I grew up in a leftist home, a moderate one I think, and I became very political when I was a teenager. I participated in all sorts of political movements. I feel it's interesting how views very, very slowly change, because when I was in the army I spent a year of my life in the Occupied Territories, as a soldier, as a fighter, during the first intifada. I opposed it, but it didn't bother me so much, I was one of those who felt that it was better that I was doing it than somebody else.
Ofer Shinar
1
Israeli Military Service
Where are you from and how did you get involved in the peace work you are doing?
I grew up in a leftist home, a moderate one I think, and I became very political when I was a teenager. I participated in all sorts of political movements. I feel it's interesting how views very, very slowly change, because when I was in the army I spent a year of my life in the Occupied Territories,as a soldier, as a fighter, during the first intifada. I opposed it, but it didn't bother me so much, I was one of those who felt that it was better that I was doing it than somebody else. Then I went to the university. I think that the thing that really changed me was studying law in Tel Aviv University, which was, and still is a very politically conscious faculty. The studies are oriented toward social values and the meaning, the hidden meanings of the law. Critical Legal Studies is very prevalent there. It helped me a lot to see things differently, and I also did a degree in Philosophy. So it was very important for me to understand things and to conceptualize things that I saw before. I ended up doing human rights work as a student at the Human Rights clinic at Tel Aviv University Law Faculty. Clinics are now very common in the States because you don't have internships so as a student you usually want to 'jump on the bandwagon' because it's great to do some actual work while still at law school. Here [in Israel] it wasn't so common in my day. Now it's much more common here; you have a yearlong internship after your studies in order to become a lawyer. I was one of the first students to experience that because Tel Aviv University was one of the first places where clinical legal education started, and it was very important for me. After I finished my studies and internship in a well-established commercial law firm, I was offered a job as a clinician in Tel Aviv University. By some miracle I ended up with the job. I had no experience, but it was a very good schooling experience for me as a young lawyer. I had to teach human rights, so in a way it forced me to think hard about our ability to change society as members of the legal profession. That was the main thing we discussed, how we, as students, as lawyers, can change things, and what's the impact of law, of legal work, what are the limits of what we can do? I was very interested in what's called "rebellious lawyering." It's a way of thinking that demonstrates that lawyers can do much more than they are "supposed" to do, and they can use their tools in different ways to promote change.