300 High School Seniors Refuse to Join IDF
Have you heard about the Shministim? In Israel, typical teenagers serve a while in the Israeli Defense Force after high school (there are some exemptions available). But recently some teens are refusing to serve, because they beleive that serving in the IDF supports an immoral occupation.
Seeking to make an example, the IDF is court-martialing six of the high-school conscientious objectors (five who are refusing to serve because they object to the occupation, and one who is refusing to serve because he’s a pacifist). As always, Aron’s Israel Peace Blog has the info: a summary article, “The Saga of the Court Martials“; an interview with Haggai Matar, a co-founder of Shministim and one of the six boys on trial; and an interview with Haggai’s mother Anat Matar, a philosophy lecturer at Tel Aviv University. I liked this quote from Ms. Matar:
Conscientious objectors have always been my heroes; even as a kid, I read The Hobbit and thought that Bilbo’s refusal to fight at the end was the coolest thing I’d ever read. I hope the Israeli COs win their case.
If you’re interested in more information about the Shministim or about Israeli refuseniks in general, check out the Refuser Solidarity Network’s website.
One IDF Policy for Girls, Another for Boys
One fascinating point the “Saga of the court martials” brings up: a genuine case of anti-male sexism. The Israeli Defense Force has an official policy of not granting conscientious objector status to folks who oppose the occupation: this is the “pacifists yes, political refusers no” doctrine.
(In fact, whatever the official policy, the IDF in practice doesn’t grant CO status. “The army’s Conscience Committee, in theory charged with exempting CO’s, was in practice a dead-end, turning down virtually everybody who applied.”)
But, as the defense pointed out in court, the IDF does grant CO status for “political refusers” – if the political refuser happens to be female. In effect, male applicants for CO status are being discriminated against. The court has not yet ruled on this question.
Likud leader accuses IDF of violating human rights
Interesting article in the Guardian: a Likud leader has accused the IDF leadership of looking the other way while the IDF abuses the human rights of Palestinians. The accusations are nothing new, but the source is interesting.
Although Israeli and foreign human rights groups have long documented evidence of systematic abuses by soldiers in the West Bank and Gaza – including murder, indiscriminate shooting, aiming at children, torture and use of human shields – such accusations have generally been dismissed by the authorities as driven by anti-Israeli motives.
Hopefully Mr. Eitan’s charges won’t be so easily dismissed.
Finding Love in the International Solidarity Movement
This cute story (again from the Guardian) describes how Adam Shapiro (nicknamed “the Jewish Taliban” by some disgusting people) and Huwaida Arraf (founder of the International Solidarity Movement) met, fell in love and married. Both of them were born in the US, and both of them have spent their lives fighting the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
As well as telling the story of their romance and marriage (which is pretty amusing – Arraf almost missed her own wedding because she was performing a hunger strike in an Israeli jail), the article gives an interesting picture of the life of a couple of very dedicated Americans opposed to the occupation.
An interesting cultural point from the article: Arraf’s father (a devout Catholic who at first didn’t approve of the marraige) apparently had difficulty understanding that Shapiro was Jewish but not Israeli. This is something I’ve read about elsewhere – many Palestinians learn to use the word “Jew” and “Israeli” interchangeably, referring not to religion but to Israeli citizenship..
This is, o’ course, because the Zionists have done a good job of making their movement part of Jewish idenity politics.
HOW TO RECRUIT A JEW TO KILL HIMSELF
by Emanuel A. Winston, a Middle East analyst & commentator
Submitted by http://www.israelfaxx.com
It’s really quite easy as exemplified by the Oslo Accords, the Road Map and Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s Disengagement Plans.
Having been hunted by the so-called civilized world for a few thousand years, Some Jews have a deep craving for recognition and approval. Promise them anything that fills that vacuum and they will follow like puppies.
Israel has many enemies, most of whom have declared their enmity long before the Jewish State was ever created in 1948. No point in going back a thousand years because, if you don’t know our uninterrupted tragic history by now, it’s doubtful you will ever take the time to learn it.
It is now 2004 and the Jewish State is 56 years young. She has been attacked in seven wars of Muslim Arab aggression. She has won all of them and maintained her existence by beating and enduring against an unending sub-level of Terror. Her enemies are quite easy to list, namely, all of the Muslim Arab nations, most, if not all of the European nations, including those who collaborated with Hitler to eliminate all Jews from their nations. The Arabist U.S. State Department has an indelible record beginning in earnest during WWII through the present. The United Nations continuous anti-Israel resolutions were and are driven by the Muslim Arab Block. Russia’s history is rife with murderous pogroms against its Jews. The Church of Rome through its teaching – well, you get the idea.
These are and have ever been the enemies of the Jewish State who wish it to disappear from the face of this planet – denials by France, Germany, the U.S. State Department, ‘et al’, notwithstanding.
But, destroying the Jewish State of Israel has become a problem, given that she has armed herself and has become proficient at winning wars and defeating Terrorism. She also has a non-advertised Nuclear Deterrent – which the State Department, Egypt and the U.N. is making a concerted effort to have Israel voluntarily eliminate – as a gesture of ‘good will’. To accomplish the cutting down toward elimination, Israel’s enemies concluded that they must enlist Israel’s leadership – both Left and Right to voluntarily commit national suicide.
This is accomplished by offering to fill that vacuum in most Jews by recognition and seeming approval. That too is not difficult since, in addition to that yearning for friendship, there is the fact of their naiveté about world intentions.
Unlike the Europeans who have centuries of conflicts where they were in almost constant state of plotting wars and subversion of each other, Israel is just beginning to learn. Israel has had only a mere 56 years to develop the ability to look ahead and foresee dangers to her existence. Her leaders have mostly been former generals whose only experience was the military with little experience in the world. In the world of International Politics, they are mere babes in the woods. Dangle something shining or make an attractive noise, and like an infant, those man-children will reach for it.
Such backward leaders as Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Bibi Netanyahu, Ehud Barak and now Arik Sharon are easily euchered (tricked) by offers to make little Israel part of the “Big Game”. David Ben Gurion would have been more difficult to trick because he still had his experience from Russia and was not quite so gullible. Menachem Begin also, although less so when he was massaged by Jimmy Carter, Moshe Dayan, Ezer Weizman and even Ariel Sharon into surrendering up the Sinai Desert for virtually nothing more than a promise by Egypt to cease fighting and preparing for war. Israel received a cold peace and Egypt has since absorbed $60 Billion in free American tax-payers dollars for war-making equipment with more on the way by a pro-Arab State Department’s approval.
Each time the U.S. through the Arabist State Department or a President who is an advocate of Saudi Arabia wishes to sucker a Jewish Prime Minister, they make an offer she cannot refuse. Usually the State Department or the President starts courting the Prime Minister, telling him how important he is between threats and how they desperately need him on their side. Part of the recruitment process is to tell them that they have vast overall plans to control the Middle East through conversion of Muslim Arab nations into dependence if not Democracy. The idea of dependence is to sell them mountains of sophisticated armaments which are then supposed to make them dependent on American technology, maintenance and spare parts. Of course, in the end, it is the U.S. who is actually dependent on the sale of more armaments plus the ever present oil.
But, the friendly back-slapping and invitation to be part of the Free West’s grandiose plans makes Israel’s shallow country bumpkin leaders gasp and their eyes spring open at the recognition of their value. How their egos inflate and they strut with self-importance, not understanding that they have been bought like any cheap street walker.
Soon, these pathetic leaders begin to cut back on planning for future war. They buy the argument of ‘Peace’ or at least, ‘The Process’ from their so-called friends who try to appease the Arab Muslims by re-partitioning the country that was once the Jewish homeland in the Palestinian Mandate. Their ‘friends’, the Americans, wish to gift a State with all that Israel has built and made green to the Arab Muslim Palestinians. They do this hoping to pacify the murderous Muslim Palestinian Arabs, knowing it will immediately become a Global Terrorist staging area. (Note the internecine war that is already raging down in Gaza as the Terrorist factions manuever to be the last ones standing after their own firefight.)
The political Left is easy to recruit because they do not regard the Land of Israel as theirs and are ready to move on if pushed sufficiently. Thus we acquired the failed Oslo Accords, with a doctrine that pre-plans to accept Terror and a ‘reasonable number’ of dead Jews. We previously saw the emerging of Ehud Barak, who was cultivated in the military by Labor to become Prime Minister. Ehud Barak accepted the Clinton plans and promises of compensation if he escaped from Lebanon in the middle of the night abandoning our Christian Lebanese allies, while leaving Israeli tanks and artillery there for the Hezb’Allah to acquire.
As Prime Minister, Barak was promised peace for his gross, foolish and cowardly gesture. He got neither peace nor the funds for his betrayal. The vacuum was filled with Hezb’Allah and now there are some 12,000 rockets and missiles pointed at Israel’s entire North – some loaded with chemical war-heads, courtesy of Syria and Iran. At this time there is a major push by Sharon and Peres to resurrect Oslo, combined with elements of the Road Map and the European/Beilin-Geneva Plan.
Now, we have Arik Sharon whose life was spent in the military pushing these suicidal plans, making solemn, though infantile, judgements about the political future of all Israel. This is a man, not unlike Rabin and Barak who never understood how America works and its separate vested interests in Arab oil and Arab oil markets. Sharon thinks that promises made by a President are binding and that Congress is simply like the inept Israeli Knesset which he can bully.
So he accepts the Bush Road Map which itself was a naive plan of wishful thinking and completely empty of any understanding of an Arab Muslim world, dedicated to ‘Jihad’ (Holy War for Islam) and world domination by Islam. Sharon, not having any real experience in world affairs, is vacuumed into a suicidal plan because he is told that Israel is an important player in a high stakes game of importance.
How proud our erstwhile Sharon is to be thought of as a ‘big player’ among the nations and, mostly, by America. He still hasn’t grasped the fact that he is merely a disposable pawn only valuable in promoting Israel’s ability to sacrifice herself so the really “Big Game” can proceed. Sharon doesn’t realize he’s merely a joke at the State Department who creates America’s foreign policy no matter who is President.
Sharon was a great warrior in his own little patch. Now he is neither a great warrior nor a sophisticated leader with worldly vision. He has become merely a Pied Piper who is planning to lead the Chidren of Israel over an irrevocable cliff.
Israel had to be recruited to accomplish her own destruction under the illusion that she will be part of the “Grand Scheme” to change the Middle East.
That Iraq will become a Democracy.
That Iran will cease its Islamic march toward regional and world infusion of Islam for everyone.
That Egypt will remain modestly religious and will not become a fully Islamic State when
President Hosni Mubarak dies and the Muslim Brotherhood starts its ‘Coup d’Etat’.
That Jordan’s Muslim Palestinians will not overthrow King Abdullah to make it a full fledge Muslim Palestinian nation (read: Terrorist Nation).
That Syria will fall into line with the Bush democracy and all these nations will cease to be Israel’s dedicated enemies.
But, first Israel must be reduced in size by being driven back to her 1967 Armistice lines (what Abba Eban called: “The Auschwitz lines”). I would call these lines the Armageddon Lines. Sharon has proclaimed that he plans to FIRST evacuate 8,000 men, women and children from Gaza/Gush Katif where they made the sand bloom and grow green for three generations. Sharon is inviting Egypt’s Intelligence into Gaza to be followed by its Army to, of course, protect its Intelligence in Gaza and the Sinai – close up to Israel’s southern borders.
Israel must do all these things voluntarily, as a gesture to Bush, the Muslim Palestinians and the Arab Muslim nations, in the hope that the promise of Peace will be bestowed upon them. Sharon plunges forward even as the different Terrorist groups fight each other for dominance in Gaza with the winner leading a final assault on Israel.
Does anyone, even the most radical Leftists, the most hostile, non-Jewish Jews, see anything wrong with this picture?
It appears that, with the exception of the Jews of YESHA (Yehuda, Shomron and Gaza) as well as the Golan and the observant Jews all over the world, many Israelis see nothing that shakes their confidence in their security by giving up their Land.
As for American Jews, their leadership was easily recruited. Just invite the members of the Conference of Presidents to the State Department or the White House, tell them how important their acceptance of surrender is for the “Peace Process”, pat their behinds on the way out and they will float for weeks, inflated with their own self-importance, bloated on the recognition of their role convincing American Jews to remain passive and silent..
However, many Jews and Christians are not so easily taken in and recruited. They know viscerally that neither the Arabs, Europeans or State Department can be trusted – at least not with the fate of the only Jewish State or even with America future security.
Israel has been sold out – again. Some by intention, some by naiveté, some from their own inflated self-importance and stupidity. It really doesn’t matter, bottom line, except to those who are or will be the victims. There is always the chance that the Jewish people will awaken, rise up and throw out their weak leadership like true Maccabean warriors of old, united, to defend the Land that was given to the Jewish people forever by G-d at Mt. Sinai.
When such men as Sharon and Peres lose their hearts, their souls follow and they are only dead men walking. Sharon, like Peres and Barak, has lost his nerve and can no longer command. It is time for this Israeli government to be overthrown and replace with better minds, with Israeli courage. Sharon, with his partner, Peres through secret agreements have betrayed the Jewish nation and must go!
###