As details of the genocidal attack against Israeli civilians continue to unfold, one of the most shocking incidents is the massacre of over 260 young adults at the Supernova music festival near Be’im, a small kibbutz about three miles from the Gaza border. Most people are now familiar with the gruesome images of Shani Louk, the Israeli-German “oppressor” lying either unconscious or dead in the back of a Hamas pickup truck while the “oppressed” lions of Islam cheer and desecrate her body.
According to her family, Shani Louk was a conscientious objector and was able to use her German citizenship to avoid mandatory military service in Israel. Ahh, but that’s the funny thing about these “peace” festivals, isn’t it? They are a luxury enjoyed only under the protections of the very military and police forces whom the dreadlocked attendees would be the first to declare evil and oppressive. They can only conscientiously object so long as there remain enough of their fellow citizens who don’t conscientiously object.
People will erroneously accuse me of blaming the victim, though that’s not what I’m doing here. Blaming the victim would imply that I thought Louk and her friends were recklessly exposing themselves to unnecessary risk. Hallucinogens and STDs aside, they weren’t. Louk and her fellow revelers had every reasonable expectation that their “peace” festival was under the vigilant protection of the mean ol’ IDF and Mossad. They are no more to blame for their own murders than are the Israelis sleeping in their homes, driving down their streets, or working in their police stations.
But can we call modern conscientious objection for what it is? It’s an excuse for young adults to shirk mandatory military service in order to be able to party during their college years or avoid a current war — or both. The latter is at least understandable. Whoever says they wouldn’t be afraid of charging headfirst into gunfire is either a fool or a liar, and this fear can paralyze even the best-trained soldiers. But have the integrity to admit that. Admit that you don’t want to serve because you’re afraid, not because all those who do serve are your moral inferiors.
And if you managed to avoid military service by hiding behind conscientious objection, you could at the very least spend that same amount of time proving your bona fides with some actual work for peace in service of the humanity you claim to love. Conscientious objectors who truly yearn for peace and justice devise more credible methods than dropping molly and swaying back and forth to the mindless techno music before stumbling back to their orgy tents.
American Quakers risked life and limb moving slaves to freedom on the Underground Railroad. Hindus marched peacefully for nationhood against the blows of British batons. Martin Luther King consistently preached peace, even from his prison cell and even under increasing pressure from within his movement to advocate violence. Chicago pastors camp out not on the BLM-bannered Gold Coast but on the crime-ridden South Side to carry their message. Idealistic youth with a strong work ethic and an ability to stomach third-world food can join the Peace Corps.
The Nazi camps and Soviet gulags held their share of prisoners, both Jewish and Christian, who preached peace behind bars, but they did so with a far better understanding of the indisputable reality of evil than do our contemporary festivalgoer types.
Not every demonstration of your dedication to peace needs to involve a Sydney Cartonesque sacrifice for the greater good. But I doubt you’re fooling even yourselves with the preposterous assertion that your behavior represents anything other than a blatant excuse to gorge yourselves silly in the sty of hedonism and defer adulthood at the expense of your more duty-bound peers.
Conscientious objection can be admirable if done for the right reasons and with a full willingness to lead by example by exposing yourself to the danger against which you claim your refusal to fight. If you’re a firefighter, you need to go where the fires are, and if you’re preaching peace, you need to go where the violence is. Otherwise, it’s just a vain exercise in upper-class virtue signaling. Why wasn’t the “peace” festival held in Gaza? I think, even before the attack, they knew why.
I don’t know what Shani Louk’s justifications for her conscientious objection were. Maybe they came from a place of nobility, maybe not. Maybe her life story is one of actual and effective work toward peace, maybe not. I don’t know. But to paraphrase the idiom, Shani may not have been interested in Islamic supremacism, but Islamic supremacism was interested in Shani. Statements from Hamas verify that they don’t consider Shani and her friends to be civilians but active participants in the forces of “occupation.” Like their predecessors in the Hitler Youth, the terrorists of Hamas have been bred and raised for the sole purpose of committing genocide against Jews. If you conscientiously object to fighting them, you sanction their crimes, pure and simple.
To the extent that peace exists in Israel, it is solely due to the efforts of the IDF and Israeli intelligence services. Shani Louk’s mother claims she has evidence that her daughter is still alive and being held captive in Gaza. I pray that Shani is alive and well and that she is rescued and returned to her family by Israelis who don’t conscientiously object.
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