Meet Israel's boycotters

 Israeli members of the BDS movement and pro-Palestinian activists explain why the world should stop supporting Israel.

"The first time I came to Palestine I was 17. I was part of an exchange programme and I noticed right away that there was some confusion between the terms 'Jewish' and 'Israeli' in Hebrew. So if you were Jewish but not Israeli, as I was, or Israeli but not Jewish, like many people, somehow your identity wasn't 100 percent.

That really interested me: the relationship between Jews and Palestinians, although nowadays we say Jews and Arabs because the word Palestinian is too friendly. Of course, before 1948, the Jews were also Palestinian.

I'm not an activist who goes to the barricades, although I did when I was younger and worked for a programme that brought Jews and Arabs together. At that time, in the early 1980s, I thought that you could work towards reconciliation but not think about politics. Later on, I realised that without justice, there is no reconciliation. So the question is: 'Whose justice and what does it consist of?'

If you don't come out and support this boycott movement your real motivation will be fear: fear of what people will think of you, fear of ostracism, fear of your friends not speaking to you.

I think that we have to understand human rights today as interactive; it can't be about 'I worry about my human rights, you worry about yours'. That doesn't work anymore. The basic human right we need today is the right not to be enemies, the right to refuse to slaughter each other. We can't actualise this right by ourselves, we need others to do it with us."

"My family returned to Israel from Antigua when I was six years old. I'd been used to a place that was warm, welcoming and non-violent, and where all religions are studied and even young children are taught about the importance of human rights.

Then suddenly I found myself in a country where everyone seems brainwashed and they don't accept you unless you are exactly like them. So, I felt far removed from the violence and militarism of Israeli society.

Then, when I was 15, I went to my first demonstration.It was close to a settlement and I remember very vividly that a child of about my age was shot in the head with a rubber bullet. That experience changed me forever and I knew then that I would not go into the army.

Before that, I had thought that maybe I'd be a paramedic, a soldier without a uniform who'd work in a hospital and do something good. But in that moment, when I experienced the violence, the tear gas, the rubber bullets, the attacks of the Israeli soldiers who beat me and my friends, I knew I could never be a part of that organisation.

I felt completely alone. And I still feel alone because our group is so small. A couple of hundred people within Israeli society support the BDS movement.

Perhaps there are 10 or 20 core people who are really active. Even people who believe the occupation of 1948 was good but that we should not occupy the land from 1967 are considered traitors.

Israeli society is more violent, right-wing and extreme than it's ever been so our voices cannot be heard."

I grew up in a very leftist house, but I got involved in activism myself at around the age of 15 or 16. I just started asking questions and went looking for answers about local politics.

I went to a summer school that brought Palestinians and Israelis together.

And then, after the second intifada broke out, I served in the army in the Occupied Territories, and that's how I got involved. I saw life inside the West Bank and realised that it's not something I can be a part of.

At first I said: 'Okay, I don't want to serve in the Occupied Territories.' But as time went by, I realised it wasn't just the Occupied Territories, it was the army; I couldn't be a part of the army. The more I went there, the more I got involved and the more I realised I couldn't be a part of it and had to do something active against it.

When I refused to serve in the Occupied Territories, I did it with a group of friends. We did it openly and declared that our refusal was because of the occupation. I was sentenced to two years in prison.

I don't know if I would have done it if I'd known I would get that long, because I went to prison saying: 'Okay, three months, it's not a problem, I can do three months.'

I don't know if I would have said: 'Yes, two years, no problem.'

It wouldn’t have been so easy to make the decision but I'm not too sorry that it happened in the way it did, because the fact that we spent so long in prison had a big impact on people: we got more media attention and a book was published about our trial, which students of philosophy and law now study. So I know the things we said about the occupation got out there.

We get a lot of support from Palestinians; they were and still are happy to hear our story. When I go there and tell people my story, they say: 'It's amazing that Israelis are also willing to go to prison because of this.' That's a very strong bridge builder for solidarity and action.

Sometimes I'm really optimistic, especially when there are demonstrations taking place. It feels for the first time like, perhaps, civilians are willing to stand up and fight and say: 'We are not going to be silent for 'security' reasons and we are not going to just do what the government tells us.'

What the separation has done -with its walls and laws and checkpoints- is make it easier for one side to demonise and dehumanise the other.

So, younger people here have probably never even met Palestinians, unless it was while they were in the army when they are in a fighting situation. And it's the same on the other side.

That makes it much easier for Israelis to say that all of the Palestinians are monsters and terrorists and for the Palestinians to say that all of the Israelis are killers. It's a very basic matter of human contact."

“I grew up in a family where politics wasn't discussed. I knew nothing about the history of Israel. Well, I knew the history but not in terms of what really happened. There was never any discussion about the Palestine issue.

But when I was 18, I enlisted in the army. By the time I was 19 I had seen what happened to the Palestinians and had a change of heart. I felt the evil and saw those affected by it.

Palestinians are abused, they are a sort of medium for abuse, they are dominated. If you step on their necks you feel stronger; it's a sort of self-aggrandisement through abusing people.

So after one or two years I read a book by Mokuza, which was about how people are brainwashed into doing the things that 'big brother' wants.

I was very interested in how this happened. I couldn't understand how society could be convinced so quickly to do insane things. I saw that when I was in the army, I saw it in my friends, in my unit; how they obey the orders they are given automatically, without thinking.

I decided not to be in the army any more.

Since about 2010, I've been involved in demonstrations in the Occupied Territories, in all kinds of activities. I've been involved in the demonstrations at Bil'in since the beginning, since 2005.

I look at the activists I really admire like towers of justice. But there are too few of them in Israel. We're far below the critical mass needed to change anything. We're just like a child putting a finger on the wall.

But I think only outside pressure by the international community, by international activists could have an impact, as it did in South Africa."

"I founded an organisation called Zochrot. It means 'remembering'. We work to raise awareness of the Nakba and to support the right of return for Palestinian refugees.

Israelis know almost nothing about the Nakba, but we believe it is essential to know what happened and to acknowledge our responsibility for it.

We organise tours for Israelis and Palestinians in Israel where we show them signs of Palestinian life and Palestinian villages and listen to the tales of Palestinian refugees from those places. They tell us about their lives there, about the Nakba and how they were expelled or ran away and prevented from returning.

We also publish booklets about these places in Hebrew and Arabic and teach about the Nakba in high schools and universities.

We have to acknowledge what we did to Palestinians – we expelled them, we prevented them from returning home. We believe that without the acknowledgement of the Nakba, without support for the right of return for Palestinian refugees, there will never be reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians.

I was born in Argentina and came here when I was five. My family went directly to a kibbutz. I was quite left-wing, but when I turned 18 I went into the army without any hesitation. There was no question about it for me because to be a good citizen you have to serve in the army; it's part of citizenship here.

I am more proud of the fact that my two oldest children have refused to serve in the army and I hope the next two will also refuse to go.

I'm not very proud of it, but I was an excellent soldier. But when my time in the army was just about coming to an end, the war in Lebanon began in 1982. I was called up as a reservist to fight there. I was against this war from the very beginning so I thought a lot and decided to refuse to serve there.

I was sent to jail. This was a very important moment for me because it was the first time I put a line: 'This is my limit. I won't cross it. I don't support this war at all.'

I was 23. I met many great people in jail; some of them are still friends today. It was important for me and my political formation and understanding.

Then, when the first intifada began, I knew I would not fight. If I believe Palestinians should have their own state and Israel should withdraw from the West Bank, how can I go there and suppress a Palestinian uprising? So I refused again, and was jailed again."

This article first appeared in the February issue of the Al Jazeera Magazine. For more compelling stories, download the magazine for iPads and iPhones here, and for Android devices