Tal Mitnick: Israeli man jailed for refusing to serve in military says he is prepared to go to prison again
An 18-year-old Israeli man, who was jailed for refusing to serve in the Israeli military, has told Sky News he is prepared to go to prison again.
Tal Mitnick says this is because, in his opinion, the war in Gaza is not the way to achieve peace with Palestinians.
Mr Mitnick is the first Israeli to be jailed as a conscientious objector in this war. He was released from an Israeli military prison on Friday after serving 30 days, said he has been labelled a traitor, but is sticking to his pacifist beliefs.
Speaking from near his home in Tel Aviv, he explained: “I think that the way the government and the regime are trying to frame this is that the objective of the war is to eliminate Hamas and to bring back the hostages.
“I feel like both of these objectives can’t be achieved with more and more fighting because like we saw, the way that we brought back the hostages at the end of the day was a deal where we exchanged prisoners for hostages.
“And the more and more fighting we see, that kills hostages, for example, the IDF [Israel Defence Forces] killed three hostages a couple of weeks ago because they thought that they were Palestinian. And the second objective of eliminating Hamas also will not be achieved with fighting.”
More than 130 hostages are thought to still be in Gaza and negotiations to free them have been moving slowly.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is coming under increased pressure to agree a new deal with Hamas, via mediators; relatives of hostages have pitched tents outside his residence in Jerusalem.
Describing conditions inside jail, Mr Mitnick said the prisoners are treated as soldiers.
“You wake up early, you always clean your cell, you have to stand still for long periods of time, and other people there are actual soldiers, most people have served and a lot of them are deserters of their position,” he said.
“Right now we’re seeing a real change in the sentencing to deserters of people’s position. People that deserted for three months, for example, to go and help their family or go take care of their siblings are being sentenced to six months in military prison.”
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Israeli soldiers operate in Gaza. Pic: Israel Defence Forces
IDF calls on him to report for duty
Mr Mitnick received a call from the IDF as we were speaking, instructing him to report for duty on Tuesday morning. He told us he would attend and refuse again.
“They think that sentencing me for 30 days will somehow make me feel threatened, but I don’t feel threatened. I stay with my beliefs, and I’ll refuse to serve once again,” he said.
“On Tuesday afternoon or evening. I’ll be sent back to prison for another sentence.
“I think to myself that I’ve gone through 30 [days].
“I can take another 30 and I can take another 30 after that because I know that a lot of people support me and that I’m succeeding in making a change and showing the world that there’s another way and that we can choose nonviolence over violence.
“I think that for 70 years we’ve been seeing the same policy of occupation, of siege and of Jewish supremacy between the river and the sea, and I can’t take part in it.
“The war has only strengthened my opinion. I feel like we need to stop the cycle of violence. Somehow it’s going to stop and I believe that every person should work to stop the violence from their own position.”
Israeli soldiers fire a mortar on the border of Gaza
Smoke rises in the distance during an Israeli ground operation in Khan Younis
‘Not wanting to serve is not a mental problem’
Mr Mitnick was not due to serve on the frontline. Instead, he had been earmarked for a position in military intelligence.
But he said he is a conscientious objector and doesn’t believe he should be punished for refusing to fight.
“I feel like not wanting to serve is not a mental problem and it shouldn’t be seen as such,” he said.
“I want to show that I don’t want to serve because of my beliefs and because of my values, and that is not a mental problem.”
Mesarvot, a group whose name means “objectors”, say it has dozens of supporters but the exact number of conscientious objectors like Mr Mitnick is not clear because many have not gone public or have not received letters of enlistment during this conflict.
When approached by Sky News, the IDF said they had no comment to add to the story.
At least 10 people have been killed after a fire broke out at a retirement home in northern Spain in the early hours of this morning, officials have said.
A further two people were seriously injured in the blaze at the residence in the town of Villafranca de Ebro in Zaragoza, according to the Spanish news website Diario Sur.
Two people remain in a critical condition following the blaze. Pic: AP
They remain in a critical condition, while several others received treatment for smoke inhalation.
Firefighters were alerted to the blaze at the residence – the Jardines de Villafranca – at 5am (4am UK time) on Friday.
Several residents were treated for smoke inhalation. Pic: AP
Those who were killed in the fire died from smoke inhalation, Spanish newspaper Heraldo reported.
The residence is home to 82 elderly residents.
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The blaze started in one of the rooms, Fernando Beltran, the national government’s top official in the region, told reporters.
All of the victims were elderly residents, he added.
Relatives wait for news outside the care home. Pic: AP
Fire crews, paramedics and police officers remain on site, said a spokesperson for the regional government of Aragon who confirmed the fatalities.
It took firefighters several hours to extinguish the blaze, they said.
The cause of the fire is unknown and is being investigated.
UN climate talks are “no longer fit for purpose” and should only be hosted by countries who are trying to give up fossil fuels, veterans of the process have said.
An open letter to the United Nations, signed by former UN chief Ban Ki-moon, made a dramatic intervention in the 29th COP climate summit, under way in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Frustration over petrostate hosts – following last year’s summit in UAE – as well as the influence of fossil fuel lobbyists, prohibitive costs, and slow progress have been mounting in recent years.
The letter acknowledges the strides COPs have made on ramping up climate policies.
“But it is now clear that the COP is no longer fit for purpose,” the authors said.
“Its current structure simply cannot deliver the change at exponential speed and scale, which is essential to ensure a safe climate landing for humanity.”
The letter’s 22 signatories also include former Ireland President Mary Robinson and Christiana Figueres, former head of the UN climate body (UNFCCC) that runs the annual COP summits.
It called for the process to be streamlined and for countries to be held accountable for their promises.
Sky News analysis has found only “marginal” progress has been made since the “historic” pledge from COP28 last year to transition away from fossil fuels.
Pic: AP Photo/Peter Dejong
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The letter also called for “strict eligibility criteria” for host countries to exclude those “who do not support the phase out/transition away from fossil energy”.
This year’s host country, petrostate Azerbaijan, has been engulfed in controversy.
Its authoritarian president Ilham Aliyev used his opening address to criticise western hypocrisy and praise oil and gas as a “gift” from God. His criticism of France, with whom relations have long been tense, drove the French minister to cancel a trip to the summit.
While the government and its COP team run separate operations, host countries are supposed to smooth over disagreements and find consensus between the almost 200 countries gathered.
COP presidencies are also nominating themselves to be climate leaders and throwing their own countries under the spotlight.
Azerbaijan is a small developing country that relies significantly on oil and gas revenues. But it has made slow progress on building out clean power – getting just 1.5% of its energy from clean sources – and led a harsh crackdown on critics in the run up to the COP.
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Azerbaijan team ‘optimistic’ about talks
In an interview with Sky News on Sunday, its lead negotiator Yalchin Rafiyev was unable to say whether Azerbaijan preferred to extract all its oil and gas or seek another, cleaner economic pathway – hard though that would be.
In a news conference yesterday, Mr Rafiyev said the president had been “quite clear” and he would not comment further.
“We have opened our doors to everybody,” he added.
Some diplomats here have hinted that Azerbaijan’s presidency team mean well but might be a little out of their depth. They have never been out in front at previous COPs, but they also only had a year to prepare for their turn hosting the mighty summit.
“My sense of this is that they’re a little underprepared, a little overwhelmed and a little bit short,” said one, speaking anonymously, as is customary for diplomats trying to maintain good relations.
“But I’m not sure that that’s politics. It might just be bandwidth and preparation and things like that.”
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Different regions in the world take turns to host a COP. This year it was up to Eastern Europe, but the selection process took longer than usual due to tensions over Russia’s war in Ukraine and between Azerbaijan and rival Armenia.
Achim Steiner of the UN Development Programme, called it “troubling” that some countries face questions over their host roles.
“Are there countries that are by definition good hosts and others are bad hosts?” he asked.
“In the United Nations, we maintain the principle of every nation, first of all, should have a right to be heard.
“Labels are not always the fairest way of describing a nation. Some of the largest oil producers have hosted this COP in the past, and seemingly this seemed to be a perfectly acceptable phenomenon.”
COP stands for “conference of the parties” and refers to countries (“parties”) who have signed the underlying climate treaty.
Azerbaijan’s COP29 team and the UN’s climate body have been contacted with a request to comment.
World
Body pulled from mine after police cut off supplies to ‘smoke out’ thousands of illegal miners
A body has been recovered from a South African mine after police cut off basic supplies in an effort to force around 4,000 illegal miners to resurface.
The body has emerged from the closed gold mine in the northwest town of Stilfontein a day after South Africa’s government said it would not help the illegal miners.
Around 20 people have surfaced from the mineshaft this week as police wait nearby to arrest all those appearing from underground.
It comes a day after a cabinet minister said the government was trying to “smoke them [the miners] out”.
The move is part of the police’s “Close the Hole” operation, whereby officers cut off supplies of food, water and other basic necessities to get those who have entered illegally to come out.
Local reports suggest the supply routes were cut off at the mine around two months ago, with relatives of the miners seen in the area as the stand-off continues.
Relatives of miners and community members wait at the mine shaft. Pic: AP
A decomposed body was brought up on Thursday, with pathologists on the scene, police spokesperson Athlenda Mathe said.
It comes after South African cabinet minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni told reporters on Wednesday that the government would not send any help to the illegal miners, known in the country as zama zamas, because they are involved in a criminal act.
“We are not sending help to criminals. We are going to smoke them out. They will come out. Criminals are not to be helped; criminals are to be prosecuted. We didn’t send them there,” Ms Ntshavheni said.
An aerial view of a mineshaft. Pic: AP
Senior police and defence officials are expected to visit the area on Friday to “reinforce the government’s commitment to bringing this operation to a safe and lawful conclusion”, according to a media advisory from the police.
In the last few weeks, over 1,000 miners have surfaced at various mines in South Africa’s North West province, where police have cut off supplies.
Many of the miners were reported to be weak, hungry and sickly after going for weeks without basic supplies.
Illegal mining remains common in South Africa’s old gold-mining areas, with miners going into closed shafts to dig for any possible remaining deposits.
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Relatives of miners and community members wait near the mine shaft. Pic: AP
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The illegal miners are often from neighbouring countries, and police say the illegal operations involve larger syndicates that employ the miners.
Their presence in closed mines has also created problems with nearby communities, which complain that the illegal miners commit crimes ranging from robberies to rape.
Illegal mining groups are known to be heavily armed and disputes between rival groups sometimes result in fatal confrontations.
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