9. Israel, 2002: A tank gunner refuses to pull the trigger, and sets off a buzz of objection instead.

General, your tank is a powerful vehicle.
It smashes down forests and crushes a hundred men.
But it has one defect:
It needs a driver. -Bertolt Brecht

Yigal Bronner, a former member of the Israel Defense Forces, included this quotation in an open letter he wrote in 2002. He and hundreds of others refused to serve with the Israeli army in the occupied territories. These soldiers were from prestigious elite units, who had seen active combat and risked their lives. Many were jailed for their refusal. They became known as seruvniks from the Hebrew word seruv—refusal.

The seruvniks drew their compatriots’ and the world’s attention to the dehumanizing effects of the occupation on both Israelis and the three million Palestinians in the occupied territories. They insisted, in what became known as the Combatants’ Letter: “We shall not continue to fight beyond the 1967 borders in order to dominate, expel, starve, and humiliate an entire people. We hereby declare that we shall continue serving in the Israel Defense Forces in any mission that serves Israel’s defense. The missions of occupation do not serve this purpose—and we shall take no part in them.”

Bronner’s letter to the general who called him to serve in the occupied territories was a meditation on the relationship between an individual soldier and the army that orders him to do the unthinkable. Bronner had one such experience when he, working as a tank gunner, was ordered to fire a missile into a group of people. “I am the final small cog in the wheel of this sophisticated war machine. I am the last and smallest link in the chain of command. I am supposed to simply follow orders—to reduce myself to stimulus and response. To hear the command ‘Fire!’ and pull the trigger, to bring the overall plan to completion,” Bronner wrote. “And I am supposed to do all this with the natural simplicity of a robot, who senses nothing beyond the shaking of the tank as the shell is ejected from the gun barrel and flies to its target.”

Bronner wrote that, although he was not a particularly gifted soldier, he was capable of thinking. And so he refused to fire. He acknowledged that he was “a buzzing gnat that you will swat and try to crush before striding on.” But his warning to the general and Israel’s political leaders was powerful: “One single gnat can’t halt a tank, certainly not a column of tanks, certainly not the entire march of folly. But … ultimately other gunners, drivers, and commanders, who will see more and more aimless killing, will also start thinking and buzzing. There are already many hundreds of us. Ultimately, our buzzing will turn into a deafening roar, a roar that will echo in your ears and in those of your children. Our protest will be recorded in the history books, for all generations to see. So, general, before you swipe me away, perhaps you too should do a little thinking.”

Steve Crawshaw and John Jackson adapted this article for YES! Magazine from their book, Small Acts of Resistance: How Courage, Tenacity, and Ingenuity Can Change the World © 2010 by Steve Crawshaw and John Jackson, Union Square Press, a division of Sterling Publishing Co,. Inc. (Facebook/SmallActsofResistance).

yesmagazine.org/people-power/10-everyday-acts-of-resistance-that-changed-the-world