Courage To Refuse: Israeli Refusenik Statement in Temple Bar, Dublin

by redjade Mon Dec 22, 2003 09:10

big poster at
http://www.project.ie

Recent News....

Israel is facing another act of defiance as more members of the military refuse to serve in the occupied Palestinian territories.


Israel faces elite commando defiance
Monday 22 December 2003,

In the latest incident, 15 members of the Israeli army's top commando unit have written to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon refusing to carry out missions in the Palestinian territories.

According to Israeli media reports on Sunday, 15 reservists from the elite Sayeret Matkal unit, said they would no longer participate in the "rule of oppression" and the defence of Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territories.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/33886836-3886-4F40-9661-C57521603D00.htm

by Faisal Mon Dec 22, 2003 09:26

In every war there are always a few losers who aren't up to the job. These clowns are a tiny fraction of a minority, who don't have the guts to carrry out their duty on behalf of their country.

The IDF is doing a fantastic job in protecting the Israeli people from terrorists. Noticed how few homicide bombings there have been lately??

The war on terrorism is worldwide, even in our own country, and Israel is playing it's part in securing a safer world for our children.

Now all we need is for Yasser Arafat to die and Chrismas would be complete.

by kokomero Mon Dec 22, 2003 10:10

Christmas (as if you had any understanding of what it means) will be complete when Israel gets out of the occupied territories permanently, closes its concentration camps such as facility 1391, ends the murder and imprisonment of its political opponents at home and abroad and gives up its WMD and gets a life!

by avi H. Mon Dec 22, 2003 12:05

weak and self-opinionated, refusing to see the big picture. We are not doing it for fun or out of spite but only to protect ourselves from a totally militarised population brainwashed into becoming human bombs.

I would always watch my back with this type of people around.

by iosaf Mon Dec 22, 2003 12:54

from those who have seen dark days of their people and know the darkest years of the Holocaust too well.

I have spoken with a friend, a woman of 40 years a resident of Tel Aviv who served in the Israeli armed forces, who now works as a school teacher, who still carries shrapnel in her body, whose family were reduced in Belsen to one line now resident in Israel and one line who were allowed to naturalised in Spain by Franco by virtue of being able to prove their Sephardic lineage in 1940.
And she said of this year's global message of "peace with restraint" that has come from thosae who have served and may serve again in the defence of their nation that :

"it takes real courage".

Shalom.

She added that someday her school students will be both arabic and israeli, and
that some day Sharon will be seen as in the same terms of disgust and shame as the "king of the Warsaw Ghetto".


I suppose the light at the end of the tunnel is the same for us all this holiday season.

Hannukah - Aid - Solstice - Xmas.
-have a good one.

the light at the end of the tunnel. {Brugh Na Boinne -Eire- Nollaig = Newgrange Solstice 2003 Ireland.

by kokomero Mon Dec 22, 2003 16:18

anybody who needs a gun to make their point is weak and for all your talk I'd like to see how tough you'd be if it came to bare knuckles.

Seeing as how you are posturing again today I saw your claims last week about Lybia and Iran were nuclear threats to Israel.

Today you have 2 less excuses for holding onto your nukes, gas and biological agents.

Eventually you'll have none and people will see that you've no clothes!

Boycott Israel!

by David from Co. Dublin Mon Dec 22, 2003 16:18 u82klein01 at hotmail dot com

Last month the four former heads of the Israeli security service, the notorious Shin-Bet, the nerve centre of the Israeli violence machine, called for a withdrawal from the occupied territories.

After such 'distinguished' and bloody careers, they finally discovered courage, and moral backbone. The armchair Zionists should mark their words. Can they be so easily dismissed? If 'we will continue to live by the sword, we will continue to wallow in the mud and we will continue to destroy ourselves.'

"When the meeting is almost over, we ask Avraham Shalom if he thinks we are on the brink of an abyss. We are on our way, he says, because all the steps that we have taken are steps that are contrary to the aspiration for peace. If we do not turn away from this path, of adhering to the entire Land of Israel, and if we do not also begin to understand the other side, dammit, we will not get anywhere. We must, once and for all, admit that there is an other side, that it has feelings and that it is suffering, and that we are behaving disgracefully. Yes, there is no other word for it.

Disgracefully.

What do you mean disgracefully, we ask, disgracefully at the roadblocks?

All of it, says Shalom, all of it.

What is disgraceful, we ask, do we behave disgracefully in the refugee camps?

Everything, everything, Shalom says. It is all disgraceful. We debase the Palestinian man individual to all and sundry. And nobody can take this.
We too would not take it if it were done to us. "

The full interview with the men is translated here:
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2003/11/275169.shtml

see also:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1096286,00.html

by avi H. Tue Dec 23, 2003 12:17

Potentially being blown up at random by any Palestinian. Because each and every one of them poses a mortal danger, they are treated like that. How would you treat someone in front of you who might be hiding a bomb?

by kokomero Tue Dec 23, 2003 17:02

What about the Palestinian schoolkids who never know from one minute to the next whether they'll be shot dead by Israeli snipers for throwing stones, trapping birds, sitting in their classrooms or killed by missiles or even booby traps while travelling with their parents, or having the misfortune in the extremely crowded West Bank and Gaza of living in close proximity to whatever the Israelis consider a target (police stations, schools, garages, moving vehicles etc.)?

" the number of the Palestinians killed at the hand of Israeli soldiers amounted to 2616 including 571 children (below 18 years old) since the outbreak of Al Aqsa Intifada in September 29, 2000 till May 31, 2003."

I suppose all these people don't really count as people for you?

Ah but I forget, you're the same Avi H. who boasted about targeting these civilians himself and uses a Galil to settle his disagreements!

The best solution would be for you Zionist scum (Mossad, Shin Bet etc. etc.) to fight it out bare handed with Hamas, Fatah and Islamic Jihad and leave the ordinary decent people on both sides to get on with life!

BTW I know who I'd put my money on and you can forget that Krav Maga rubbish!

by avi H. Tue Dec 23, 2003 23:24

the M16 is far better than the old Galil.

by .... Wed Dec 24, 2003 02:12

Went on a bit of a rant there.

Bleating about the Palestinian schoolkids is a typical wussy woolyheaded illogical approach to a very simple problem.

The Palestinian schoolkids would be just fine if Yasser Arafat was dead, they'd be fine if their parents didn't support and abet terrorists - tacitly and actively.

So until their parents learn to accept that Israel is a permanent fixture in the middle east then the poor little darlings are just going to have tosuffer just like the rest of us.

by ©2004 = repeat. Wed Dec 24, 2003 11:45

the affairs of Israel are the affairs of Europe.

Israel is Europe.

Europe ignored the suffering of the 30s and 40s and now only barely acknowledges the suffering of Palestinians. Can we yet atone? Can we still have opportunity to make things better? If We believe in "Peace" then this is one place we ought make it.

And we make Peace by reminding all that it is a possibility. Even when they hate us for it. Even when we get it wrong. Because somehow it rarely seems "wrong" if it is just.

Yet it all seems wrong.

take a pew. we are all now familiar with the hymn sheet.

by avi H. Wed Dec 24, 2003 15:01

that Bernie Sands-McKevitt spent a short while chez nous in a padded cell; or that the Mossad has a couple of Irish speakers.

by Justin Morahan - Peace People Thu Dec 25, 2003 12:56

To desert from any army of trained killers on conscientious grounds always needs courage, a strong and steel-like courage that is more powerful than any weaponry of mass destruction.
We need more of such desertions from all killing armies. All honour to the brave Israelis, to the US, British, and other such deserters-for-conscience.
It is they, (who are brave enough to think for themselves rather than sheepishly follow barked orders from "superior" officers), who can teach the world the meaning of true bravery.

by The Insider Thu Dec 25, 2003 23:11

It´s the only way you can explain something like this:

"Because each and every one of them poses a mortal danger, they are treated like that"

Every one, eh? From newborns to invalid OAPs?

That sounds exactly like something Hitler would say about the Jews.

by avi H Fri Dec 26, 2003 03:41

The entire population has been militarised by the terrorist regime of the PLA. If you don't know this, you know nothing.

by redjade Sat Dec 27, 2003 15:18

Published on Friday, December 26, 2003 by Ha'aretz (Israel)

IDF to Probe Shooting of Two Peace Activists in West Bank
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1226-04.htm

by Amos Harel

Major General Moshe Kaplinsky, head of the GOC Central Command, on Friday appointed a colonel to investigate an incident earlier in the day in which Israel Defense Force soldiers shot and wounded two people during a demonstration against the West Bank separation fence.

The incident occurred close to the Palestinian village of Mahase, east of Rosh Ha'ayin, where around 100 members of the Anarchist Movement against the Wall and the International Solidarity Movement were protesting against the construction of the security fence.

Video footage of the incident broadcast on Channel Two television showed Israeli demonstrators on the Palestinian side of the fence violently shaking it, with some trying to cut the fence with wire cutters.

by redjade Sun Dec 28, 2003 16:00

Wounding of Israeli, American protesters creates political storm in Israel

The army's shooting of an American and an Israeli peace protester has angered Israelis and sparked renewed debate over a controversial West Bank barrier and the army's rules of engagement.

Israel says the barrier -- made up of concrete walls, razor wire, fences and trenches -- is meant to keep suicide bombers out. Palestinians condemn the barrier, which dips deep into the West Bank in some areas, as a land grab.

Israeli soldiers fired Friday at a group of peace protesters who tried to cut through a fenced portion of the barrier, moderately wounding an Israeli demonstrator in his legs and lightly injuring an American protester.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2003/12/28/international0517EST0411.DTL

by Moderate Sun Dec 28, 2003 16:10

"moderately wounding"? What does that entail?
If the bullet had struck the protestor elsewhere on the body, or even in the head, would they now be "moderately dead"?