(Fwd) TOI-Billboard's description of last session in Ben Artzi court martial

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------- Forwarded message follows -------
From:           	The Other Israel <otherisr at actcom.co.il>
 	
Escalation time  and what goes on behind the screens

TOI Billboard,  October 10, 2003

# Escalation time 
# From Haifa to Ramallah - description of a human shield operation 
# Disobedience Inside The Army
-- Ben Artzi court martial tends to conclusion
-- Uri Ya'acobi on speaking tour in Northern Europe
-- Aide of KM Bronfman refuses to do reserve service in OT
-- Writers in support of the Letter of the Pilots (Haaretz)
# Campaign Safe Olive Harvest
-- Action planned for tommorow, Oct. 11
-- Schedule for weekday olive harvesting from Rabbis for Humn Rights
-- Internationals report on arrest of harvesters 
# Birzeit University made totally inaccessible 
# Women build Peace Tabernacle 
# A bereaved father's peace convoy during Days of Awe

                                (()) ))(( (()) ))(( (()) 

selected articles:

-- Ben Artzi court martial tends to conclusion
-- Uri Ya'acobi on speaking tour in Northern Europe


-- Ben Artzi court martials tends to conclusion

In the small newspaper stand outside, there were banner headlines 
about the escalation on the northern border, and the call-up of 
reserves, and the rabble-rousing pronouncements of extreme-right 
minister Avigdor Lieberman. Inside, in the narrow hall of the Jaffa 
Military Court, the final act begun in the prolonged drama of a young 
man who thoroughly rejects militarism in all its forms - CO Yoni Ben 
Artzi, who has already spent more than a year behind bars for his 
refusal to join Israel's armed forces. 

Lieutenant Colonel Avi Levy, the presiding judge, would have quite
evidently preferred to avoid this moment: the final summations by the
defence, after which the court must pronounce Ben Artzi either guilty or
not guilty of "disobeying a legal order". Two months ago, Levy took the
highly unusual step of declaring the judicial proceedings frozen and
formally suggesting to the military authorities that the "Conscience
Committee" - which in the past rejected Ben Artzi's request for 
exemption from military service - be reconvened to reconsider his case. 
But the committee quickly threw the hot potato back into the court's 
lap, with a terse statement: "No new evidence found to justify 
reopening the Ben-Artzi case."

And so, this court session came about - attended by activists and
fellow-refusers, and with an observer from the Paris-based International
Federation of Human Rights taking notes throughout  - and defence 
attorney Michael Sfard did get the chance to tear the committee to 
shreds in a brilliant final speech: "Your Honours, my learned colleague 
of the
prosecution asserted that you should respect the conscience 
committee's
ruling that the accused in this trial, Yoni Ben Artzi, is no pacifist and
does not deserve exemption from  military service. True, normally a 
court
should respect the decisions taken by an administrative body in that
body's area of competence. But to deserve such respect, said
administrative body must exhibit at least a minimal degree of 
competence -
which is not the case with respect to the Conscience Committee. In his
testimony at this court the Committee's chair, Colonel Shimhi, 
displayed
an utter lack of knowledge regarding pacifism, its history and tenets -
nor did he take any steps to rectify that lack by reading even the most
elementary text on the subject, before presuming to rule who is and 
isn't
a pacifist. 

In the minutes presented to this court we see that the committee had 
set
up completely inappropriate criteria such as that "a contentious person
who argues a lot and confronts authority is not a pacifist". By this
criteria, Yoni Ben Artzi was judged not to be pacifist; Gandhi, Martin
Luther King and most other prominent pacifists would not have passed 
the
committee's test, either. Then, we heard Colonel Shimhi declare that "Ben
Artzi sincerely believes himself to be a pacifist, but he is wrong" and
then he went on about the alleged true motives of which Ben Artzi is not
aware. Leaving aside the question of Colonel Simhi's credentials as a
psychologist (as far as I know, he has none), did nobody bother to tell
him that his job is precisely to determine the sincerity of the
convictions of those who appear before his committee - and grant
exemptions on the basis of such sincerity? Apparently not. 

And there is also a matter called discrimination. In the seven years of
its existence, this Conscience Committee rejected nearly all of the  young
men who applied to it. Only four percent of them were granted an exemption
from military service, the other 96% being rejected. But there is a second
committee, dealing with the applications of young women, where the result
is an exact mirror image: 96% of the girls were given an exemption, only
four percent being rejected. Judge Aharon Barak, President of the Supreme
Court in Jerusalem, already ruled that this kind of lop-sided statistics
in the record of a public body creates a strong presumption of a biased 
attitude, of discrimination - which would tend to cast in doubt or
altogether invalidate all the decision and rulings made by that body. The
same attitude was taken by the US Supreme Court and by European judicial
bodies, in cases where statistics seemed to indicate discrimination. In
fact, in most of the precedents I have, the discrepancy between men and
women, or in some cases between whites and blacks, was far less steep than
in this case.

Here, Presiding Judge intervened: "But it is well known that we are far
from  complete equality in the armed forces. Women serve a shorter period
then men, there are many military jobs and units from which they are
debarred, and many others to which they are admitted only in special cases
while men are posted to them as a matter of routine. Is it therefore not
logical that the army would make more stiff criteria in granting
exemptions to men and be more lax to women?" 

"I have long suspected that this, indeed, is the source of the
discrimination encountered here" responded Adv. Sfard. "Had the military
authorities asserted officially that such is their policy, I would have
been happy to challenge that policy. I can't imagine any judge in the
Supreme Court accepting that Freedom of Conscience - a basic human and
civil right - be applied differently to different citizens on the basis of
gender. However, the army made no such assertion. In fact, my colleague of
the prosecution assured us that there is no discrimination of any kind and
that precisely the same criteria are applied to men as to women - an
assertion on which the statistics cast a grave doubt". 

On the basis of the foregoing, Sfard asked the court to rule incompetent
the committee's ruling with regard to Ben Artzi, and to rely instead on
the testimonies of the accused himself - who had spoken at length about
his convictions - as well as of Ben Artzi's sister. Also, the court was
asked to take into account the fact that Ben Artzi has firmly stuck to his
convictions through more than a year of imprisonment. 

"Yoni Ben Artzi is accused of disobeying a legal order. But the order he
disobeyed was not legal. Ordering a pacifist to violate his most deeply
held convictions by enlisting and donning the uniform of an army - an
organization whose sole raison d'etre is violence - is an illegal order,
just as ordering an observant Jew to eat ham would have been an illegal
order. Under article 125 of the Military Legal code, Ben Artzi is not
guilty of any offence for having refused to obey that illegal order."

Adv. Sfard further pointed out that Ben Artzi's refusal comes under the
purview of "Defence on the Grounds of Need", under which an otherwise
illegal act can be justified if needed in order to defend a person's life,
body or liberty, and provided that the act did not cause a greater damage
than it was designed to prevent. "The late Prof. Leon Shelef of Tel-Aviv
University has clearly demonstrated that `Liberty` in this context
includes Freedom of Conscience". 

Finally, Sfard referred to the measure known to jurists as "Criminal
Estoppel", or less formally "Defence out of Natural Justice": in cases
where a court becomes convinced that charges had been brought against the
accused in a grossly unfair way, the judges may "stop" these charges and
set the accused free. 

"The defence has made no secret of its view that this entire trial should
have taken place in a civilian court rather than a military one - since
Freedom of Conscience is a civil, not a military, issue" concluded Sfard.
"But since the proceedings did take place in this court, it would be an
act of poetic justice for a military court - flesh of the army's flesh -
to set right the wrong which the military system did to Yoni Ben Artzi". 

Following the end of the defence summations, Judge Levy called a
ten-minute recess. In the event, the three judges remained closeted for
nearly half an hour. Among the activists left in the hall, there was a
buzz of speculations, some spectators expecting a startling announcement
of one kind or another. But when the judges finally trooped back in, it
was only to make a dry announcement: the verdict will be delivered "within
two to three weeks", the exact date to be announced later. What, then, did
take the judges so long? Had they been arguing about something? For the
present, there is no way of knowing.      

Messages of support to Yoni Ben Artzi 
mailto:mbartzi at yahoo.com
            **

Uri Ya'acobi on speaking tour in Northern Europe

Draft refuser CO Uri Ya'acobi - who spent half a year behind bars and in
the end got his exemption from military service - will be on a speaking
tour in Europe, in the end of the year. Ya'acobi was among the signatories
of the Michtav HaShiministim (High School Letter). You may remember his
open letter "I am no occupier, full stop" of a year ago - still appearing
on http://www.wri- irg.org/co/yaacobi.htm 

During the second half of November he will appear in Sweden and Finland;
in the beginning of December he plans to go to Denmark and from there he
will get to Germany and Holland etc., where he will be during the second
half of December. Groups interested in hearing Ya'akobi can contact him
via email war_pax at hotmail.com or by phone: 972-55-498315 (mobile) /
972-2-6788315 (home).
                           **

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