[GushShalom] Historic court martials

[Gush Shalom (Israeli Peace Bloc)]

GUSH SHALOM  pob 3322, Tel-Aviv 61033 www.gush-shalom.org

June 24, 2003

Dramatic days at the Jaffa Military Court. Today: three young refusniks 
delivered stirring, hours-long anti-occupation addresses of a kind never 
before heard in an Israeli military court. It followed yesterday's session 
of the resumed Ben-Artzi Trial, in which the prosecution ties itself in 
knots trying to prove that a pacifist is not a pacifist. 

[] June 23, Ben Artzi's court martial
    the prosecutor's predicament
[] June 24, court martial of "The Five"
    the occupation in the dock

     \\// //\\ \\// //\\ \\//      
   
[] June 23, Ben Artzi's court martial
    the prosecutor's predicament

As the court martial of Yoni Ben-Artzi resumes, a disappointment: two 
intriguing witnesses who were expected, didn't show up. Colonel 
Shlomi Simchi - head of the army's Conscience Committee, which 
persistently refused to recognize Ben Artzi as a pacifist - was "too 
busy" and would come on a different occasion.
The same with Brigadier Avi Zamir, Deputy Head of Manpower, who 
had tried to negotiate with Ben-Artzi on "easy terms of service" and 
when that failed ordered Ben-Artzi court-martialed.

The first witness who appears: Ruti Ben-Artzi, sister of the accused, 
who came over from Columbia University in the US where she is 
completing a PhD. in Political Science.
"I am twelve years the elder; I know Yoni since I helped change his 
diapers and have followed closely his development. Already in the 
highschool he objected to lectures by officers who came to the school 
to prepare children for military service. Nor did he want to take part in 
school outings to the Mount Herzl National Cemetery and the like.And 
I witnessed myself how deeply he was moved when the family visited 
Verdun, France and saw these terrible cemeteries with hundreds of 
thousands of mostly anonymous tombstones. 'How futile, the Germans 
and French killing each other, and now they use both the same 
currency.' I see it that he came back from France a determined pacifist"

The prosecutor his cross-examination tries to trip her up on many 
minor details. "Is it not true that your father described this a bit 
different, three years ago in a newspaper interview? And how come 
your grandfather thinks maybe just afraid?" (The extremely 
heterogeneous Ben-Artzi family is much sought-after by the press.)

Then, Yoni Yechezkel - a refuser who shared prison terms with his 
namesake and who last week got a sudden and unexpected discharge 
from the Conscience Committee (the first applicant to gain an 
exemption since the committee was formed in 1995). The questions of 
Adv. Michael Sfard reveal a refusnik of quite different style, a bit flippant 
one who frequently went AWOL, played a kind of cat and mouse game 
with the military authorities and had been quite frankly willing to make 
all kind of compromises ("I told the army I don't care what way they get 
me out, Conscience Committee, Incompatibility Committee,  
psychiatrist - whatever they choose, but they will never make a soldier 
out of me").
 
Also Yechezkel was cross-examined, and the prosecutor - who tries 
so assiduously  to disprove Ben Artzi's pacifist credentials - was now 
in the opposite role of bolstering Yechezkel's. But he was unconvincing 
in trying to show that Yechezkel is more of a pacifist than the punctual 
and principled Ben Artzi.

[] June 24, court martial of "The Five"
    the occupation in the dock

For a whole hour, before the scheduled time of today's trial, dozens of 
youths lined the sidewalk in front of the building, holding up placards 
and chanting "Occupation is Terrorism! - The refuser is a hero!"

Long before the judges came in, the small courtroom was filled far 
beyond capacity with many envious activists left outside. In the front 
row were sitting Knesset Members Roman Bronfman (Meretz) and 
Muhammad Barake (Hadash communists) as well as former KM Tamar 
Gozanski. When the five accused filed in, they were greeted with 
prolonged applause.

Adv. Dov Henin started by outlining the main defence line. "This trial is 
not about technicalities and obscure points of the law. This trial is 
about a major constitutional issue which no Israeli court has dealt with 
before. The conscience is the most basic part of human dignity, the 
part of the personality which defines the essential values; the part 
which if broken, breaks the whole person. It is the contention of the 
defence in this trial that Freedom of Conscience is already enshrined in 
israeli law and has been for the last ten years, ever since the Knesset 
adopted the Basic Law on Human Dignity and Liberty - even though the 
military authorities so far did not take proper cognizance of the fact. 
The defence asks the court's indulgence in listening to the five 
accused. Each one should have the full possibility of showing that his 
decision to refuse military service does indeed proceed from deeply 
held convictions - the dictates of his conscience."

The first to take the stand is CO Haggai Matar. 
He speaks out of his already considerable personal experience with 
the occupation, to which he adds long quotes from the reports of 
human rights organizations as well as stories which he heard from 
military prison cell-mates who have been to the territories. 

"In 1999, I joined a special of joint summer studies by Israeli, 
Palestinian and Jordanian pupils. Soon afterwards I started 
correspondence with a Palestinian Administrative Detainee who was 
held in an Israeli prison for six years without trial. When at last he was 
released I visited him in a house riddled by Israeli bullets and with 
broken furniture.
I joined actions of the Gush Shalom and Ta'ayush movements. We 
went to the territories to rebuild houses demolished  by the army, to 
provide humanitarian help in towns hit by closure or curfew, to support 
Palestinian villagers who have been violently assaulted by settlers.
Always, soldiers tried to block us and in many cases used violence 
against us.
In 2001, I met again with some of the Palestinian pupils of the summer 
camp and they told harrowing stories of being beaten up and arrested 
by soldiers. One told of witnessing his friends in Ramallah being shot 
to death.
On August 20, 2002, three days before I was due to present myself for 
enlistment, i and several other activists got an emergency call to go to 
Yanoun Village, a tiny place where settlers have so terrorized the 
inhabitants that the Palestinians all left. We came there and the empty 
houses were terribly depressing and somber sights. We were very 
happy that due to our presence the people started coming back.
With all my experiences, I had no doubt: I absolutely don't want to be 
and can't be part of the Israeli army which I don't think has any longer 
the right to call itself an army of defence."
[The above is excerpted from a two-hour speech; full text in Hebrew 
and English available from Anat Matar <matar at post.tau.ac.il>]
                                                *
The philosophical analysis of  CO Matan Kaminer, next in line, was no 
less impassioned.

"In this testimony I would like to describe the guiding lines of my 
conscience and explain why it is incompatible with service in today's 
Israeli army. For some people the basic value from which their 
conscience is derived is God's word. For others it is loyalty to their 
country. For me the basic value is human liberty, human rights.
I believe that all human beings have inalienable rights such as the right 
to life, the right to equality, to welfare, to education, to association, to 
democracy.
All of these rights are violated in countless ways by the occupation - 
mainly violated as regards the Palestinians, but in many ways also 
regarding Israelis.
The right of Palestinians to life is violated by the policy of liquidations 
(which indirectly causes also the loss of Israeli life, as we saw last 
week), and by the constant military activity in populated areas which 
causes the death and wounding of civilians.
The right to equality, both of Palestinians and of Israelis living within 
the Green line is violated by the policy of settlement which takes land, 
resources and basic human dignity from Palestinians and which 
discriminates against most israelis in the division of national resources.
The right of Palestinians to welfare  and to education are violated by 
the ongoing closures and curfews which cause the sky-rocketing 
unemployment figures and the severe disruption of the educational 
system.
The most fundamental, though not necessarily the most directly 
painful, is the violation of the right to live in democracy. The very very 
rule over another people which is denied the right to control it's own life 
and future is a flagrant violation of that right, and after 36 years the 
pretense that the occupation is temporary wears thin.
The contempt for democracy is gradually crossing into Israel proper, 
with racist extreme right parties becoming an acceptable and common 
component of government coalitions.
The deprivation to the right of democracy of the Palestinians is the root 
cause of all the crimes which accompany the occupation - both the 
crimes of the occupier of which I described part, and the crimes of the 
occupied, pushed to immoral and inhuman ways of struggle. Neither 
set of crimes is in any way justified. Both are direct derivatives of the 
occupation and can only be abolished by the occupation itself.

>From all of this, it logically follows that service in the army, which is 
the main instrument for implementing the occupation is totally against 
my conscience. My decision to refuse enlistment does not mean that i 
am against the state of Israel, against the people in israel, or against 
the Israeli society of which I am part. On the contrary, I feel impelled to 
do all i can for the Israeli society. I did it in the past and intend to go on 
doing it. The occupation is a terrible crime; an immoral and malignant 
crime against another society which spreads also to our own society, 
strangling and poisoning it.
Obviously, in such a situation i can't go into the army. I can only ask 
that my conscience be recognized and that i be provided an 
opportunity to do alternative civilian service for the benefit of the Israeli 
society.

[Summary provided by Matan himself and translated by us. Full 
Hebrew text available from: Noam Kaminer 
<noam.kaminer at exlibris.co.il>]
                                                *
At three in the afternoon it was the turn of Shimri Tzameret, whose 
testimony was interrupted by the court adjourning at 5 pm.

"Already for years I know that i am not going to join the army. I know it 
with as much certainty as I know that I will never kick a homeless 
person lying on the sidewalk, never rape a woman, and when I will have 
a child - never abandon it.
We all of us have our own reasonings and my reasons are a bit 
different from those who spoke before me. I feel that there is no need to 
detail what the occupation is doing to the Palestinians. What it is 
doing to ourselves is reason enough.
First I want to talk about the suicide bombings. It is a very central part 
of our life here in this country and many of us are touched personally in 
one way or another. It happened a bit more than a year ago, exactly on 
the day when i decided to tell my schoolmates that i am going to 
refuse to serve in the army, that a suicide bombing happened in which 
the mother of one of the girls in the school was killed. And later on the 
day it turned out that her sister was killed as well.
It brought home to me what does it mean, that the life of this girl whom 
I knew will never be the same again; how terrible it is when something 
like this is suddenly breaking in to a life. Some of my schoolmates 
were angry with me; they said: how can you refuse to go to the army 
when such things happen. I told them: that is exactly the reason that i 
am refusing: the army being in the territories is not a way to stop 
terrorist attacks; it causes them. Exactly because I told Merav that i 
feel committed to do whatever I can to prevent such things from 
happening again to others, I feel that one of the most important things 
which I as an individual can do, is refusing to serve in the army.
After all, everybody knows how the present situation will end: always in 
the last centuries the rebellion of an occupied people eventually ended 
in its freedom. The only question how much time it will take, and how 
many more casualties there will be. I try to make both a bit less.
Another point: what the occupation is doing to our society. I want to 
tell about Rami, whom i met in the prison. I sat with him for hours, 
listening. It is incredible how many terrible things he had witnessed in 
just three months of service in the territories.
He told me about the young boy who threw a stone at the lieutenant-
colonel's jeep which did not hit but the colonel still chased the child, 
caught him and beat him brutally with the butt of a rifle. And another 
child which a Shabak agent tied up, and then urinated on him. When 
Rami tried to protest the man shouted: go away; i am conducting an 
interrogation. And he also told me soldiers looting a shop, and then 
destroying everything which they could not carry. And he told me about 
how he could not stand it anymore, and how he sat in the toilet for 
several hours in the night, the barrel in his mouth, the finger on the 
trigger. In the end he ran away, and that's how he got into prison.
That's what happens to the sensitive people. The non-sensitive ones, 
those who get used to these Wild West norms, afterwards bring these 
norms into the Israeli society itself. We are corrupting ourselves. I am 
not willing to be part of the main instrument of corruption."

[To be continued in the next session some time in July, when also 
Noam Bahat and Adam Maor will have "their day in court."]

P.S.: On Wednesday, June 25, the court martial of CO Hillel Goral - 
separated from the others and charged with desertion rather than 
refusal. Meanwhile the Incompatibilty Committee, in a sudden outburst 
of activity, granted discharge to Shmuel Baron and Shachar Ben-Har. It 
seems that while the court martials are on, the army is trying to get rid 
of the wave.


--
A map of the separation wall:

http://www.gush-shalom.org/thewall/hebrew.html
http://www.gush-shalom.org/thewall/index.html (English)

--
Our site:
http://www.gush-shalom.org/ (òáøéú)
http://www.gush-shalom.org/english/index.html (English)

with
\\photo's - of action or otherwise informative 
\\the weekly Gush Shalom ad - in Hebrew and English 
\\the columns of Uri Avnery - in Hebrew, Arab and English
\\and an archive full of interesting documents

N.B.: 
On the Gush Shalom website links for:
Articles and documents in German
Articles and documents in French
Articles and documents in Spanish

In order to receive our Hebrew-language 
press releases [mostly WORD documents - 
not always same as English] mail to:
gush-shalom-heb-request at mailman.gush-shalom.org 
+ NB: write the word "subscribe" in the subject line.

To get more of the forwarded reports and announcements 
which we receive from other organizations + a selection of 
English-language articles, send one blank mail to: 
TOI_Billboard-subscribe at topica.com

If you want to support Gush Shalom's activities you can 
send a cheque or cash, wrapped well in an extra piece 
of paper to: 

Gush Shalom
pob 3322
Tel-Aviv 61033
Israel

or ask us for charities in your country which receive 
donations on behalf of Gush Shalom

Please, add your email address where to send our 
confirmation of receipt. More official receipts at 
request only.