The story of Nathan Blanc as told in The Guardian on Easter Monday is one of those news items the world really needs every once in a while.
He is about to go to military prison for the 8th time as a conscientious objector.
What strikes us about the young man is a level-headedness so genuine that it will make the stomach of every middle aged male a little queasy.
We repeat what we have said before: If you are honest with yourself, you will cop to having taken the easy way out one or more times in your life.
Nathan does not claim pacifist status under Israeli law because he does not believe he is what Christians would call a saint. Which would be the kind of level of pacifist thinking required to obtain status.
Judging by how panels in several countries used to ascertain the true beliefs of conscientious objectors, the friendly panel members would ask questions like: imagine you are walking in a park at night with your girlfriend and a gang encircles you and threatens to rape and kill your girl. You happen to have a gun on you. What would you do?
As in the few previously reported similar cases, reactions run the whole gamut of arguments, from plain old traitor to something along the lines of "I understand, but you are delegitimizing the defense forces".
In our view, it is one of the great mental leaps backwards that we humans are so good at: there is one little guy who would love to do national service but does not claim the equivalent of sainthood - and this one individual is all of a sudden attributed the superpower of being able to delegitimize one of the best fighting forces on the planet.
At age 19, Nathan has life ahead of him. We wish him luck.
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