Objectores de consciência (refusenik) israelitas recusam-se a integrar o exército sionista de ocupação e são presos pela sua decisão corajosa

Entre a população israelita popularizou-se o termo refusenik (sarvanim, סרבנים, en hebreo ) para denominar os objectores e objectoras de consciência que se recusam a incorporar-se no Tsahal, o exército sionista de Israel, enquanto este continuar a ser um exército de ocupação, ou quando são enviados para os territórios palestinianos ocupados.

Claro que existem vários outros grupos, da mais variada natureza, que recusam a ocupação e a guerra movidos pelos seus princípios pacifistas. Mas o mais interessante é mesmo saber que uma quata parte dos jovens israelitas escapam, sob os mais diversos pretextos e subterfúgios, ao serviço militar, algumas vezes, com custos para a sua própria vida, ou da sua liberdade.

Quem são os Shministim?

Shministim significa jovens graduados em hebreu. O serviço militar é obrigatório após o ensino superior para os jovens israelitas. O Shministim são jovens israelitas que se recusam a servir no exército por causa dos 40 anos de ocupação de Israel sobre as terras palestinianas. Em 2008 estima-se que o seu n´mero tenha sido de uma centena, o que tem, normalmente, por consequência, a sua prisão. E aqueles que se recusam a vestir o uniforme militar dentro da prisão são metidos sózinhos em celas em isolamento absoluto. Depois de cumprida a punição, voltem a casa, e se recusarem a alistarem-se, pela segunda vez, são novamente detidos, e assim sucessivamente, conforme a vontade arbitrária das autoridades militares do exército israelita.

Jesse Bacon (justicelovejesse@gmail.com ) forma parte do "Shministim" que se recusam a entrar na máquina militar israelita. Ela própria afirma: « Estou muito orgulhosa da minha decisão em recusar-se a servir um exército que se diz humanitário e que tem fins defensivos, mas que faz sofrer diariamente um povo inteiro. Fui parar à prisão no dia 23 de Setembro. Cumpri 35 dias de detenção. Quando lerem as minhas palavras, o mais certo é eu estar novamente na prisão, junto de outros amigos, que serão detidos depois de estarem uma semana em casa, e voltarem a recusar a sua incorporação no exército.

Apoia os objectores de consciência israelitas enviando cartas de apoio dirigidas ao ministro israelita da defesa, tais como a que podes encontrar em,

WWW.December18th.ORG

Apoia os objectores de consciência israelitas

Outro refusenik é Michel Weksler (mweksler@gmail.com ) que declarou: "Eu era um comandante de tanques no exército israelita. Estive na prisão porque me neguei a ir para Gaza em 2002. Senti que era meu dever recusar ordens que eram claramente ilegais. Aliás, penso que as práticas de ocupação do exército israelita são nitidamente ilegais. Não é de admirar que o Tribunal Supremo Israelita tenha evitado sistemanticamente a pronunciar-se sobre o caso dos refuseniks. Os ataques com foguetes em Gaza são um erro, mas é ridículo da parte de Israel fazer-se de vítima em todo este círculo vicioso. Israel violou a lei internacional, mas também a lei israelita, com a forma como trata dos territórios ocupados. Note-se que essas pessoas vivem num limbo legal. Não são israelitas, nem pertencem a um Estado independente. Ainda por cima Israel está-lhes a negar os seus direitos como povo ocupado, como está previsto na Convenção de Genebra. O governo israelita tenta encobrir esta realidade referindo-se a essas pessoas como «cidadãos de Gaza», só que o povo bombardeado de Gaza não é cidadão de nenhum sítio, e esse é que é o problema: são pessoas sem estado e isto tem que terminar.

Outro caso ainda é o do capitão da Forças Aéreas israelitas, na reserva, Yonatan Shapira, que em 2003 liderou um grupo de pilotos da Força Aérea israelita que se negaram a participar em missões de ataque aos territórios palestinianos. É co-fundador dos Combatentes pelas Paz. Também ele declara: «Os grandes meios de comunicação estão empenhados a não dar uma visão real da situação. As pessoas precissam de ouvir, ver e ler os meios de comunicação alternativos. Se olhares o número de pessoas assassinadas em Gaza, o número de palestinianos mortos é enorme, mais de 400 em Gaza. Não podem sar, procurar alimentação, não têm água potável nem electricidade. Ainda por cima a Força Aéra israelita bombardei-os matando pessoas e crianças inocentes. Os mass media não falam disto. Apenas relatam que o Hamas lança foguetes contra cidades israelitas, o que pode matar pessoas.Mas as represálias israelitas e todo esse aparato não nos vai trazer mais segurança, mas antes pelo contrário. A raiz e a causa do conflito está sim no desenvolvimento da ocupação e na atitude do governo israelita em negociar com o Hamas a fim de acordar para uma completa retirada das fronteiras de 1967. Aliás, não noto da parte do governo israelita qualquer vontade de resolver o porblema. Por isso, quero gritar tão alto quanto possa e pedir ao mundo para que se una nesta luta a fim de evitar mais derramamento de sangue entre palestinianos e israelitas. Digo isto como judeu e israelita que quer continuar a viver neste maravilhoso mas triste pedaço de terra.»

www.CombatantsForPeace.org

http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/

http://december18th.org/

Name: Raz Bar-David Varon
Age: 18
Why I am one of the Shministim:
“I wasn’t born to serve as a soldier who occupies another, and the struggle against the occupation is mine too. It is a struggle for hope, for a reality that sometimes feels so far away. I have a responsibility for this society. My responsibility is to refuse.”
First Sentence: 3rd - 21st Nov. 2008 (18 days)
Second Sentence: 24th Nov. - 30th Nov. 2008 (currently in prison)


In a brief statement made on the day of her arrest, Raz said:

“I have witnessed this army demolishing, shooting and humiliating people whom I did not know, but have learnt to respect for their ability to go on dealing with these horrors on a daily basis. There’s supposed to be a good reason for all of this. This reason is supposed to be my defense. I feel like screaming: ‘This does not defend me! It hurts me!’ It hurts me when people, Palestinians, are being so brutally assaulted, and it hurts me when they later turn their hatred towards me because of it. I wasn’t born to serve as a soldier who occupies another, and the struggle against the occupation is mine too. It is a struggle for hope, for a reality that sometimes feels so far away. I have a responsibility for this society. My responsibility is to refuse.”

http://december18th.org/2008/11/24/raz-bar-david-varon/#more-56




Name: Omer Goldman
Age: 19
Location: Tel-Aviv
Why I am one of the Shministim:
“I believe in service to the society I am part of, and that is precisely why I refuse to take part in the war crimes committed by my country. Violence will not bring any kind of solution, and I shall not commit violence, come what may.”
First Sentence: 22nd Sept. - 10th Oct. 2008 (18 days)
Second Sentence: 12th - 24th Oct. 2008 (10 days)


Omer Goldman, has had to confront the values of her own family. She is the daughter of the former deputy head of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service and who is still considered one of the most powerful men in the Israeli security system. Omer, without her father’s permission visited a Palestinian town in the West Bank and at a check-point, alongside Palestinians, her supposed enemies, was fired upon by Israeli soldiers, “We were sitting by the roadside talking and soldiers came along and after a few seconds they received an order and fired gas grenades and rubber bullets at us. Then it struck me, to my astonishment, that the soldiers were following an order without thinking. For the first time in my life, an Israeli soldier raised his weapon and fired at me.”

Although, not surprisingly, her father does not support her decision to refuse, he still supports her as a daughter. “He and I have very similar characters. I, too, fight to the end for what I believe in. But we are opposites ideologically.”

In her declaration of refusal she stated:

“I refuse to enlist in the Israeli military. I shall not be part of an army that needlessly implements a violent policy and violates the most basic human rights on a daily basis.

Like most of my peers, I too have not dared to question the ethics of the Israeli military. But when I visited the Occupied Territories I realized I see a completely different reality, a violent, oppressive, extreme reality that must be ended.

I believe in service to the society I am part of, and that is precisely why I refuse to take part in the war crimes committed by my country. Violence will not bring any kind of solution, and I shall not commit violence, come what may. “


Name: Sahar Vardi
Age: 18
Location: Jerusalem
Why I am one of the Shministim:
“I realize that the soldier at the checkpoint is not responsible for the wretched policy of the oppressor towards civilians, I am unable to relieve that soldier of responsibility for his conduct … I mean the human responsibility of not causing another human being to suffer.”
First Sentence: 25th - 31st Aug. 2008 (6 days)
Second Sentence: 12th - 30th Oct. (18 days)
Third Sentence: 3rd - 21st Nov. 2008 (18 days)


Sahar was the third conscientious objector, and the first woman, to be imprisoned among this years group of high school seniors, who signed a collective declaration of refusal to serve in the Israeli army of occupation.

While she stresses the importance of resisting the occupation of Palestine as a motive for her refusal, Sahar’s conscientious objection is also rooted in a wider pacifist position.

During her sentence Sahar refused to wear a military uniform in prison, and subsequently spent the duration of her detention in solitary confinement. The Isolation Wards of military prisons in Israel are often the cite of various minor or less minor forms of abuse, so Sahar needs your support.

In a letter to the Minister of Defense, declaring her refusal to serve in the military, She wrote:

“I have been to the occupied Palestinian territory many times, and even though I realize that the soldier at the checkpoint is not responsible for the wretched policy of the oppressor towards civilians, I am unable to relieve that soldier of responsibility for his conduct … I mean the human responsibility of not causing another human being to suffer.

The bloody times in which I live (consisting of assassinations, aggression, bombings, shootings) results in increasing numbers of victims on both sides. It is a vicious circle that emanates from the fact that both sides elect to engage in violence. This choice I refuse to take part in.”

A peaceful demonstration was organized in support of Sahar before her first sentence in military prison on August 25, 2008. About 80 people joined the demonstration, and were met by a small counter-demonstration organized by a pro-military group. The pro-military group confronted the original protesters aggressively and head-butted one of the demonstrators and drove a motorcycle into the crowd.

http://december18th.org/2008/11/23/shministim-statement-1/#more-5

Julgamento de 16 anarquistas judeus contra o Muro construído pelo Estado de Israel

16 activistas pertencentes ao colectivo «Anarchists against the Wall» compareceram ontem num tribunal israelita que decidiu a sua libertação mediante uma caução, excepto para dois outros activistas internacionalistas que vão continuar detidos.

Transcreve-se a seguir um pequeno texto que prolonga, de alguma maneira, a luta do colectivo ««Anarchists against the Wall»


SIM À VIDA DOS DOIS POVOS


Num texto publicado no passado dia 30 de Dezembro, «On Gaza», a activista anti-globalização norte-americana Starhawk escreve:

«Eu sou judia, de nascimento e de educação, nasci seis anos depois do fim do Holocausto, e fui educada no mito e na esperança de Israel. O mito diz que «durante dois mil anos andamos errantes por todo o mundo, perseguidos, quase fomos destruídos pelos nazis. Mas de todo esse sofrimento resultou, pelo menos, uma coisa boa, a pátria, para a qual nós regressamos, e que é o nosso país, onde podemos estar em segurança, soberanos e fortes». Trata-se de uma história emocionante e galvanizadora. Só tem um erro: esquecer-se dos Palestinianos.»

Na verdade, o conto deve esquecê-los, porque se admitíssimos que a nossa pátria pertencia a um outro povo, lá se ia a bonita história. O resultado disso tudo é uma espécie de cegueira psiquíca a propósito dos Palestinianos. Se defendeis realmente Israel, o Estado judeu, como a pátria dos judeus, então não podeis aceitar que os Palestinianos sejam uma realidade. De resto, Golda Meir já dizia:«Quem são os Palestinianos? Eles não existem». E hoje ouvimos isto: «Não há parceiros para fazer a paz. Não há ninguém com quem falar».

Perante esta cegueira, só existe uma alternativa para a comunidade internacional, onde as decisões dependem ainda dos governos ocidentais: ou obrigar os israelitas a verem os Palestinianos; ou então a corroborar essa cegueira («claro que não, com certeza que vocês tendes toda a razão, essa gente não existe, mas mesmo assim lançai algumas bombas para terem a certeza, e para os tranquilizar», caucionando e encoragando um sociocídio. Tudo indica que esles já fizeram essa escolha.»


http://www.awalls.org/
http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1052261.html

Texto completo de Starhawk:

On Gaza
by Starhawk



All day I've been thinking about Gaza, listening to reports on NPR, following the news on the internet when I can spare a moment. I've been thinking about the friends I made there four years ago, and wondering how they are faring, and imagining their terror as the bombs fall on that giant, open-air prison.

The Israeli ambassador speaks movingly of the terror felt by Israeli children as Hamas rockets explode in the night. I agree with him-that no child should have her sleep menaced by rocket fire, or wake in the night fearing death.

But I can't help but remember one night on the Rafah border, sleeping in a house close to the line, watching the children dive for cover as bullets thudded into the walls. There was a shell-hole in the back room they liked to jump through into the garden, which at that time still held fruit trees and chickens. Their mother fed me eggs, and their grandmother stuffed oranges into my pockets with the shy pride every gardener shares.

That house is gone, now, along with all of its neighbors. Those children wake in the night, every night of their lives, in terror. I don't know if they have survived the hunger, the lack of medical supplies, the bombs. I only know that they are children, too.

I've ridden on busses in Israel. I understand that gnawing fear, the squirrely feeling in the pit or your stomach, how you eye your fellow passengers wondering if any of them are too thick around the middle. Could that portly fellow be wearing a suicide belt, or just too many late night snacks of hummus? That's no way to live.

But I've also walked the pock-marked streets of Rafah, where every house bears the scars of Israeli snipers, where tanks prowled the border every night, where children played in the rubble, sometimes under fire, and this was all four years ago, when things were much, much better there.

And I just don't get it. I mean, I get why suicide bombs and homemade rockets that kill innocent civilians are wrong. I just don't get why bombs from F16s that kill far more innocent civilians are right. Why a kid from the ghetto who shoots a cop is a criminal, but a pilot who bombs a police station from the air is a hero.

Is it a distance thing? Does the air or the altitude confer a purifying effect? Or is it a matter of scale? Individual murder is vile, but mass murder, carried out by a state as an aspect of national policy, that's a fine and noble thing?

I don't get how my own people can be doing this. Or rather, I do get it. I am a Jew, by birth and upbringing, born six years after the Holocaust ended, raised on the myth and hope of Israel. The myth goes like this:
"For two thousand years we wandered in exile, homeless and
persecuted, nearly destroyed utterly by the Nazis. But out of that
suffering was born one good thing-the homeland that we have come back
to, our own land at last, where we can be safe, and proud, and
strong."
That's a powerful story, a moving story. There's only one problem with it-it leaves the Palestinians out. It has to leave them out, for if we were to admit that the homeland belonged to another people, well, that spoils the story.

The result is a kind of psychic blind spot where the Palestinians are concerned. If you are truly invested in Israel as the Jewish homeland, the Jewish state, then you can't let the Palestinians be real to you. It's like you can't really focus on them. Golda Meir said, "The Palestinians, who are they? They don't exist." We hear, "There is no partner for peace," "There is no one to talk to."

And so Israel, a modern state with high standards of hygiene, a state rooted in a religion that requires washing your hands before you eat and regular, ritual baths, builds settlements that don't bother to construct sewage treatment plants. They just dump raw sewage onto the Palestinian fields across the fence, somewhat like a spaceship ejecting its wastes into the void. I am truly not making this up-I've seen it, smelled it, and it's a known though shameful fact. But if the Palestinians aren't really real-who are they? They don't exist!-then the land they inhabit becomes a kind of void in the psyche, and it isn't really real, either. At times, in those border villages, walking the fencelines of settlements, you feel like you have slipped into a science fiction movie, where parallel universes exist in the same space, but in different strands of reality, that never touch.

When I was on the West Bank, during Israeli incursions the Israeli military would often take over a Palestinian house to billet their soldiers. Many times, they would simply lock the family who owned it into one room, and keep them there, sometimes for hours, sometimes for days parents, grandparents, kids and all. I've sat with a family, singing to the children while soldiers trashed their house, and I've been detained by a group of soldiers playing cards in the kitchen with a family locked in the other room. (I got out of that one-but that's another story.)

It's a kind of uneasy feeling, having something locked away in a room in your house that you can't look at. Ever caught a mouse in a glue trap? And you can't bear to watch it suffer, so you leave the room and close the door and don't come back until it's really, really dead.

Like a horrific fractal, the locked room repeats on different scales. The Israelis have built a wall to lock away the West Bank. And Gaza itself is one huge, locked room. Close the borders, keep food and medical supplies and necessities from getting through, and perhaps they will just quietly fade out of existence and stop spoiling our story.

"All we want is a return to calm," the Israeli ambassador says. "All we want is peace."

One way to get peace is to exterminate what threatens you. In fact, that may be the prime directive of the last few thousand years.

But attempts to exterminate pests breed resistance, whether you're dealing with insects or bacteria or people. The more insecticides you pour on a field, the more pests you have to deal with-because insecticides are always more potent at killing the beneficial bugs than the pesky ones.

The harshness, the crackdowns, the border closings, the checkpoints, the assassinations, the incursions, the building of settlements deep into Palestinian territory, all the daily frustrations and humiliations of occupation, have been breeding the conditions for Hamas, or something like it, to thrive. If Israel truly wants peace, there's a more subtle, a more intelligent and more effective strategy to pursue than simply trying to kill the enemy and anyone else who happens to be in the vicinity.

It's this-instead of killing what threatens you, feed what you want to grow. Consider in what conditions peace can thrive, and create them, just as you would prepare the bed for the crops you want to plant. Find those among your opponents who also want peace, and support them. Make alliances. Offer your enemies incentives to change, and reward your friends.

Of course, to follow such a strategy, you must actually see and know your enemy. If they are nothing to you but cartoon characters of terrorists, you will not be able to tell one from another, to discern the religious fanatic from the guy muttering under his breath, "F-ing Hammas, they closed the cinema again!"

And you must be willing to give something up. No one gets peace if your basic bargaining position is, "I get everything I want, and you eat my shit." You might get a temporary victory, but it will never be a peaceful one.

To know and see the enemy, you must let them into the story. They must become real to you, nuanced, distinctive as individuals. But when we let the Palestinians into the story, it changes. Oh, how painfully it changes! For there is no way to tell a new story, one that includes both peoples of the land, without starting like this:
"In our yearning for a homeland, in our attempts as a threatened and
traumatized people to find safety and power, we have done a great
wrong to another people, and now we must atone."
Just try saying it. If you, like me, were raised on that other story, just try this one out. Say it three times. It hurts, yes, but it might also bring a great, liberating sense of relief with it.

And if you're not Jewish, if you're American, if you're white, if you're German, if you're a thousand other things, really, if you're a human being, there's probably some version of that story that is true for you.

Out of our own great need and fear and pain, we have often done great harm, and we are called to atone. To atone is to be at one-to stop drawing a circle that includes our tribe and excludes the other, and start drawing a larger circle that takes everyone in.

How do we atone? Open your eyes. Look into the face of the enemy, and see a human being, flawed, distinct, unique and precious. Stop killing. Start talking. Compost the shit and the rot and feed the olive trees.

Act. Cross the line. There are Israelis who do it all the time, joining with Palestinians on the West Bank to protest the wall, watching at checkpoints, refusing to serve in the occupying army, standing for peace. Thousands have demonstrated this week in Tel Aviv.

There are Palestinians who advocate nonviolent resistance, who have organized their villages to protest the wall, who face tear gas, beatings, arrests, rubber bullets and real bullets to make their stand.

There are internationals who have put themselves on the line-like the boatload of human rights activists, journalists and doctors on board the Dignity, the ship from the Free Gaza movement that was rammed and fired on by the Israeli navy yesterday as it attempted to reach Gaza with humanitarian aid.

Maybe we can't all do that. But we can all write a letter, make a phone call, send an email. We can make the Palestinian people visible to us, and to the world. When we do so, we make a world that is safer for every child.

Below is a good summary of some of the actions we can take. Please feel free to repost this. In fact, send it to someone you think will disagree with it.

Starhawk

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