(fwd) Doing things the hard way - the verdict of The Five

[Gush Shalom (Israeli Peace Bloc)]

Doing things the hard way - the verdict of The Five

Dec. 16, 2003

The courtroom at the Jaffa Military Court had never been so overcrowded. 
Special benches had been dragged in, filling the aisle and leaving hardly 
any room for passage. Activists, family members and journalists crowded 
into every available corner (there were four TV crews, who were chased 
out after the judges came in) and still as many as were in had to wait 
outside. At long last, the verdict in the trial of  Noam Bahat, Matan 
Kaminer, Adam Maor, Haggai Matar and Shimri Tsameret was going to be 
delivered.

After the Yoni Ben-Artzi verdict, nobody really expected a "not guilty." 
Clearly, they would be found guilty-as-charged of the formal aberration of 
"not obeying an order", but against our better judgement we were hoping 
that these boys' convincing moral stand did impress the court. But the 
Colonel Avi Levy who read the verdict seemed a different person from the 
presiding judge who had exhibited signs of moderation throughout the 
earlier sessions.

While starting out by accepting the defence's contention that the Freedom 
of Conscience is a right under Israeli basic law and not just a privilege 
granted at the army's pleasure, the verdict proceeded to give it such an 
interpretation as to nullify its practical value. In essence, the verdict 
endorsed the military authority's policy and the judicial justifications for it 
as presented by the prosecution: exemption from military service should 
be granted only to pacifists and nobody else. The judge seemed less 
concerned with the ideological differences and more with practical ones: 
pacifists in his view are a small group which does not challenge 
government policies but just seek personal salvation and, so he stated, are 
not likely to grow significantly. 

But what the court dealt with here was far more serious: "We recognize 
that the accused do feel moral and ideological revulsion about taking part 
in an army which according to their belief is perpetrating manifestly 
immoral acts. But the act of refusal is derived not only from this revulsion 
but also - and perhaps mainly - from the wish of the accused to change 
public opinion in general, to effect a change in the views and in the 
behavior of those who are about to go into the army and of conscripts and 
reservists, and finally to cause a change in government policy and bring 
about an end to the occupation."

Colonel Levy  went into long and complicated legal as well as 
philosophical arguments reaffirming over and over again that this was a 
threat not to be tolerated, and that everybody must be made to go into the 
army and share equally the risk to life in defence of the country (no  
mention of the tens of thousands ultra-Orthodox who don't risk their lives 
while receiving generous allowances for studying in religious seminaries). 
"There exists no legally established alternative civilian service in Israel, so 
the military authorities cannot be blamed for failing to offer one as an 
alternative to the five accused. But it is the position of  this court that 
even if it existed, it would not have provided a fitting answer for the case 
of these five. The requirement of equality is not that citizens just give 
three years of service, but that they all undergo the same risk to life" 
(skipping over the fact that most soldiers in a modern army are non-
combatants...).

As the reading ended, we sat there in stunned silence. Only Reuven 
Kaminer, grandfather of Matan, got up and left the court shouting 
"Shame!" But outside the court there was the solid phalanx of press 
photographers and TV cameras, and behind them the activists who had 
not been able to enter. When the five emerged they got a hero's welcome 
of wild cheers and prolonged clapping. Then there developed a scene 
surely unequaled in the decades that this building has been used as a 
military court; something halfway between a political rally and a press 
conference. 

The chanting "Occupation is Terror - the Refuser is a Hero" and "Peace 
Yes - Occupation No" (some cried out "army no") lasted several minutes, 
until the TV crews managed to get the quiet to interview the five, their 
parents and their lawyer. 

"We are being punished for saying the word  o-c-c-u-p-a-t-i-o-n. So here I 
say it again: occupation, occupation, occupation" said Matan Kaminer. 
"The most easy thing for an 18-year old  in this country is to get an 
exemption from the army through all kind of backhand tricks. Anybody 
can do it, and many do. We chose to go the hard way. We say that the 
occupation is a moral abomination which moral people can not tolerate and 
that this is the reason that we refuse to enlist. If our sincerity means that 
we will sit many years in prison then we will sit many years in prison."

"We say a truth that most of the public does not know, and that many 
choose not to know, and that's why we are being punished" said Haggai 
Matar. "They do war crimes and they expect us to keep silent. But we will 
not be silent. We will speak out against the occupation, even when we pay 
a price. After an exhausting year we find that the military court is not 
willing to listen to what we have to say. It turns out that Colonel Avi Levy 
is after all not more than a screw in the military machine. He is not the kind 
of person to shake the whole system."

 "The worse the occupation becomes, the more people will refuse." These 
words of Adam Maor were to go into the evening TV news of Channel-I. 
He went on to say: "A country which oppresses three and half million 
people and denies them the most basic human rights is a country which is 
bound also to oppress its own citizens. No wonder that this country is 
sending us to prison. No wonder that it is trampling the poor and the 
disadvantaged, as it does."

Shimri Tzameret was next: "I am not deterred by this verdict. This court is 
part of the army, and the army is doing terrible and immoral things such as 
sending my friends to risk their life for Netzarim settlement and for Hebron, 
when everybody knows that eventually we will evacuate these places. The 
army is causing despair in the Palestinian society. In fact it is the army 
which is breeding  the suicide bombers. This is the kind of army it is, and it 
is no surprise that this is the verdict handed by the court of this army."

Last of the five was Noam Bahat: "It is important to remember that the war 
going on now is a war of choice, a war which is not needed for survival or 
self-defence. A war of choice is by definition immoral. We must refuse 
because this war will end only when people stop supporting it. I can't say 
that I am happy with this verdict, but it is in no way a reason for me or the 
others to give up."

"I have listened most carefully to this verdict" said adv. Dov Chenin. "The 
test of whether a basic civil or human right is being respected is not when 
everybody agrees. The test is exactly when it is hotly controversial. The 
court said that the Freedom of Conscience is protected by Israeli law, but 
it refuses to apply it where it is most needed. If people like these five don't 
get the protection of the Freedom of Conscience, then this freedom 
doesn't exist. About this I have a strong debate with the court. This right 
was not given the weight it deserves, which in my view makes the verdict 
unconstitutional." (This was perhaps the first draft of an appeal to the 
Supreme Court.)

Meanwhile, the last act of this court is still to come: next Tuesday (Dec. 
23) at 2pm, the court is to hear the arguments of the prosecution and 
defence as to the fitting punishment, which is expected on that same day.

[The information reached us that solidarity demonstrations for The Five 
took place today in London, Rome and Berlin, and that in France over 
thousand signatures were collected on a petition initiated by veterans who 
had themselves served prison terms for refusing to take part in the 
Algerian War.]

For more information:
Adv. Dov Chenin +972-3-5256333 / +972-68-249212
Anat Matar +972-3-5408977 / +972-58-560001
Messages of support to: Noam.Kaminer at exlibris.co.il

Hebrew readers can follow the "Prison Blog" of Shimri at: 
http://e.walla.co.il/ts.cgi?tsscript=category&path=225

[Report written by Gush Shalom member Adam Keller on behalf of the 
Refuser Parents' Forum.]

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