will never be any peace.
- In a way I feel like it is our only choice because-
- It's not the only choice, you see?
our only choice is to fight.
I'm sorry.
I remember the Jews when they were before World War II.
Most of the Jews were against the Zionism.
What happened to my grandfather that was anti-Zionists?
He was burned in the village that he lived there.
You are too optimist.
But the world is not, it's not that way.
- It's hard for me to believe that.
- Maybe if it wasn't the Holocaust,
things would have been different.
But after the Holocaust, the Jews wanted their own state.
Doesn't matter what it will cost to the Arabs.
And your mother, she was fighting to get
to go into the army.
Now it's different.
- Most of those who are refusing right now are women.
And it's a part of that women fighting
for freedom and fighting for equality,
but not through a macho-istic program.
- So stupid.
(laughing)
(light orchestral music)
- When my grandfather was my age, he saw whole villages
of Palestinians being loaded into trucks and deported.
He told me that it broke his heart,
but also that he thought it was necessary.
Those people could have been my friends or their families.
So I'm asking myself, what can I do?
What power do I have to change things here?
And it's like I have the power to refuse.
(singing in foreign language)
(all chattering)
(speaking foreign language)
(singing in foreign language)
(speaking foreign language)
- You know we are going in the road
of becoming more and more apartheid.
And I have to do whatever I can to try and stop it.
And try to change this road that we're walking on.
Because the army is such a powerful thing
in the Isreali society, refusing is the way
to make people hear me.
And to try and make them open their eyes.
(all chattering)
(dramatic orchestral music)
(bells ringing)
♪ From the Halls of Montezuma ♪
♪ To the shores of Tripoli ♪
♪ We will fight our country's battles ♪
♪ In the air, on land, and sea ♪
(humming)
♪ I ain't gonna study war no more, no more ♪
♪ I ain't gonna study war no more ♪
♪ Study war no more, no more ♪
(all chattering)
(speaking foreign language)
(percussive music)
(speaking foreign language)
- [Atalya] I will go in with everyone else who was supposed
to enlist today, but I will refuse to become a soldier.
By tomorrow I'll be transported to military prison.
(camera shutter clicking)
(speaking foreign language)
(dramatic music)
(speaking foreign language)
- [Osama Voiceover] When I was my sister's age,
I wasn't as bold and knowledgeable as she is today.
And I wasn't able to take such a public stand.
I'm grateful to be able to support right now.
And I hope that this can be a beginning
of a new family tradition where it is legitimate
to not do military service and to struggle against it.
- Dear Atalya, I know my words won't be enough to explain
to you my feelings and my respect and my support to you.
I'm sorry that you're away from your family,
your friends and your beloved.
I'm sorry because the place you are in
is not your right place.
People like you are changing the directions
from hate to love, from enemy to friendship,
and from war to peace.
We are all proud of you.
Be strong.
Don't give up.
You are drawing a new future.
And a better future for all of us.
Your Palestinian brother, Osama.
(light acoustic guitar music)
(speaking foreign language)
(Atalya speaking foreign language)
(speaking foreign language)
(Atalya speaking foreign language)
(speaking foreign language)
(Atalya speaking foreign language)
(speaking foreign language)
(Atalya speaking foreign language)
(speaking foreign language)
(Atalya speaking foreign language)
(speaking foreign language)
(Atalya speaking foreign language)
(percussive music)
(singing in foreign language)
(speaking foreign language)
(percussive music)
You think it went well?
- Hopefully she could hear it.
It's quite easy to live in Israel and forget
that there is an occupation at all.
So talking about occupation in any way is a good thing.
And I think today's action really brought
that up and I think that was important.
While Atalya was in prison we organized a couple of trips,
especially one to the South Hebron Hills,
to see the occupation there.
(speaking foreign language)
So we did it with some American organization
and that American organization said,
we want you to write something about the trip,
but don't use the word occupation.
So I said, how can I write something about going
to the Hebron Hills without using the word occupation?
And they say, "Well, we talk around it."
I thought, what kind of games are you playing?
I mean, you need to call a spade a spade
in order to start dealing with it.
And I used the word occupation.
You know, the bad O word.
It was amazing.
And Americans really, really didn't like it.
(dramatic music)
(all speaking foreign language)
(percussive music)
(all speaking foreign language)
(speaking foreign language)
(Atalya speaking foreign language)
(speaking foreign language)
(Atalya speaking foreign language)
(speaking foreign language)
(Atalya speaking foreign language)
(speaking foreign language)
(Atalya speaking foreign language)
(speaking foreign language)
(Atalya speaking foreign language)
(speaking foreign language)
(Atalya speaking foreign language)
(speaking foreign language)
(dramatic orchestral music)
(speaking foreign language)
(Atalya speaking foreign language)
(speaking foreign language)
(dramatic orchestral music)
(shouting)
(speaking foreign language)
(laughing)
(speaking foreign language)
(laughing)
(speaking foreign language)
(laughing)
(speaking foreign language)
(all chattering)
(speaking foreign language)
(all cheering)
(speaking foreign language)
- I have a lot of soldiers that put their fingers
in the wrong place.
- No. - Shot their finger off.
- You saw that? - I saw the finger afterwards.
- It was an accident?
- Yeah, it was an accident.
He didn't know how to do it.
He put his finger.
- [Woman] That's a good idea.
You shoot the gun and you put the finger.
- [Woman] They put it back on?
- [Woman] No, he just came back.
- I had a friend in prison
that was building security officer
and one time she told her commander that if he makes her
do it at night,
be guard alone at night, then she will shoot him.
And then he made her do it and she aimed her weapon
at him and that's why she was in prison.
- She threatened his life, so.
(all chattering)
- When I go to my base-
- It's a soldiers dream.
- Yeah.
We're going to be the next IDF spokesman.
- We have a thing in the army called Ram Steim.
I talk every day with people that are going
to be very powerful in the army.
(all chattering)
- I'm not like running away from my responsibility
for society, I'm doing volunteer work for like 10,
almost 12 hours a day.
Because civil service, when it's something I believe in,
is something that I am able to do.
(upbeat music)
(man speaking foreign language)
(speaking foreign language)
(upbeat music)
- I'm very proud of your feminist views.
Because, of course, feminism is not being like the guys.
(speaking foreign language)
- I feel more strongly now that
there should be an alternative route
to national service besides the army.
But the main issue is what the hell are we doing
in occupied territories?
And the question is whether it's
for our military security reasons
or whether we're being dragged there by messianic settlers.
- So because of the settlers we shouldn't have an army?
Women shouldn't go to the army?
- What we're saying is the government didn't decide
what to do with the territories.
Right? - Right.
- But the government uses the army to police it.
Because they still can't decide.
And what these young people like Atalya are doing.
They're telling the government you can't use the army
as an occupying force. - But what is more important
to have the army or-
- It's important not to be occupiers.
- [Man] I don't agree with you, I don't think so.
- Well, I don't think we should go on living the way we do
~if we have peace with Egypt,
and peace with Jordan and Syria almost disappeared.
And so there is only Lebanon and the army does
all this policing in the West Bank.
We should stop living on our sword.
- But still instead of scrubbing pots and pans
there in the army, she should have learn something
of value, that would have been better.
But it's my humble opinion.
- You know, scrubbing the floor is a very important ability.
I think I'm much better at cleaning
and now than I was my whole life.
And it's really important and very useful.
- In the past, you know,
I thought that I was more in the middle
and I've probably moved further to the left.
Because the idea that you can affect change from the inside,
which is always what people say,
kind of go to the army and try to effect change
from the inside.
I don't think it really works.
It's such a huge machine.
And it's so, you know, it will crush you
if you try to change.
- Yeah.
- This was the first point.
Yeah.
This is like the fence and like the barbed wire.
These are like the birds and they call to the wind.
- Freedom.
- [Atalya] Freedom, yeah.
- You wrote every day? - Yeah.
The girls I met in prison.
There's like a disproportion
between how much the army actually uses them and needs them
to how psychologically damaged
this whole experience has made them.
You know, the meals in prison, you can yeah, you can smile
and laugh, you can talk and you can have eye contact.
So as I was looking at them and be like this or something,
and then one of the commanders like, you know,
really really yelled at me.
I was peeking when guards like they slept there less
than I slept, like their commanders treated them badly
the same way they sometimes treated us.
Like I could find a lot of kindness in my commanders.
- Yeah, it's interesting to hear all that.
On the one hand, it's beautiful.
And and the other hand,
Palestinian prisoners don't have that.
- Yeah, it is Different.
- [Man] This video proved too much for Israel.
I had to meet a young Palestinian punching
and kicking a heavily armed soldier shortly
before Ahed hit out at the soldier,
her 15-year-old cousin, Mohammed, was wounded.
The family says he was shot in the head by a rubber bullet.
Days later, the army arrested her in a nighttime operation.
- [Woman] The 17-year-old agreed to a plea deal
with Israeli prosecutors to avoid more serious charges
that could've imprisoned her for years.
(speaking foreign language)
(dramatic orchestral music)
- Right now, it feels like things
are only getting worse all the time.
It's difficult and you don't really see a positive future.
I come from the side of the oppressors.
Without my own choosing, of course.
But I'm an occupier.
When we're able to give up some of those privileges
in order to struggle against the Israeli occupation,
it's difficult, but it's not as difficult
as being a Palestinian.
(dramatic orchestral music)
(speaking foreign language)
(guns firing)
(speaking foreign language)
(dramatic orchestral music)
(speaking foreign language)
- We brought you olives from our garden.
- Thank you.
- [Atalya] I mostly came to express my solidarity.
And I brought you this.
It's a letter from 63 Israeli refusers which refused
to join Israeli army.
- Do we want to build a brave generation,
the generation who have a belief.
And self confidence and the can, result really result,
to end the occupation?
When Ahed grows up, she believes that it's her role
and her duty and her responsibility.
I highly appreciate the struggle on your side
to pay the price for what you believe.
- Although it was hard, it made my heart lighter
because I knew that I was doing something
I truly believe in-
- There is no gain without losses.
When your enemies become angry,
you are in the right direction.
(camera shutter clicking)
(speaking foreign language)
(all laughing)
(speaking foreign language)
- Living as a human being,
you always feel guilty about something.
I always felt guilty about not doing enough.
You know?
She'll have to come to terms with it.
I can't help her.
I do what I can and I support my kids who do more than I do.
So all I can do is support them, then I do that.
And it's my little bit of fighting the occupation
through other people, through subcontractors.
(percussive music)
- What I mean is like,
if we'll have more than 60 conscientious objectors
at the same time, we'll shut down
the military prison system.
Because there's only place for 80 conscientious objectors
and there are other girls in prison.
That's like my dream.
They won't even have a place in prison to put us all in.
(laughing)
(dramatic orchestral music)
(reporter speaking foreign language)
- 63 12th graders have signed
an open letter to the government
indicating their refusal to serve.
(speaking foreign language)
- We- - We-
- [Girl] We young people write this letter as a statement
of our refusal to join the army.
(speaking foreign language)
- [Man] For the good of all of us between the Jordan River
and the sea.
(speaking foreign language)
- [Man] We must end occupation and reach peace.
- [Woman] And reach peace.
- [Man] Achieve peace. - [Woman] Achieve peace.
(speaking foreign language)
(laughing)
(speaking foreign language)
- What's the event title?
It's about the- - The letter.
We're trying to get people to sign up.
It's going to be.
I really, really don't have any...
- Inspiration?
- No, well that too but, I don't have the energy
to deal with violence.
(speaking foreign language)
And now you have to give a speech.
- Which I haven't written anything of.
- I would say a year ago there was only you
and two others refusing.
And now more than 100 people have signed a refusal letter.
Sounds pretty exciting.
- You are treating it as if I was the only one who refused,
but that's not true.
I was just the only one in prison last year.
There were more people
who supported anti-occupation, activism.
(speaking foreign language)
(all speaking foreign language)
(speaking foreign language)
(crowd cheering)
(all shouting)
(all chanting in foreign language)
(speaking foreign language)
(sighing)
(dramatic orchestral music)