Its simply chilling name has a distinct ring of George Orwell, but when the army of the one of the world's most military-conscious nations creates a conscience committee, nothing is that simple.
It has been eight years since the IDF conscience committee was set up. But the need for a such a body has deepened dramatically amid the moral complexities of the war in the territories and a consequent steep rise in the awareness of the pilots, elite commandos, grunts and draftees who have come forward - some quietly, some openly - to say that hell no, they won't go. Although pacifism and refusal to serve have been in evidence since Israel was born in war in 1948, the issue has always been of extreme sensitivity in a country in which formally universal military service has left an indelible mark on the development of language and culture, on the conduct of commerce, and on the vocabulary and practice of statecraft.
The issue came to the fore once again this week, as the army continued to struggle in myriad ways with its relationship to its "sarbanim," a term ill-rendered into English as "refuseniks."
Refusal to serve, and attitudes toward those who refuse, have long functioned as a sensitive barometer of Israeli society as a whole. When Yesh Gvul (There is a Limit), a movement of sarbanim, arose during then-defense minister Ariel Sharon's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, those who refused to fight in protest over the controversial war were widely condemned as traitors, their manhood was questioned, and their act was interpreted as granting aid, comfort and encouragement to Israel's enemies.
Clearly, in the interim, and especially in the three years of the war in the territories, something has changed.
"When you speak to the young, you see that for them, refusal has become an option," says Haaretz commentator Lily Galili. "This one wants to be a pilot, and this one wants to refuse. It is nearly the same level of choice - either this or that.
"This legitimacy seen in the act of refusal is something new in Israeli society," Galili says.
If the climate has changed, many of the arguments against refusal have not. As in 1982, when members of Peace Now took a "serve now, protest later" position that included reserve duty in Lebanon interspersed with participation in anti-war demonstrations at home, many leftists oppose refusal on principle.
Their arguments are many, including the strong impact that individual officers and soldiers have on the moral behavior of the army as a whole, especially in their contact with, and treatment of, Palestinian civilians.
They note that in many areas of the territories, the IDF effectively operates as an amalgam of countless local militias, whose behavior can be exemplary or execrable, depending on the attitudes and actions of on-site commanders and troops.
Leftist opponents of refusal have also voiced fears that if the government undertakes wholesale evacuations of settlements in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, right-wing soldiers could embrace refusal as well, declaring their opposition to participating in any action aimed at harming settlements.
Apart from Arab legislators, only two leftist Knesset members have gone on record as supporting refusal: Zehava Gal-On and Roman Bronfman, both of Meretz.
At the same time, the wider left, led by academics and some political activists, as well as the public at large, have softened their former blanket opposition to refusal. "A majority still opposes refusal, but there has begun to be a recognition of a democratic right to refuse, a difference in nuance, but a difference nonetheless," says Galili.
"People say that they view the phenomenon of refusal as dangerous, but that they understand that the right exists in a democratic society."
That right has increasingly been put to the test.
At the outset of the intifada, when Ehud Barak's Labor government broke historical precedent by sending battle tanks and helicopter gunships to attack Palestinian targets in the West Bank and Gaza, there was a sharp rise in the number of Israelis declaring their refusal to serve in the territories.
It has been argued that the refusal movement was later blunted by the spate of suicide bombings aimed at the hearts of cities in Israel proper.
But the course of refusal can more accurately be described as cyclical, with a number of peaks, such as during the 2002 Defensive Shield operation in the West Bank, Galili observes.
More recently, the issues raised by refusal, and the sensitivity to its possible consequences, riveted the Jewish state when 27 Israel Air Force pilots signed a letter of protest declaring that they would no longer participate in targeted assassinations. The air strikes, while directed at terror warlords, have claimed large numbers of Palestinian civilian casualties.
The army said this week that of the 27 pilots, 15 no longer do reserve duty, two or three have retracted their public declarations, and the remainder have been dismissed from reserve duty.
In late December, 13 reserve soldiers and officers in the army's ultra-prestigious Sayeret Matkal unit signed a letter declaring their refusal to serve in the territories.
"We say to you today, we will no longer give our hands to the oppressive reign in the territories and the denial of human rights to millions of Palestinians," read the letter addressed to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, "and we will no longer serve as a defensive shield for the settlement enterprise."
On Wednesday, Yoni Ben-Artzi, convicted of refusing an order to enlist in the IDF, was summoned to appear for a fourth time before the conscience committee, charged by the army with determining the sincerity of potential conscripts who refuse to serve on the grounds of pacifism.
Formally, Israeli law as interpreted by Supreme Court decisions recognizes across-the-board pacifism as grounds for refusing army service. The conscience committee has been little inclined to accept claims of pacifism as genuine, however. In eight years, out of some 180 applicants to the committee, only six have been recognized as pacifists.
Although the great majority of conscience hearings have been held without public notice, the Ben-Artzi case has received particular attention, as the defendant's aunt is Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's wife, Sara.
The military tribunal that convicted Ben-Artzi included in its ruling a rare and acrid criticism of the conscience committee, which had accepted a military prosecutor's description of Ben-Artzi as having "feigned pacifism."
A year ago, in response to criticism by the High Court of Justice, a civilian - a philosopher by profession - was added to the formerly all-military panel.
Much more common than youths who declare themselves pacifists are those who choose selective refusal. These fall into two general categories. The first are those who are willing to serve in the army, but refuse to serve in the territories. The second refuse to be conscripted at all unless and until the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza comes to an end.
The army this week ordered that five youths in the latter category, who have served more than a year in military prisons, be transferred to a civilian prison, a step that their lawyers and parents have hotly contested, disputing the army's claims that the sarbanim are dangerous, and arguing instead that it is the civilian jail that holds the most danger.
By far the most widespread form of the phenomenon is entirely unrecognized by army statistics, Galili says. This is "gray refusal," in which sarbanim quietly find means within the army to serve as they choose. This category may include transfers or changes of role within the IDF, or military discharges or exemptions for youths and reservists declared "inappropriate for service."
IDF Major General Gil Regev, head of the army's personnel division, sparked controversy this week when he testified before a Knesset committee on the issue of refusal, which he acknowleged had spread over the past three years.
Taking as his unit of measure the number of soldiers jailed for refusal, Regev said Tuesday that there had been a marked drop in refusal over the past year. In 2002, 100 reservists and 29 officers were sentenced to jail terms for refusing to serve in the territories.
Last year, by contrast, only 18 reserve officers and eight officers did jail time for comparable refusal, Regev said.
The figures were quickly and hotly disputed, however, in part because they did not reflect the fact, acknowledged by Regev, that many individual soldiers have discreetly received consent from their commanders to be relieved of specific duties or transferred away from duty in the territories.
The Yesh Gvul organization, which backs sarbanim, countered that Regev's figures were plain wrong. According to the group, the army jailed a total of 76 people, 11 of them officers.
The group also said that said that 79 soldiers and 18 officers had added their names to the Courage to Refuse [service in the territories] letter in 2003, and that the number of high-school sarbanim had risen to 500.
Has the phenomenon of refusal had a substantive impact on Israeli policymaking, and of the conduct of the war and the occupation?
The question is a difficult one to answer definitively. However, Galili states, "Over the recent period, we have all taken notice that there have been fewer 'liquidations' [assassination missions] launched by the air force.
"Under no circumstances can I state a cause-and-effect relationship as a result of the pilots' letter, but in practice there has been a drop."
=========
* [Ed. Note: The first wave of political refusnics was initiated with the famous "Sminists' letter" (high school 12th graders) at the early 70s. initiated by the anti Zionist left. As the Communist Party put pressure on their youth - only one member of the mainly Libertarian Communist Matspen refused service and after 9 months of Jail time was granted the substitutional service as Hospital clerk.
Ferment and selective refusal of service in the Lebanon during the early 80s was mainly of the Zionist left and continued with low intensity till the last Intifada started 3+ years ago.
The last wave started with a new "Sminists' letter" - initiated by young anarchist teens who were the first to be arrested for total refusal for few months each till they were exempted from service.
The wave intensified and was joined by less radicals and peaked by the court martial of the five teens sentenced lately for an additional year in jail. The less radical Zionists both in the political sphere and reservists were radicalized at the last two years and now even two MPs of the Zionist left support the refusnics in public.]
Thursday, February 5, 2004
Wednesday, January 28, 2004
Israe, One Struggle*, LEFT, RIGHT, TURN BACK! 28/01/04
Before leftist activists take to the streets with vigils against the settlements or the oppression of the Palestinians, and in order for them to even be able to formulate a real alternative to the Apartheid policies, massive land theft and low-profile transfer which we are witnessing these days, they must first identify the social conditions that enable the current right wing government to imprison, starve, wound and kill the Palestinian people. The left must also recognize and understand its' own role in creating and prolonging these conditions.
Contrary to the political conditions which make current policies possible (a simple arithmetic majority in the Israeli parliament), social conditions have much stronger, deeper roots (historical, cultural), and enjoy an equally strong hold within the left as they do within the right.
These conditions are interconnected and weaved with one another, however it is possible to isolate two main ones, which are at the heart of the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians: Zionism and Militarism.
The Israeli left cannot become an obstacle for the brutality of Ariel Sharon's government (or Barak, or Netanyahu or Rabin before him), because its' hands are tied in blind obedience to the demands, needs and to the very viewpoint of the Israeli army. The leftist camp declares it does not believe in a military solution to the conflict, but with the same breath declares also that it intends to join the army and give it full, unconditional support, no matter what. Thus, in its' willingness to always and as a matter of principle hand itself over to military service - the left neutralizes its' own potential to halt the Militaristic carnage. If Israeli prime ministers throughout history, from both the left and the right, hadn't known that the army is a sacred "apolitical" tool at their disposal, enjoying sweeping popular support, they would not have been able to depend on it so readily and easily, and one can assume they would have had to stick more rigidly to the road of negotiation and true diplomatic solutions.
We ask, what credibility is there for people who realize that military force is not a solution, and who witness today the high, ever-growing number of victims and the vast destruction that the attempts to implement it bring, and yet are still willing (as well as demand of others) to serve in the army: to become cogs in the very same machine that creates and perpetrates these ill-fated attempts?
A good example of the hegemony of Militarism in Israel is that group of people labeled "Refusniks". As a whole, members of this group are not conscientious objectors in the true meaning of the term, as it is in the rest of the world, meaning people who do not believe in war and combat. The "Refusniks" merely refuse to serve in the occupied territories. They are ripe with the disease of Militarism, since they do not question, not even for a second, the legitimacy of the Israeli "defense" force, and do not challenge the legitimacy of war as a means to solve national conflicts. They are willing to serve the war machinery, to kill and be killed by command, as long as they, personally, do not have to march their little feet across this or that geographic line (in this case the "green line": Israel's border prior to the 1967 war and its' subsequent occupational misadventure).
The rest of the left, institutions such as "Peace Now" and "Meretz", are even more captivated than the "Refusniks" by that old myth according to which joining the Israeli army is not a political act or statement. The uniform and unit pride, like the baton, the rifle and the tank, are not "neutral".
Lending a hand to any and all of these means actively supporting the suffering, wreckage and death they sow among non-Jewish populations. For the more than two thousand Palestinians killed since the beginning of the El-Aqsa Intifada alone, for their families and for the tens of thousands injured, dispossessed and the homeless "our forces" have created - for them there is no comfort in the fact that the soldiers who inflicted this upon them did not do it out of "malice". It does not make an ounce of difference whether those who are crushing their cities under armored bulldozers, imprisoning them in their homes at gunpoint for weeks and dropping bombs on them from the sky, are "right wingers" or "leftists", racists or humanists, believe in military solutions or don't. In the talk-shows on our TV screens the difference might seem significant, but if it was us standing in the shoes of the people in the occupied territories, we would no doubt finally understand the simple fact that there is, in all honesty, no difference at all.
The second social condition paralyzing the leftist camp from rising up against the killing, along with the sanctity of the IDF, is Zionism.
In the official stance and even slogans of mainstream Zionist leftists, one can detect a certain thesis: "Let us pull out of the occupied territories and all will be well" says a student group, "Leave the territories, return to our senses" exclaims the Peace Coalition, and so forth. The thesis is that the military conquest and occupation of the left bank and the Gaza strip were and still are something "alien" to the state of Israel, a kind of isolated historical "mistake" committed in the past, for reasons supposedly unrelated to the nature and essence of Zionism, and if we were only to pull out of them then everything would fall into place and back to normal. The truth, however, is not that simple.
Long before the occupation of the Palestinian territories in 1967 (almost twenty years before), in what the Zionists call "The War Of Independence" and the Palestinian people call "El Nakba" (The Disaster), close to 500 Palestinian villages were destroyed by Zionist armed forces (villages which today have no trace of existence in our current geographic or political landscape), and more than half the Palestinian people were expelled from the territory that became the state of Israel (we are talking about 750,000 people who were torn out of their lands and homes, whether directly by forceful transfer or by threats and the spread of fear through various massacres perpetrated by the Zionist side - of which Deir Yassin is the most famous, although not the only one or most terrible).
As long as the left continues to see the occupation of the Palestinian territories as some isolated historical mistake - the root of the problem instead of another one of its' symptoms - it ignores (quite conveniently) the most crucial chapter of the Israeli-Arab conflict, which is the nature of the establishment of the "Jewish state": at the expense of the Palestinian people who lived here until the arrival of the Zionist movement. That is why the Zionist left fails to comprehend, just as Itzhak Rabin and Ehud Barak failed to comprehend in the Oslo and Camp David accords, the viewpoints and demands of the Palestinian side, which "insisted" on full control of the west bank and the Gaza strip (only 22 percent of Palestinian territory during British mandatorial rule). He who remains blind to this - and this includes of course the Zionist left which enthusiastically supported these accords - cannot see that for the Palestinians, the demand of statehood over the aforementioned 22 percent meant that they were willing to give up 78 percent of the land from which they were expelled and exiled, and was in fact a historical compromise.
The left, the so-called "peace" camp, will never be able to establish a real, lasting peace, as long as it denies the responsibility of Zionism in the displacement of the Palestinian people from their land, and as long as it refuses to understand that a country in which more than a fifth of the population is not Jewish cannot be both Zionist (a "Jewish state") and truly democratic. The best that the Zionist left can afford itself is a "military democracy" with second class citizens (Palestinian, Bedouin, Druze and foreign workers) and "generous offerings" a la Barak or a "recognition of a Palestinian State" a la Sharon, which mean nothing but the establishment of poor Palestinian ghettos, separated and devoid of hope, to become easy dumping grounds for products, sweatshop infrastructures and a source of cheap labor for Israeli industries - Shimon Peres' "New Middle East". Indeed, it is not the least surprising that from 1993 (the beginning of the so-called "peace process") until today, the situation of the Palestinian people has only gotten worse (and the number of settlers on their lands has doubled!).
The only thing that a left which insists on staying inside the parameters of Militarism and Zionism and their historical narrative can offer Palestinians is peace "from a position of superiority", hoping all the while that "Gaza will sink into the sea", as its' beloved martyr Rabin once put it (that same man of peace who ordered the breaking of arms and legs of innocent Palestinians as a determent measure). The headline of the latest left wing mass demonstration says it all: "Get out of the territories, for Israel's sake!" - the other side does not exist, its' demands and needs are irrelevant, and only the Jewish dead are taken into account.
The Zionist left is not capable of rising above its' inherent limitations. Its' political role is reduced to merely playing "good cop" to the "bad cop" of Ariel Sharon and the fascist generals who will follow in his footsteps. It's role is to assess damage control, put a more gentle face on Apartheid policies. It's role is to bomb, kill, destroy, discriminate - only slightly less. To shoot and shed tears at the same time, with drawings of doves, flowers and peace chants in the background. The absolute most it can do is try to impose a "peace agreement" like the ones the right wing and the USA are currently trying to impose: a peace agreement which brings no "peace" and no "agreement", and will be forced under military threat on Arafat, Abu Mazen or any other Palestinian leader willing to sell his people in exchange for the chance to be a corrupt, brutal despot in one giant prison disguised as a state.
The Zionist left is constantly competing with the right wing: which one carries more national flags during its' events, which one sings the national anthem louder, which one is harsher in its' condemnation of “draft dodgers”...
We wish to convey the message that there is no longer a need to compete. You, the left, have become its' equal. The common ground you share - Militarism and Zionism - is stronger and more meaningful than all those cosmetic differences separating between you. The Palestinian people, on whom our fathers, brothers and sons are committing war crimes via the terrorist organization known as the IDF, sure as hell can’t tell the difference.
=================================
* Copied from the web page of the Israely anarchist group Maavak Ehad (One Struggle in Hebrew)
http://www.onestruggle.org/leftright.htm
Contrary to the political conditions which make current policies possible (a simple arithmetic majority in the Israeli parliament), social conditions have much stronger, deeper roots (historical, cultural), and enjoy an equally strong hold within the left as they do within the right.
These conditions are interconnected and weaved with one another, however it is possible to isolate two main ones, which are at the heart of the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians: Zionism and Militarism.
The Israeli left cannot become an obstacle for the brutality of Ariel Sharon's government (or Barak, or Netanyahu or Rabin before him), because its' hands are tied in blind obedience to the demands, needs and to the very viewpoint of the Israeli army. The leftist camp declares it does not believe in a military solution to the conflict, but with the same breath declares also that it intends to join the army and give it full, unconditional support, no matter what. Thus, in its' willingness to always and as a matter of principle hand itself over to military service - the left neutralizes its' own potential to halt the Militaristic carnage. If Israeli prime ministers throughout history, from both the left and the right, hadn't known that the army is a sacred "apolitical" tool at their disposal, enjoying sweeping popular support, they would not have been able to depend on it so readily and easily, and one can assume they would have had to stick more rigidly to the road of negotiation and true diplomatic solutions.
We ask, what credibility is there for people who realize that military force is not a solution, and who witness today the high, ever-growing number of victims and the vast destruction that the attempts to implement it bring, and yet are still willing (as well as demand of others) to serve in the army: to become cogs in the very same machine that creates and perpetrates these ill-fated attempts?
A good example of the hegemony of Militarism in Israel is that group of people labeled "Refusniks". As a whole, members of this group are not conscientious objectors in the true meaning of the term, as it is in the rest of the world, meaning people who do not believe in war and combat. The "Refusniks" merely refuse to serve in the occupied territories. They are ripe with the disease of Militarism, since they do not question, not even for a second, the legitimacy of the Israeli "defense" force, and do not challenge the legitimacy of war as a means to solve national conflicts. They are willing to serve the war machinery, to kill and be killed by command, as long as they, personally, do not have to march their little feet across this or that geographic line (in this case the "green line": Israel's border prior to the 1967 war and its' subsequent occupational misadventure).
The rest of the left, institutions such as "Peace Now" and "Meretz", are even more captivated than the "Refusniks" by that old myth according to which joining the Israeli army is not a political act or statement. The uniform and unit pride, like the baton, the rifle and the tank, are not "neutral".
Lending a hand to any and all of these means actively supporting the suffering, wreckage and death they sow among non-Jewish populations. For the more than two thousand Palestinians killed since the beginning of the El-Aqsa Intifada alone, for their families and for the tens of thousands injured, dispossessed and the homeless "our forces" have created - for them there is no comfort in the fact that the soldiers who inflicted this upon them did not do it out of "malice". It does not make an ounce of difference whether those who are crushing their cities under armored bulldozers, imprisoning them in their homes at gunpoint for weeks and dropping bombs on them from the sky, are "right wingers" or "leftists", racists or humanists, believe in military solutions or don't. In the talk-shows on our TV screens the difference might seem significant, but if it was us standing in the shoes of the people in the occupied territories, we would no doubt finally understand the simple fact that there is, in all honesty, no difference at all.
The second social condition paralyzing the leftist camp from rising up against the killing, along with the sanctity of the IDF, is Zionism.
In the official stance and even slogans of mainstream Zionist leftists, one can detect a certain thesis: "Let us pull out of the occupied territories and all will be well" says a student group, "Leave the territories, return to our senses" exclaims the Peace Coalition, and so forth. The thesis is that the military conquest and occupation of the left bank and the Gaza strip were and still are something "alien" to the state of Israel, a kind of isolated historical "mistake" committed in the past, for reasons supposedly unrelated to the nature and essence of Zionism, and if we were only to pull out of them then everything would fall into place and back to normal. The truth, however, is not that simple.
Long before the occupation of the Palestinian territories in 1967 (almost twenty years before), in what the Zionists call "The War Of Independence" and the Palestinian people call "El Nakba" (The Disaster), close to 500 Palestinian villages were destroyed by Zionist armed forces (villages which today have no trace of existence in our current geographic or political landscape), and more than half the Palestinian people were expelled from the territory that became the state of Israel (we are talking about 750,000 people who were torn out of their lands and homes, whether directly by forceful transfer or by threats and the spread of fear through various massacres perpetrated by the Zionist side - of which Deir Yassin is the most famous, although not the only one or most terrible).
As long as the left continues to see the occupation of the Palestinian territories as some isolated historical mistake - the root of the problem instead of another one of its' symptoms - it ignores (quite conveniently) the most crucial chapter of the Israeli-Arab conflict, which is the nature of the establishment of the "Jewish state": at the expense of the Palestinian people who lived here until the arrival of the Zionist movement. That is why the Zionist left fails to comprehend, just as Itzhak Rabin and Ehud Barak failed to comprehend in the Oslo and Camp David accords, the viewpoints and demands of the Palestinian side, which "insisted" on full control of the west bank and the Gaza strip (only 22 percent of Palestinian territory during British mandatorial rule). He who remains blind to this - and this includes of course the Zionist left which enthusiastically supported these accords - cannot see that for the Palestinians, the demand of statehood over the aforementioned 22 percent meant that they were willing to give up 78 percent of the land from which they were expelled and exiled, and was in fact a historical compromise.
The left, the so-called "peace" camp, will never be able to establish a real, lasting peace, as long as it denies the responsibility of Zionism in the displacement of the Palestinian people from their land, and as long as it refuses to understand that a country in which more than a fifth of the population is not Jewish cannot be both Zionist (a "Jewish state") and truly democratic. The best that the Zionist left can afford itself is a "military democracy" with second class citizens (Palestinian, Bedouin, Druze and foreign workers) and "generous offerings" a la Barak or a "recognition of a Palestinian State" a la Sharon, which mean nothing but the establishment of poor Palestinian ghettos, separated and devoid of hope, to become easy dumping grounds for products, sweatshop infrastructures and a source of cheap labor for Israeli industries - Shimon Peres' "New Middle East". Indeed, it is not the least surprising that from 1993 (the beginning of the so-called "peace process") until today, the situation of the Palestinian people has only gotten worse (and the number of settlers on their lands has doubled!).
The only thing that a left which insists on staying inside the parameters of Militarism and Zionism and their historical narrative can offer Palestinians is peace "from a position of superiority", hoping all the while that "Gaza will sink into the sea", as its' beloved martyr Rabin once put it (that same man of peace who ordered the breaking of arms and legs of innocent Palestinians as a determent measure). The headline of the latest left wing mass demonstration says it all: "Get out of the territories, for Israel's sake!" - the other side does not exist, its' demands and needs are irrelevant, and only the Jewish dead are taken into account.
The Zionist left is not capable of rising above its' inherent limitations. Its' political role is reduced to merely playing "good cop" to the "bad cop" of Ariel Sharon and the fascist generals who will follow in his footsteps. It's role is to assess damage control, put a more gentle face on Apartheid policies. It's role is to bomb, kill, destroy, discriminate - only slightly less. To shoot and shed tears at the same time, with drawings of doves, flowers and peace chants in the background. The absolute most it can do is try to impose a "peace agreement" like the ones the right wing and the USA are currently trying to impose: a peace agreement which brings no "peace" and no "agreement", and will be forced under military threat on Arafat, Abu Mazen or any other Palestinian leader willing to sell his people in exchange for the chance to be a corrupt, brutal despot in one giant prison disguised as a state.
The Zionist left is constantly competing with the right wing: which one carries more national flags during its' events, which one sings the national anthem louder, which one is harsher in its' condemnation of “draft dodgers”...
We wish to convey the message that there is no longer a need to compete. You, the left, have become its' equal. The common ground you share - Militarism and Zionism - is stronger and more meaningful than all those cosmetic differences separating between you. The Palestinian people, on whom our fathers, brothers and sons are committing war crimes via the terrorist organization known as the IDF, sure as hell can’t tell the difference.
=================================
* Copied from the web page of the Israely anarchist group Maavak Ehad (One Struggle in Hebrew)
http://www.onestruggle.org/leftright.htm
Monday, January 26, 2004
Israel, Tel-Aviv, benefit party for the iniative against the apartheid wall* 26/01/04
Greetings, From: mulan on 2nd of febuary, a benefit event will take place in the kosmonaut club, hamehoga st 4 at 20:30. all the income from the evening will go for the continuation of direct actions againset the apartheid wall. the evening will contain many shows from different artists, will have t shirts stands, olive oil, books and more.
sounds great ? and very exciting no? sounds like its going to be hell of a night eh? well yeah, but its up to all of us to make this evening work so we are inviting you to come to salon mazal (simta almonit 3 street) on wedensday the 28th at 18:00 so u can participate in the preparations for the evening so you can step forward and use your talent and help make this evening work, because we need money to pay our phone bills.
we need people to technical work, people to stand at the door, to get the place ready, to put up posters, give out flyers and many other nice little things that need to be done. so be there or be square!
FOR MORE DETAILS AND TIPS FOR DRESS PARTIES:
RONEN: 053-561580
FRANCHESKA:
ANAT:
===========================
*[Ed. Note: Anarchists and others]
sounds great ? and very exciting no? sounds like its going to be hell of a night eh? well yeah, but its up to all of us to make this evening work so we are inviting you to come to salon mazal (simta almonit 3 street) on wedensday the 28th at 18:00 so u can participate in the preparations for the evening so you can step forward and use your talent and help make this evening work, because we need money to pay our phone bills.
we need people to technical work, people to stand at the door, to get the place ready, to put up posters, give out flyers and many other nice little things that need to be done. so be there or be square!
FOR MORE DETAILS AND TIPS FOR DRESS PARTIES:
RONEN: 053-561580
FRANCHESKA:
ANAT:
===========================
*[Ed. Note: Anarchists and others]
Thursday, January 15, 2004
Israel-Palestine, Update from Budrus 15.1.04
Hi everyone, Report from people in Budrus is that today a great demonstration was held, with a van of Israelis* attending. Despite the attempts of the Occupation Forces to crush the resistance by arresting the Palestinian activists, the people went down to the bulldozed land and planted about six small olive trees and two big ones. Some Israeli and Arabic media were there. The families of Ayed and Na'eem are holding up okay. LAWYERS: Kate from IWPS and Jonathan from the Israeli Anarchists have, in consultation with the family, been trying to get a good lawyer. From talks with lawyers today, it seems that at least $1000 (US) will be needed. Israelis who want to donate could call Jonathan on xxxxxxxxxx. ISM please can you put this appeal out on your list. There are ISM'ers who were in Budrus but are now back in their countries who might want to donate. I could not reach Huwaida today but suggest that internationals who can contribute any money should call her on xxxxxxxxxxxx.
DEMONSTRATION AT OFER PRISON: Various people today were discussing holding a demonstration at Ofer Military Prison as soon as possible. Can the Israeli Anarchists and ISM figure out what is a suitable date for you and then we can work together on arranging it.
PHONE CALLS are needed demanding the release of all the Budrus prisoners:
Ofer Prison 02 5884202 or 02 5884348
Minister of Justice, Yosef Lapid
Phone: 02-646-6527
Fax: 02-628-5438
Military Attorney General, Brig. General Menahem Finkelstein
Fax: 03-569-4370
==============================
*[Ed. Note: The Anarchists Against The Wall initiative]
DEMONSTRATION AT OFER PRISON: Various people today were discussing holding a demonstration at Ofer Military Prison as soon as possible. Can the Israeli Anarchists and ISM figure out what is a suitable date for you and then we can work together on arranging it.
PHONE CALLS are needed demanding the release of all the Budrus prisoners:
Ofer Prison 02 5884202 or 02 5884348
Minister of Justice, Yosef Lapid
Phone: 02-646-6527
Fax: 02-628-5438
Military Attorney General, Brig. General Menahem Finkelstein
Fax: 03-569-4370
==============================
*[Ed. Note: The Anarchists Against The Wall initiative]
Monday, January 5, 2004
Israel-Palestine, Declaration of The Anarchists Against The Wall 5.1.04
In these days, with the building of the system of fences, ditches and the wall of separation which robs the fields and leaves people in enclaves without the necessary means of existence, when hundreds of thousands are cut off from health and education facilities and essential infrastructure and are forced to choose between "voluntary" transfer or death, it is our duty as human beings to struggle against this crime. We forced open the gate at Mas'Ha to open a gap in the wall of hatred and to provide with our actions a living, kicking alternative to the apartheid policy of the Israeli government. We, to whom the future of this land is important, regard the system of the fences and separation wall not only as a huge disaster for the Palestinian people, but also as a direct threat for us and for anyone who desires a peaceful and secure life. This is not a security fence. This is a racist apartheid fence that will cause bloodshed for all of us for many years to come.
We try to live in our daily lives the changes we are striving for. We work in a spirit of full cooperation, without leaders. Our decisions are arrived at by consensus and everyone contributes according to their ability. We believe that justice and equality are arrived at by voluntary agreement between people and that the state is only an aggressive tool of dominant ethnic-class groups.
We are realists and understand that the abolition of state system will not occur tomorrow, but even today we can already demand a way of life with "no rulers and no ruled" - "no masters and no slaves". Direct action is the democratic act when democracy stops functioning. The Berlin wall was not dismantled by rulers and agreements, but by the citizens who felled it with their own hands.
Since we can remember, we have been brainwashed with hatred and fear of our Palestinian neighbours. We have not gone for trips in the countryside without armed escort... We were told that our hand is extended for peace but there is no one to talk to. But these lies were exposed and are clear for every one who participates in the actions against the occupation to see. We have slept together beneath the olive trees (before they were uprooted), we have marched together to the fence and we will continue to struggle together - Israelis, Palestinians and internationals, for justice and equality for all.
For years, good people claim that when the transfer is enacted, they will lie down in front of the wheels of the trucks and buses to block that crime. But, the transfer is already happening now! Depriving thousands of people of the minimal means of existence does not leave them any alternative. Thousands are leaving their villages to find food for their children. The ethnic cleansing is occurring before our eyes and we have only one option: to use the few rights we still have from the remnants of Israeli democracy and break the racist, immoral laws. Yes, to break the gates and fences, to block the bulldozers with our bodies, to enter closed-off military areas, and also to transform the enemy into our friend. Palestinian and Israeli resistance will continue as long as the occupation, which is the infrastructure/root of the terror, continues.
We try to live in our daily lives the changes we are striving for. We work in a spirit of full cooperation, without leaders. Our decisions are arrived at by consensus and everyone contributes according to their ability. We believe that justice and equality are arrived at by voluntary agreement between people and that the state is only an aggressive tool of dominant ethnic-class groups.
We are realists and understand that the abolition of state system will not occur tomorrow, but even today we can already demand a way of life with "no rulers and no ruled" - "no masters and no slaves". Direct action is the democratic act when democracy stops functioning. The Berlin wall was not dismantled by rulers and agreements, but by the citizens who felled it with their own hands.
Since we can remember, we have been brainwashed with hatred and fear of our Palestinian neighbours. We have not gone for trips in the countryside without armed escort... We were told that our hand is extended for peace but there is no one to talk to. But these lies were exposed and are clear for every one who participates in the actions against the occupation to see. We have slept together beneath the olive trees (before they were uprooted), we have marched together to the fence and we will continue to struggle together - Israelis, Palestinians and internationals, for justice and equality for all.
For years, good people claim that when the transfer is enacted, they will lie down in front of the wheels of the trucks and buses to block that crime. But, the transfer is already happening now! Depriving thousands of people of the minimal means of existence does not leave them any alternative. Thousands are leaving their villages to find food for their children. The ethnic cleansing is occurring before our eyes and we have only one option: to use the few rights we still have from the remnants of Israeli democracy and break the racist, immoral laws. Yes, to break the gates and fences, to block the bulldozers with our bodies, to enter closed-off military areas, and also to transform the enemy into our friend. Palestinian and Israeli resistance will continue as long as the occupation, which is the infrastructure/root of the terror, continues.
Israel-Palestine, Truth from the land of Israel... Media still focused on the injury of Anarchist Against The Wall activist at Mas'ha 05/01/04
The shooting to hit with live ammunition on Israeli demonstration in Mas'ha against the wall is still in the news. The clear lies of the Israeli authorities is exposed again and again. The video documentary is shown again and again - including the detailed statement of the reporter of the main Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot.
Yesterday late evening, a special investigation reportage in which both the soldiers lying and the evident that exposed it were screened in details. In a nutshell, it exposed also the army policy of shooting with live ammunition on non armed demonstrators called "regulation of detaining suspects" (which is really not in order to detain but to deter) applied in the past only to Palestinian Israeli citizens in few occasions and regularly applied to palestinians - including children.
It seems, the naZionist left and liberals that were not so active in criticizing the shooting policy when applied to Palestinians in the occupied territories reached a qualitative turning point.
The fact that fluent and intelligent good looking Israeli anarchists are good interview subjects contribute too. The various media channels - printed, audio and visual, keeping bringing them again and again.
Yesterday and today the media is bringing in addition the young refusnics who were sentenced yesterday for a one year in jail. This was the peek of a three years initiative started by high school anarchists to whom joined others with less crystallized political consciousness.
The initiative started with a petition of about hundred signatures. At first, the local commander of the army sentenced those whose conscription date arrived but refused joining the army to few weeks in jail for two to four repetitions and then released them as "unfit to service". Later, the army escalated and stopped releasing the refusnics of regular conscription after few terms.
As result, the refusnics refused to be judged by the local commander who could continue to put them back again and again and took the alternative court martial.
After about a year of hearings, the verdict was given and they got one year in prison.
The struggle is not at end yet as they will appeal it to the military appeal court and probably later to the Israeli supreme court.
Yesterday late evening, a special investigation reportage in which both the soldiers lying and the evident that exposed it were screened in details. In a nutshell, it exposed also the army policy of shooting with live ammunition on non armed demonstrators called "regulation of detaining suspects" (which is really not in order to detain but to deter) applied in the past only to Palestinian Israeli citizens in few occasions and regularly applied to palestinians - including children.
It seems, the naZionist left and liberals that were not so active in criticizing the shooting policy when applied to Palestinians in the occupied territories reached a qualitative turning point.
The fact that fluent and intelligent good looking Israeli anarchists are good interview subjects contribute too. The various media channels - printed, audio and visual, keeping bringing them again and again.
Yesterday and today the media is bringing in addition the young refusnics who were sentenced yesterday for a one year in jail. This was the peek of a three years initiative started by high school anarchists to whom joined others with less crystallized political consciousness.
The initiative started with a petition of about hundred signatures. At first, the local commander of the army sentenced those whose conscription date arrived but refused joining the army to few weeks in jail for two to four repetitions and then released them as "unfit to service". Later, the army escalated and stopped releasing the refusnics of regular conscription after few terms.
As result, the refusnics refused to be judged by the local commander who could continue to put them back again and again and took the alternative court martial.
After about a year of hearings, the verdict was given and they got one year in prison.
The struggle is not at end yet as they will appeal it to the military appeal court and probably later to the Israeli supreme court.
Saturday, January 3, 2004
Subject: Israel-Palestine, Another initiation of Anarchists Against the Wall - joint demonstration this Saturday, 3/1/04
Following last weekend's events, and marking the end of the activities at the protest tent against the Apartheid Fence in Dir Balut, Anarchists Against the Wall, the people of Dir Balut and Ta'ayush will hold a joint demonstration this Saturday, 3/1/04, protesting the continuing erection of the Apartheid Fence, and the outrageous shooting policy of the Israeli Army in 3 years of Intifada, which was suddenly "discovered" by many Israelis only this weekend. We would like to seize the new public discussion and media interest in what is happening behind the Green Line, and therefore we act with such a rush.
The main gathering time and place will probably be at 10:30 in Kufr Qassem, and transportation will leave from Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and the north.
See also:
English texts:
http://www.ainfos.ca/03/nov/ainfos00221.html
(en) Israel - Palestine, Tel Aviv - Zububa, Twenty meters of fence removed - in joint Israeli/Palestinian action
http://www.ainfos.ca/03/nov/ainfos00203.html
(en) Israeli anarchist group - One Strle - initiated an internationalist action against the wall
http://www.ainfos.ca/03/dec/ainfos00416.html
http://www.ainfos.ca/03/dec/ainfos00415.html
http://www.ainfos.ca/03/dec/ainfos00413.html
http://www.ainfos.ca/03/dec/ainfos00395.html
http://www.ainfos.ca/03/dec/ainfos00394.html
http://www.ainfos.ca/03/dec/ainfos00392.html
http://www.ainfos.ca/03/dec/ainfos00435.html
Portuguese, Italian, Spanish and Turkish translations for some of the posts are avilable too at http://www.ainfos.ca/03/dec/
The main gathering time and place will probably be at 10:30 in Kufr Qassem, and transportation will leave from Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and the north.
See also:
English texts:
http://www.ainfos.ca/03/nov/ainfos00221.html
(en) Israel - Palestine, Tel Aviv - Zububa, Twenty meters of fence removed - in joint Israeli/Palestinian action
http://www.ainfos.ca/03/nov/ainfos00203.html
(en) Israeli anarchist group - One Strle - initiated an internationalist action against the wall
http://www.ainfos.ca/03/dec/ainfos00416.html
http://www.ainfos.ca/03/dec/ainfos00415.html
http://www.ainfos.ca/03/dec/ainfos00413.html
http://www.ainfos.ca/03/dec/ainfos00395.html
http://www.ainfos.ca/03/dec/ainfos00394.html
http://www.ainfos.ca/03/dec/ainfos00392.html
http://www.ainfos.ca/03/dec/ainfos00435.html
Portuguese, Italian, Spanish and Turkish translations for some of the posts are avilable too at http://www.ainfos.ca/03/dec/
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