I am not labelling anyone, I personally know some of the refusniks, and they have indeed a dual moral concern, one is what is whether what is done in the territory is absolutely necessary for Israel's survival (they say no, just as I say that invasion of Iraq is not necessary for our securit) main concern is indeed that by taking the stance they do, they leave the dirty job to tohers. You see, out of 500,000 reservists, there are probably 100,000 that agree with Asaf that there must be a better way to solve the security problem, not just 500, but they decided the morl question oof who is going to be left to do the "dirty work" by shouldering the task. That does not mean they are less moral than Asaf, it just means that in a society like Israel, a lot of people have developed the attitude, If I do shoulder the burden, no one will and the whole country will go down the drain.
You see those 100,000 that shoulder the burden despite their disagreement are greater "moral heros" in my book, they are the one that end up having nightmares, not the one that spent few weeks of months in detention for refusing. That does not detract from Asaf or Joni own moral deliberations and action taken as the result of a moral stance. There is a sizeable movement of doves in Israel, I was raised in such a "dovish" kibbutz (part of what today is called Meretz), very few of these "leftist doves" are part of the refuzniks movement, mostly because they recognize that if the nation (through its elected parliament and government) decided that a form of action must be taken, unless such an action is a crime of war (and those actions are not crimes of war) and thus would impart a stamp of impurity on their pure arms, they will shoulder the burden with the rest. I the few cases were hooligans are breaking their oath to keep their arms pure of innocent blood, those doves are the one bringing the deviants to a harsh court and appropriate punishment. I know of one Israeli soldier in jail for harming (though not killing) an unarmed civilian because in the heat of battle he misttook that civilain (with a hay fork) as holding a weapon, the incident haapened at night and visibility was poor. Today, they use better techniques, including the ability to visualize people within closed structure and determining whether they are armed or not, field unis operating in territories have such an observer, and his is authorizing directing fire to such structure or not according to what he sees. Unfortunately, the device is not perfect, a person slouching on the floor cannot be identified, so from time to time, civilians do get killed.
You are trying to describe that Assaf's position too simplisticly without taking ito account the moral debate the rest of the armed forces are going through with every encounter they have with armed terrorists.
Zeev
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