SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
conscientious objector
From Vietnam to Today: Lessons in Resistance for the Trump Era
More than ever before, Americans of conscience are being forced to answer the question: What does it mean to be a responsible citizen?
Apr 06, 2025
The return of Donald Trump to the presidency is revealing itself to be a time of significant national division and turmoil. He is pursuing policies that reflect international bellicosity and a frightening dedication to xenophobia, misogyny, and intolerance. I take him seriously when he promises retribution and punishment of his “enemies.”
More than ever before, Americans of conscience are being forced to answer the question: What does it mean to be a responsible citizen?
Throughout our national history, Americans have had to come to grips with national leaders bent on suppressing dissent, punishing those who disagree, and harnessing the power of government to enact legislation designed to restrict freedom and diminish equality. Citizens who find the moral courage to dissent, must ask themselves about the cost—professional, social, or personal—they are willing to pay. We know from bitter experience that silence in the face of evil aids the oppressor and neutrality often disguises indifference.
I had to redefine manhood, patriotism, duty, obligation, courage, honor—even when my definitions were bound to run up against opposition.
At its core, moral courage is the ability to stand up against wrong. Bayard Rustin said that moral courage happens when we speak truth to power, when we directly confront wrong, aware that our decision may result in harm to our personal well-being. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. exhorted us to act with principle. He said that the time is always right to do right. And Susan B. Anthony comforted those who felt that the fight may be endless: “Failure is impossible.”
Quiet moral courage may be invisible to many, unnoticed by louder voices, stridently demanding a stage for their protest. Moral courage does not belong exclusively to those with advanced degrees. As Bob Dylan noted, “You don’t need to be a weatherman / To know which way the wind blows.” At its best, moral courage is an act of selfless love.. a caring for community and an affirmation of the possibilities of a kinder, more compassionate world.
In my recently published memoir, 90: A Conscientious Objector’s Journey of Quiet Resistance, I try to describe how the moral courage I expressed personally ricocheted in larger arenas. Some 50 years ago, I had to face the prospect of fighting in a war I felt was morally repugnant. Resistance to a terribly misguided national policy meant alienating family members and facing the fact that refusing military service would be disgraceful to my recently deceased, beloved father. Then, as now, our nation was in a state of upheaval; the dislocations of the Vietnam War swirled in the tumultuous eddies of the civil rights movement and the emergence of a rebellious counterculture.
I was only 20 when the United States introduced a lottery to determine who would be called to don the uniform of our military. I drew 90, a number that placed me squarely in the crosshairs of being drafted. Naïve, traumatized by the recent death of my father, and idealistic, I made the decision to resist the war as a conscientious objector. I had little hope of gaining this status, as I didn’t belong to a religious sect that opposed all war and my draft board was in San Diego, California—a notoriously conservative, pro-war city. More and more, I became convinced that I would go to jail if the board rejected my application. This terrified me, despite knowing that scores of brave Americans have chosen prison as a means of expressing dissent.
Where did I find the moral courage to join some 170,000 other men who filed for conscientious objector status during the Vietnam era? I remembered my soft-spoken father whose example told me to never back down when faced with issues of right or wrong. I recalled my grandmother Rose, who fled czarist persecution to find meaning in an America that would welcome all comers, especially the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” I sat in awe-struck admiration of the men, women, and children of the civil rights movement who sacrificed even their lives for the ideals that America ought to represent.
I had to redefine manhood, patriotism, duty, obligation, courage, honor—even when my definitions were bound to run up against opposition. Somehow, I had to summon the strength to follow Henry David Thoreau’s model when he stopped paying taxes and was thrown in jail to protest slavery and an immoral, expansionist war that would expand that evil. He demanded, well over a century and a half ago, “Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine.”
I became a CO and learned to live with the consequences of that act of quiet resistance. For two years, in lieu of serving in the military, I worked as a laboratory glassware washer at the Palo Alto Veterans Administration Hospital.
My decision to protest an unjust war derailed my dreams of a career in the law but opened my eyes to other possibilities for honoring my need to serve America.
More importantly, the most crucial lesson I learned was that a good American needs to obey the dictates of conscience rather than blindly follow the demands of their government.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Israel's Conscientious Objectors Stand on the Shoulders of Giants
Refusing to fight in unjust and brutal wars is not new, but it remains a rare act of courage.
Mar 22, 2024
According to legend, the organization I lead, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, was founded in August 1914 when a British Quaker and a German Lutheran shook hands at a railway station in Cologne. With England on the cusp of joining World War I, they pledged, "We are one in Christ and can never be at war."
After Germany sunk the Lusitania ship in May 1915, American public support for joining the war swelled. But not everyone got on board.
Political activist and theologian A.J. Muste responded to his country’s gearing up for war by becoming a pacifist. His views resulted in him being forced out of his pastoral position. Likewise, pacifist and social reformer Jane Addams (who later went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize) was viciously criticized for calling the war “an insane outburst.”
Despite the pro-war hysteria that countries use to justify their military endeavors, conscientious objection remains a courageous option for those committed to peace. As the ongoing genocide of Palestinians unfolds in front of the eyes of the world, a couple of young Israelis are choosing this brave, though unpopular, path.
“Slaughter cannot solve slaughter,” 18-year-old Israeli-American Tal Mitnick said in December 2023 before receiving his first 30-day prison sentence for refusing to join Israel’s military.
The same week that Tal refused for the third time and received a third term in prison, he was joined by fellow teenager Sofia Orr. “I reject participating in the violent policies of oppression and apartheid that Israel has imposed on the Palestinian people, especially now during the war,” she said.
It’s not the sentences Tal and Sofia are enduring that make their actions exceptional. They have options. In fact, 12 percent of conscripted Israelis get out of service through notoriously easy-to-obtain mental health exemptions. Instead of the 10-year terms that Russian draft evaders face, even when Israelis are sentenced for refusing, they receive consecutive sentences with breaks in between to see if they have changed their minds.
Tal and Sofia are not being held indefinitely in overcrowded, abusive, deadly prison facilities like incarcerated Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank. But, what Tal and Sophia are doing is heroic and places them within a legacy of great peacemakers.
The earliest recorded act of conscientious objection occurred in 295 A.D. when Maximilianus refused his conscription into the Roman Army. He was beheaded for refusing to kill. Later, he was canonized as a saint.
Like Maximilianus, Austrian farmer Franz Jägerstätter was arrested and executed for refusing conscription by the Nazis. He wrote, "I find that [my hands being in chains is] much better than if my will were in chains. Neither prison nor chains nor sentence of death can rob a man of the Faith and his free will.”
When, in 1944, devout Quaker Bayard Rustin was sentenced to three years for refusing to serve in World War II, he devoted his prison time to racial justice work. A disciple of Gandhian nonviolence, he organized his fellow prisoners to resist segregation in the prison. He was so successful that the head of the prison described him as “an extremely capable agitator.” Upon release, he traveled the country organizing communities, including the “First Freedom Ride” in 1947.
James Lawson, also a student of Gandhi, spent 13 months in prison between 1951 and 1952 for refusing to serve during the Korean War. Lawson went on to become, along with Rustin, an essential advisor to Dr. Martin Luther King.
Since its campaigns were broadcast on TV across America, the civil rights movement challenged the public, especially American youth, to choose between justice and segregation — between equality and oppression. At the same time, there was a surge of draft evaders and conscientious objectors to the Vietnam War, including prominent leaders like “good troublemaker” John Lewis.
Refusing and avoiding conscription became so popular during the Vietnam War that President Nixon’s commission reported that the movement was “expanding at an alarming rate,” leaving the government “almost powerless to apprehend and prosecute them.”
With the majority of Israelis opposing an end to the war in Gaza and 72 percent of them supporting no humanitarian aid, Tal and Sofia are not part of a growing popular movement, like what took place during the Vietnam War. But their contributions to peace are no less important.
Whether or not other young Israelis join them in jail — Tal and Sofia were part of a group of 200 Jewish Israeli 12th graders who pledged in August 2023 to refuse military service to protest the government’s effort to overhaul Israel’s judicial system — what Tal and Sofia have done places profound marks on the pages of history.
Members and contributors to the Fellowship of Reconciliation include the likes of Jane Addams, A.J. Muste, Mahatma Gandhi, Bayard Rustin, Martin Luther King Jr., Daniel Berrigan, Dorothy Day, James Lawson, and countless other brave conscientious objectors and peacemakers.
Today, as the world is watching a genocide take place in real-time — as of this writing, the death toll in Gaza is approaching 32,000 and famine is setting in — FOR-USA is proud to be raising money for an ad in an Israeli newspaper lifting up two of the most important conscientious objectors of our time. We invite you to join us by following Tal and Sofia’s journey at forusa.org/IsraeliRefusers.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Why I'm Saying No to the IDF as a 17-Year-Old
As my birthday approaches, I grow more and more anxious because a professional organization of trained terrorists that calls itself an army wants me to be one of them. And if I say no, a prison sentence will be the result.
Apr 27, 2023
As a soon-to-be 18-year-old Israeli high school student, enlistment is the only thing waiting for me after I finish my studies in six months. We have speeches every other week, telling us how important it is to serve and complete a "meaningful service" for the country. Of course, meaningful service means serving in fighting roles, roles that include violence.
Recently I got sent a message from the IDF telling me that I'm "invited" to a sorting intended for future paratroopers. I, of course, don't want to be a paratrooper. I don't want anything to do with the IDF, for obvious reasons.
I don't want to take any part in enforcing apartheid, colonialism, and violent oppression. For the IDF though, this is not enough. As I learned recently, the army does not exempt anyone purely because of ideological reasons. In other words, I can hate the army, I can hate the country, its government, and the things it stands for, but I cannot refuse to become a soldier.
Because the punishment for that is a prison sentence.
We're told to serve, have a meaningful service, and be ready to kill. That's why I will be a paratrooper if I don't resist. If I don't defy them. If we all don't defy them.
I grow more and more anxious by the day because a professional organization of trained terrorists that calls itself an army wants me to be one of them. And I cannot say no.
But, in the eyes of the government, especially the purely fascist one we have now, I should be proud to serve. I should be honored to be allowed to serve "the security of our state."
And as someone eligible to serve in a fighting role, I should gladly give my life and the lives of others for the country.
I should be prepared to kill. Fighters in the army have a literal license to kill. And to top all that, the propaganda we are fed in school is infuriating. Most people know the myth of Israel's soldiers being part of the most moral army in the world. But here, I'm surrounded by 17- and 18-year-old classmates who believe and defend the idea that the IDF is somehow even close to being "moral." Anyone who believes that Palestinians deserve self-determination and their birthright to live freely is labeled either a 'dirty leftist' or a Nazi.
All Israelis aged 18 must serve, but the ones who understand the gravity of the army's deeds, the ones most fiercely opposing it—they have to put aside their belief system and put up with being an opponent to millions of Palestinians living a peaceful life.
To destroy and take lives is the main mission of an IDF soldier. Everything else is secondary.
That's why we're told to serve, have a meaningful service, and be ready to kill.
That's why I will be a paratrooper if I don't resist. If I don't defy them. If we all don't defy them.
Because if no one dares to oppose Israel, they will continue what they have been doing best.
And that's not being the most moral army in the world.
That's why I'm saying no to them.
That's why I'm risking going to prison.
I'm saying no to the IDF, so they understand what it feels like when someone forces their belief system onto them, just like the way they have been doing to others all this time.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular