[fwd] Report of the Court Martial of the five "Occupation Refusers"

[otherisr at actcom.co.il]

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"Punished - not for our disobedience but for our opinions"
-- this week's continuation of the Court Martial of The Five--
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Tel-Aviv, October 22

A few minutes before the beginning of the solidarity vigil on the  
afternoon of Sunday Oct, 19, somebody came up with a new slogan: 
"Conscience in Prison, Stupidity in Power!"  Blank placards were 
drawn up on the sidewalk opposite the Defense Ministry gate, and the 
new slogan joined old favorites such as "Down With The Occupation!" 
and "Occupation Is Terror - the Refuser is a Hero!"
Some 150 people had come to express solidarity with the  imprisoned 
refusniks, now entering the last stages of the year-long ordeal at the 
Jaffa Military Court. Old and young were there, past and present 
refusers, parents and friends and sympathizers. The youngsters were 
singing the unofficial anthem: "No thank you Mr Sharon / Go yourself 
to Hebron / Damn your schemes, all to hell / Off we go to prison cell!"

On the following morning, all who could afford to miss a working day 
crowded into the narrow hall at the court. KM Issam Mahoul was there, 
as well as a couple of "ecumenical accompaniers" from the World 
Council of Churches and several representatives of the international 
press. As on previous sessions, the five youngsters got prolonged 
applause as they filed in and took their places at the dock. The equally 
young military police accompanying them seemed quite friendly 
disposed.

Today, the cross-examination of Shimri Tzameret, Adam Maor, and 
Noam Bahat was scheduled, the other two - Chaggai Matar and Matan 
Kaminer had theirs already in September. 
The prosecutor, Captain Yaron Costelitz, had managed to prepare himself 
by obtaining a considerable number of leaflets and press releases by the 
various refuser movements, as well as the full text of Shimri's "prison 
blog", new installments of which appear  every week on the Israeli Walla 
news website  [ http://e.walla.co.il/ts.cgi?tsscript=category&path=225 ], 
trying to rattle the young COs with a flood of quotations.  
"So you think the war is not really necessary, do you? That the 
government could have ended it easily enough by just withdrawing? So 
you know better than all the generals, and all the decisionmakers, on the 
basis of the enormous experience and knowledge you gathered in your 19 
years of life?" 
The youngsters stood their ground. "I did not take the decision to refuse 
in one day. I pondered for years what I was going to do. I read a lot of 
material and spoke with many people and had sleepless nights of thinking 
and debating with myself. I came to the conclusion that the army's acts in 
the Occupied Territories are flagrantly immoral and violating international 
law", said Shimri Tzameret. "Violating international law? We seem to have 
here an eminent jurist, also! Don't you know that the Supreme Court ruled 
all these actions to be justified and necessary for saving lives?" "That is 
not true; in some cases the Supreme Court forbade things which were 
being done for years. For example the torture of Palestinian prisoners."
"But if the Supreme Court rules that your refusal is totally illegal, would 
you persist in it? Would you undermine the rule of law that much?" "You 
are an observant Jew. Would you obey the Supreme Court if it ruled that 
you must eat ham?"

Adam Maor was subjected to prolonged questioning about the letter 
which the refusers signed last June, calling from the military prison upon 
Palestinians to avoid attacks on civilian targets, and which was published 
widely in both Israeli and Palestinian press. "You wrote specifically asking 
your Palestinian friends to avoid killing civilians. Does that mean that you 
approve of the killing of soldiers?" Tense silence in the court. Everybody 
had seen the morning headlines telling of three soldiers ambushed and 
killed in a West Bank village. "I am very much against killing in general, of 
civilians or soldiers. In that letter we specifically mentioned other courses 
of action Palestinians may take, such as mass demonstrations, hunger 
strikes or the dismantling of army roadblocks. Still I must say, if a foreign 
army was occupying Haifa where I live, if roadblocks were depriving all of 
us of the most elementary freedom of movement, if we had grown up 
seeing our fathers being humiliated by the foreign soldiers - frankly, I  
don't know how we would have behaved."

Later, Costelitz tried to dig into the meanings of the Highschool Letter 
which the five together with some 300 others had signed. "When you 
write: 'We call upon all those soon to be conscripted to do as we do' does 
that mean that you call upon all of them to refuse military service?" Before 
defense attorney Smadar Ben-Nathan could voice an objection, the 
presiding judge, Lieutenant Colonel Avi Levi sternly reprimanded the 
prosecutor: "Before asking such .a question, it i your duty to warn the 
accused that his answer may implicate him in more serious charges than 
those he faces in this court, namely Incitement to Mutiny." Throughout 
the trial, Colonel Levy seemed to act in an eminently fair way, which is of 
course no guarantee for the final outcome.

When it came the turn of Noam Bahat, Costelitz produced a thick file of 
Bahat's correspondence with the military authorities. "I have here the letter 
which you wrote to the army at the age of 17, and another letter from half a 
year later, and also a letter which your parents wrote to the army on your 
behalf at the same time. None of them mentions a principled objection to 
military service. In fact, the only request you made at that time was not to 
go to a combat unit. You have come quite a long way since, isn't it?" - "If 
you read these letters you must know that at that time I contemplated 
joining the army's Educational Corps and helping those soldiers who come 
to the army with lack of basic education, some of them actually illiterate. 
Since I have already some educational experience and that is what I want 
to do in life, I thought that would be  the most useful thing I can do. But 
gradually I realized that the education which the army provides to such 
people is short and superficial, and its main purpose i still to make them 
into 'usefull parts of the military'. Also, while I had this correspondence I 
heard from friends who already went into the army what is really going on 
in the territories. For example, the practice of forcing Palestinians to be 
human shields when soldiers are besieging suspected terrorists and force 
their neighbors to go first into the building, and thus sometimes get killed.
Later it was very much in the news. But I had already heard about it first-
hand  from friends. I decided I could not be part of a body which does 
such things. I am still very much willing to do educational work, as a 
service to the society, but in a civilian framework."

"In January you had a hunger strike in your cell. I have here the press 
release where you are quoted as saying that you are persecuted for your 
opinions. Is that really what you said? Persecuted for opinions - not for 
disobeying legal orders?" - "Yes, indeed! That's what I said then, and that 
is what I say now. I and the rest of us are suffering for our opinions. There 
is in the army a procedure that a soldier who persists in making trouble 
upon enlistment is sent three times to a month in prison, and after ninety 
days or so gets to the Incompatibilty Committee which throws him out of 
the army. I know somebody who went to the Induction Center on the same 
day I did and he refused without giving any political or ideological reason. 
He is already out for more than half a year. Later I talked with an officer at 
the  Induction Center, who told me that is really the procedure but that 
there is an order not to apply it to principled refusers. So, yes, we are here 
in this court not because of our disobedience but because of our 
opinions."

With this day-long session a long-drawn out process of testimonies and 
cross-examinations came to an end. The next session, on November 4, will 
be devoted to the final summations of  prosecution and defence, after 
which the final verdict should not be too long in coming. Still before that is 
expected the verdict in the separate trial of the "unrecognized pacifist" 
Yoni Ben-Artzi. (The army's official doctrine is that, while an objector to 
the occupation is ineligible for exemption a true pacifist could go free.)

Meanwhile, on the day of the trial, a new refuser was reported to have 
embarked that morning on the long and weary way of confronting the 
military system. Three other draft resisters are still trapped in the limbo of 
going in and out of ever renewed monthly prison terms, while four 
reservists are presently incarcerated for refusing service in the occupied 
territories.

Report made by Adam Keller for the Refusenik Parents Group

Contact persons:
Smadar Nehab <snehab at netvision.net.il>
"Anat Matar" <matar at post.tau.ac.il>
"Reuven Kaminer" <mssourk at mscc.huji.ac.il>

Donations:
Checks earmarked for "legal aid" to New Profile, POB 6187 Ramat 
HaSharon 47271, Israel