The year is coming to a close and Refusal Solidarity Network would like to thank you for standing with us in trying times, helping us bring moments of hope to the fore when darkness is the norm. This year has been marked by world-destroying tragedies – the genocide in Gaza – and moments of hope for a new world puncturing the bleak reality. With your support, over the last several months we’ve managed to grow a refuser movement numbering in the hundreds with the power to stop the genocide and bring about a different reality between the river and the sea.

This mass refusal wave – the likes of which we haven’t seen in twenty years, prompting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to threaten refusers with “harsh consequences” – was made possible by your support. Your backing allows us to provide logistical support and organizational capacity-building for spontaneous refuser groups, turning moments of courage into sustained movements with real power.

This last year was one marked by intense contradiction and hardship. The space for action has been both severely delineated yet simultaneously expanded in contradictory ways. No funding exists in Israel for organizations challenging the Israeli war machine. And since October 7th, European funds have also largely pulled their once generous support for several anti-war groups that we support. Some of our partners in the refusal movement, helping hundreds of Israeli refusers, are now facing a financial crisis amid the war.

But global support for our movement, from ordinary people in solidarity with our struggle and in support of the Palestinian people, has only grown. With your help, our network continues to expand every day across the globe, with new supporters joining Refusal Solidarity Network daily. On the ground here in Israel-Palestine, we are witnessing a critical shift among swaths of the Israeli public.

We are working with hundreds of Israeli reservists who have refused or are threatening to refuse service, and our movement is only growing as more Israelis realize they cannot fake normalcy amid a genocide mere kilometers away. As our movement grows, so do our plans: our refuser movement has unprecedented actions in the works for the next few months. We still need to raise $25,000 to realize our plans to continue supporting the increasing number of refusers. Please help us support the refusers so we can end the genocide in Gaza.

We have come a long way over the past year due to your support. Your donations, words of support and willingness to spread our message among your communities sustains us and gives our work meaning. With you alongside us, we are carrying on this important work even as suppression is at an all-time high: funding is being pulled across the board while the state threatens us.

But these tactics remind us that our movement is effective, and that the powers that be know we have the power to stop the war and demilitarize [our] society. We are stronger together, and we remain steadfast in our struggle with the world behind us. A war on Palestine, or on anyone in the world, is a war on all of us.

I want to thank you personally […] for all of your support this year for our movement. If you still would like to support the refusers this year, it is still possible via this link. I wish you a happy new year and hope for a better year of peace and justice for Palestinians and Israelis.

In solidarity,

Mattan Helman
Director
Refuser Solidarity Network

(Taken from an email sent to me by the Refuser Solidarity Network. Emphasis original.)