My name is Atalya, I am an activist, and I spent 110 days in jail after refusing to serve in the Israeli military in 2017.I also manage Refuser Solidarity Network’s social media platforms “Voices Against the War”. I never thought that years later, I would be marking one year of an ongoing genocide, alongside 76 years for the crimes committed by Israel against the Palestinian people. Since the war’s outbreak, I have taken part in and documented countless demonstrations and actions calling for an end to the genocide and the occupation of Palestine, alongside activists and refusers who continue to call for an immediate ceasefire, a just hostage deal (the release of both Israeli and Palestinian hostages) and freedom for all. But Israel has not stopped committing its crimes. Some days, I find myself consumed by hopelessness as the genocide in Gaza is livestreamed to a world that marches on. But I also know that it is my duty as a person living here and as a civil resister to continue fighting against the occupation and against the genocide. It is my duty as a refuser myself to continue supporting the Israeli refusers who have the power to stop the genocide. Join me and support the Israeli refuser movement by signing our solidarity statement, and send it to your communities.

While Israel debases those who were murdered on October 7 – and those still alive and in captivity – by continuing its genocide in Gaza, we insist in honoring them through our resistance. As words fail us, as we try to grasp for the ability to describe unseen levels of immiseration and displacement, little room remains for symbolism. All we have is our resistance against the occupation, apartheid and genocide, our only remaining tool to honor the memory of those lost and save those waiting to come home to their families, Palestinians and Israelis alike.

Our struggle is one that is in total solidarity with Palestinians themselves fighting for a different future, one of justice for everyone from the river to the sea. We fight so that the oppression before October 7, the atrocities of October 7, and the genocide that followed it will never happen again. Our vision of honoring the dead is to fight for the lives that they could have lived, insisting on the conditions that could have allowed them to keep on living. As Israelis, we recognize that the victims of the October 7 attacks lost their lives on the altar of Jewish supremacy, a system maintained on the backs of the Palestinian people. That is why we continue to see refusal as the way forward. This is the only path that allows for Israelis to refuse the state of affairs, to refuse to kill and be killed, to refuse to oppress in the name of ethnic supremacy, revenge and an illusionary sense of safety.

Join us and support the Israeli resistance, not the genocide. Your support allows us to bring more war refusers into our movement, and to offer an alternative for the growing number of Israelis who recognize that we need a different path forward. Please sign and share our solidarity statement with your community, and let the world know you back war refusers in Israel and the world over.