• Israeli "refusenik," or conscientious objector, who refused the Israeli Defense Forces draft
• Speaks on numerous college campuses

Noam Bahat is an Israeli “refusenik,” or conscientious objector, who declined to serve in the Israeli Defense Force when he was drafted at the age of 18.

Bahat was born in Nirit, near the Green Line in Israel, in 1983. He dropped out of school in the tenth grade and eventually became a youth movement leader and mentored children at an Israeli moshav (cooperative agricultural community). 

Bahat's refusal to obey his draft orders resulted in a prison sentence of nearly two years (645 days in all). After his release, Bahat and Shimri Zamaret, a fellow refusenik, embarked on a lecture tour of numerous U.S. cities, addressing mostly students on college campuses. Their talks focus on condemning Israel's “occupation” of Palestinian territory and its “oppression” of the people in the West Bank. The Washington, D.C.-based Refuser Solidarity Network and the American Friends Service Committee, along with local groups, have sponsored these speaking engagements. 

"I realized that my country is an occupying nation," says Bahat. "When I realized that, I knew that I must do everything I can to stop this occupation to make sure that both countries would stop paying that very high price." Additional public statements by Bahat include the following:

• “The state of Israel, my state, my homeland, destroys the lives and rights of three million people.”
• “I went through a process at school, in which I stopped believing in the formal education system, a dogmatic and racist system that educates for grades and not for values. I looked around, tried to be critical and weigh things evenly, and decided to leave the educational system.”
• “I became more aware of the horrendous things taking place in the occupied territories, and I also became aware of the nature of what it means to serve in the educational part of the army, that it means to be part of the propaganda of the occupation. Then I became aware that there’s nothing in the army I can do that I believe in, that I agree with, that I can tolerate. That’s when I decided to refuse.”
• “Palestinians have long since stopped being people in our [Israelis'] view.”
• "As a man of conscience I could not take part in the army of oppression."

This profile is adapted, with permission, from Stand4Facts.org.