Israeli Heroes, Palestinian Zeroes

Westerner audiences are eager to lionize Israeli refuseniks as heroes. This lowers the bar for what constitutes heroism in the face of a genocide. It also dehumanizes Palestinians.

When the news broke the other day that Tal Mitnick, an Israeli teenager from Tel Aviv, was refusing to enlist in there IDF and subsequently sentenced to 30 days in prison, the internet rushed to celebrate him as a saint. “He is hero,” wrote Ben Burgis in Jacobin. “In the long arc of history it’s peace activists like Tal Mitnick who’ll be remembered as the real heroes of this war,” said another commentator on Twitter.