For four years Yonin Hiller has refused to put on an Israeli military uniform. Today he gets the chance to explain himself in court, writes Mary Russell.
Yonin Hiller, a 20-year-old Israeli, will make history today when he stands up in the High Court of Justice in Jerusalem and explains why he refuses to be drafted into the army. It will be the moment he, his family and supporters have been both dreading and hoping for the last four years.
In Israel, everyone except Orthodox Jewish students and most Arab Israelis must join the Israeli Defence Force; the men for three years, the women for 18 months.
At the age of 16, Hiller announced that he could not compromise his principles by going to war. It was not that he didn't want to serve his country, he said, simply that he didn't want to have to put on a military uniform to do so. In short, Hiller is a conscientious objector.
His case is complicated by the fact that under Israeli law, a woman may claim exemption from military service on grounds of conscience but a man may not - a law strangely at variance with Israel's declared democratic status.
Summoned before a military tribunal, Hiller was invited to do his military service by working with children, provided he did so in uniform, which he declined to do.
Last March, he was called before the High Court where it was decided that the army must return and give a reasoned explanation as to why his request to be exempted from military service had been turned down.
Today, that moment has come.
The process has been a lengthy and unsatisfactory one. In the early stages of the case, when he was 16, Hiller was not allowed to be accompanied by parents, friends or legal advisers, nor was he allowed makes notes during the meetings.
Now, however, he has the services of a young lawyer, Ori Keidar, who has agreed to take on the case for half the usual legal fee.
"If it hadn't been for that," says Hiller's mother Ruth, "we could not have helped Yonin take his case so far."
Together with a number of other women whose children had also resisted the draft, Ruth Hiller formed a campaigning peace group called New Profile, its name a reference to the system of profiling conscripts according to their suitability to serve on the front line.
Anyone scoring below 21 is deemed unsuitable either physically or emotionally to join the army and many draft-resisters have avoided conscription simply by getting a sympathetic doctor to sign the appropriate medical certificate.
New Profile's aims are clear. "We are concerned about the culture of war that exists in Israel and what we want to do," says Ruth Hiller, "is instead of militarising the country to civilise it."
Indoctrination begins early, she believes, and so New Profile has run conferences for teachers, seeking to make them more aware of the way in which war, in Israel, is an acceptable part of everyday life.
She cites the visibility of young uniformed conscripts standing in bus queues, slinging weapons over their shoulders as casually as they might sling their bag of books, their make-up pouch or their sports gear.
Working in the same field is Gush Shalom, a peace group founded by former Knesset member Uri Avneri. While abstaining - for legal reasons - from giving advice on how to resist the draft, Gush Shalom offers counselling to draft-resisters as well as running courses and conferences in political education.
These and other similar groups will be at the High Court on Wednesday to show their support.
Since her son's case came to light, Ruth Hiller has been dealing with a succession of anxious parents of young draft-resisters. "I talk to two or three every day," she tells The Irish Times. A draft-resister can be sentenced to a maximum of three months but in some cases it can be more.
"Some of the resisters, " she says, "are Druze or Russian and the only way they know of getting themselves heard has been to go absent without leave. Then they are summoned to appear before a military court and sentenced. If they've been AWOL, their sentence is usually longer. We try to help them find other ways of doing it."
Last year, some 40 draft-resisters served jail sentences. "The number is growing," says Ruth Hiller. "Conscription is a major issue now and Yonin's will be a test case."
She has high hopes that he will win. "He has not avoided serving his country. For the last 2½ years he has been working as a volunteer counsellor for school children and the lawyer's team think this will help."
Mary Russell is a freelance journalist