troung

Soldier sentenced to 28 days for refusing to serve in Lebanon

By Amos Harel, Yuli Khromchenko, Lily Galili, Gideon Alon and Yoav Stern

The first person to refuse to do army service during the current fighting was sentenced Sunday to 28 days in a military prison. According to the refusal organization Yesh Gvul, which issued a public statement Sunday urging others to follow in Amir Fester's footsteps, more than 10 other people have contacted the organization about the possibility of refusing to serve.

While some of them have answered reserve duty call-ups and are participating in military training, they have said that they will not take part in the fighting, according to organization spokesman Yishai Menuchin.

In a separate incident, which is not of a political nature, a disagreement erupted between an officer in the armored corps and his commanders.

The officer, who is currently in compulsory duty, received instructions to help repair a stranded tank near the south Lebanese village of Maroun Ras.

In view of the fact that the crew of the tank was not inside, the officer was convinced that sending soldiers to fix the tank in daylight would unnecessarily place his men at risk.

Eventually, the officer's commanders yielded and the repair was carried out during night hours, without the difference of opinion reaching the level of refusing a military order.

One petition, which collected more than 200 signatures within a few hours Sunday, was organized by Haifa resident Orit Ben Artzi. It calls for a cease-fire and the opening of negotiations.

Sunday's bombing in Qana sparked an immediate surge in opposition to the fighting in Lebanon. Spontaneous demonstrations and petitions were organized within hours, and drew more people than the organized demonstrations of the previous two weeks.

One of the demonstrations, organized by senior officials from Meretz, took place in front of the Defense Ministry compound in the Kirya in Tel Aviv.

Dozens of members and top officials of the party protested despite Meretz's official position, which for the moment is one supporting the Lebanon offensive.

Demonstrators held signs which read, "Cease-fire now," calling for immediate negotiations with Lebanon and Syria. Another sign was emblazoned with, "We are a strong but thinking homefront."

"We wanted to protest the foolishness of this war," attorney Yifat Solel, who also serves on the Meretz board of directors, told Haaretz. "It's obvious that a military operation would cause the harming of innocents, and that the most significant achievement would be reached only through diplomatic negotiations."

More than 600 people, including Israeli professors and senior Meretz party officials, have signed an international petition calling for an immediate, unconditional cease-fire in Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank. Among the signatories to this petition are former Meretz MKs Naomi Chazan and Mussi Raz - though the latter has meanwhile obeyed an emergency call-up order for army reserve duty.

Thousands protest in Umm al-Fahm against war
Thousands of Israeli Arabs took to the streets of Umm al-Fahm Sunday evening to protest the war in Lebanon following the bombing of the village of Qana.

Demonstrators shouted "Israel is a terrorist state," and, "the people of Gaza and Lebanon won't surrender."

In Tel Aviv, dozens of left-wing activists demonstrated in front of the Defense Ministry building.

In the Galilee, dozens of Ta'al activists demonstrated against the war and waved signs that read: "Peretz, Olmert and Rice are responsible for war crimes."

Left-wing factions of Knesset on Sunday denounced the Israel Air Force strike on the Lebanese village of Qana that left 54 people dead.

MK Mohhamed Barakeh (Hadash) said the only result of the offensive being waged by Olmert and Peretz in Lebanon is a series of war crimes. "The government has decided to carry out massacres in Gaza and Lebanon under the protection of the U.S."

Meretz chairman Yossi Beilin said the large number of civilian casualties at Qana proves that prolonging the campaign in Lebanon won't help obtain the operation's objectives.

Beilin added that no Israel Defense Forces statement could justify the pictures of innocent casualties, nor the reality that another strike like this could happen again.

MK Avshalom Vilan (Meretz) called for negotiations, adding "what happened there is a humanitarian disaster that no one intended, but the outcome is a black flag."

MK Ahmed Tibi (Ra'am-Ta'al) said that Rice's 'smart bombs' and Halutz's praised pilots' have caused a horrendous and foreseeable war crime. "Bush, Peretz, and Olmert bear the responsibility for this brutal parade of corpses," he added.

MK Jamal Zahalka (Balad) said Israel has declared war on the citizens of Lebanon, adding "those resopnsible for the massacre are guilty of a war crime and should stand trial before the international Criminal Tribunal in the Hague."

Balad is to hold an anti-war demonstration outside the Knesset on Monday.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/744379.html

__________________
To sit down with these men and deal with them as the representatives of an enlightened and civilized people is to deride ones own dignity and to invite the disaster of their treachery - General Matthew Ridgway

troung

Yesha Rabbinical Council: During time of war, enemy has no innocents

The Yesha Rabbinical Council announced in response to an IDF attack in Kfar Qanna that "according to Jewish law, during a time of battle and war, there is no such term as 'innocents' of the enemy."


All of the discussions on Christian morality are weakening the spirit of the army and the nation and are costing us in the blood of our soldiers and civilians," the statement said. (Efrat Weiss)

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7...283720,00.html

(07.30.06, 17:37)

Confed999

Honestly, I agree. Pick a side, or flee...

__________________
No man is free until all men are free - John Hossack
I agree completely with this Administration’s goal of a regime change in Iraq-John Kerry
even if that enforcement is mostly at the hands of the United States, a right we retain even if the Security Council fails to act-John Kerry
He may even miscalculate and slide these weapons off to terrorist groups to invite them to be a surrogate to use them against the United States. It’s the miscalculation that poses the greatest threat-John Kerry

troung

Spouse in plea to Hezbollah wives

The wife of a kidnapped Israeli soldier has issued a public appeal to the spouses of Hezbollah fighters to help her free the man she calls "the love of my life". Karnit Goldwasser, 30, the wife of Ehud Goldwasser, said: "I am asking, as a wife to a Hezbollah wife, that she can help me to get the message from my husband to me - as a wife to a wife."At a news conference at the Israeli Consulate in New York, Mrs Goldwasser said she was confident her husband, known as Udi, is alive and in Lebanon.

troung

The south Lebanon town where 'we are all terrorists'

Nabatiyeh, Lebanon - Amal Hamdoun finds it hard to hold back the tears as she surveys the devastation in Nabatiyeh, the largest town in south Lebanon and now emptied of half of its residents.

"Are we all to be branded terrorists?" she cries.

Amal is standing in Bayada, a district where most homes have been reduced to rubble by Israel's aerial onslaught. Miraculously, her own building is still untouched.

She has arrived with her husband and cousin, taking advantage of the brief lull in air strikes to try to retrieve what they can from their house.

Her composure finally breaks.

"The Israelis have bombarded my quarter four times since the 1980s," she sobs. "But this time they came back seven times."

Amal, in her 40s and with her hair loose and arms bare, has the misfortune to live near what Israel considers to be targets.

"They attacked an office of the Hezbollah TV channel Al-Manar," she says, "and farther down the home of a Hezbollah official."

"But that's no reason to ruin our lives," she sighs.

There is no trace now of Shiite Hezbollah fighters in Nabatiyeh, considered a bastion of the "Party of God" in south Lebanon.

Dozens of portraits of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah remain, however, as do pictures of the late spiritual leader of the Islamic revolution in Iran, Ayatollah Knomeini, and his successor Ali Khamenei.

The Israelis hit Nabatiyeh hard. And not just in Bayada -- the town centre has also been transformed into piles of debris. Buildings were destroyed, the roads are pitted with deep craters and shopfronts were blown in.

Cardiologist Mustafa Badreddin was elected the town's mayor eight years ago after standing as an independent. He estimates damage to the town centre alone at more than 30 million dollars.

Since Israeli air attacks began on July 12 after Hezbollah seized two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid, 35 people have been killed and at least 60 wounded in air strikes on Nabatiyeh.

Half of its inhabitants have fled northwards, Badreddin says.

The remainder opted to stay so they could "die with dignity rather than die on the roads" in Israeli attacks.

Like Amal, Badreddin surveys the ruins of Bayad. Four times it has been destroyed, and four times it has been rebuilt during the violent history between Lebanon and its powerful neighbour.

"The Israelis' lists of targets are old," he says. "They have attacked the same area for years."

Since the Israeli offensive began, Bayada has been in the Jewish state's sights seven times.

"But it's families who live here, not gangsters or cowboys in the Wild West," Badreddin says, masking his grief with irony.

And neither do Hezbollah fanatics, says Amal Hamdown.

She was in her teens in 1983 when Nabatiyeh was the scene of the incident which enraged Islamic resistance against Israel in Lebanon -- the violent breaking up by an Israeli patrol of a parade to mark Ashura, the holiest Shiite festival.

"All the time I walked around with my arms bare and my hair uncovered to show them that we were not Hezbollah," she says, pointing to the sky at Israeli unmanned drones overhead.

Amal does not adhere to the strict Islamic code of women covering their arms and their hair.

"But all that means nothing," she says resignedly.

"We're going back to live in a school in Beirut, with nothing but these shopping bags.

She lifts the two bags, one in each hand, and turns away.

"In the end, we are all terrorists," Amal says.

Agence France Presse

http://nationmultimedia.com/worldhot...ewsid=30010188

troung

Israeli pilots 'deliberately miss' targets

Fliers admit aborting raids on civilian targets as concern grows over the reliability of intelligence

Inigo Gilmore at Hatzor Air Base, Israel
Sunday August 6, 2006
The Observer

At least two Israeli fighter pilots have deliberately missed civilian targets in Lebanon as disquiet grows in the military about flawed intelligence, The Observer has learnt. Sources say the pilots were worried that targets had been wrongly identified as Hizbollah facilities.

Voices expressing concern over the armed forces' failures are getting louder. One Israeli cabinet minister said last week: 'We gave the army so much money. Why are we getting these results?' Last week saw Hizbollah's guerrilla force, dismissed by senior Israeli military officials as 'ragtag', inflict further casualties on one of the world's most powerful armies in southern Lebanon. At least 12 elite troops, the equivalent of Britain's SAS, have already been killed, and by yesterday afternoon Israel's military death toll had climbed to 45.

As the bodies pile up, so the Israeli media has begun to turn, accusing the military of lacking the proper equipment, training and intelligence to fight a guerrilla war in Lebanon. Israel's Defence Minister, Amir Peretz, on a tour of the front lines, was confronted by troubled reserve soldiers who told him they lacked proper equipment and training.

Israel's chief of staff, Major-General Dan Halutz, had vowed to wipe out Hizbollah's missile threat within 10 days. These claims are now being mocked as rockets rain down on Israel's north with ever greater intensity, despite an intense and highly destructive air bombardment.

As one well-connected Israeli expert put it: 'If we have such good information in Lebanon, how come we still don't know the hideout of missiles and launchers?... If we don't know the location of their weapons, why should we know which house is a Hizbollah house?'

As international outrage over civilian deaths grows, the spotlight is increasingly turning on Israeli air operations. The Observer has learnt that one senior commander who has been involved in the air attacks in Lebanon has already raised concerns that some of the air force's actions might be considered 'war crimes'.

Yonatan Shapiro, a former Blackhawk helicopter pilot dismissed from reserve duty after signing a 'refusenik' letter in 2004, said he had spoken with Israeli F-16 pilots in recent days and learnt that some had aborted missions because of concerns about the reliability of intelligence information. According to Shapiro, some pilots justified aborting missions out of 'common sense' and in the context of the Israeli Defence Force's moral code of conduct, which says every effort should be made to avoiding harming civilians.

Shapiro said: 'Some pilots told me they have shot at the side of targets because they're afraid people will be there, and they don't trust any more those who give them the coordinates and targets.'

He added: 'One pilot told me he was asked to hit a house on a hill, which was supposed to be a place from where Hizbollah was launching Katyusha missiles. But he was afraid civilians were in the house, so he shot next to the house ...

'Pilots are always being told they will be judged on results, but if the results are hundreds of dead civilians while Hizbollah is still able to fire all these rockets, then something is very wrong.'

So far none of the pilots has publicly refused to fly missions but some are wobbling, according to Shapiro. He said: 'Their target could be a house firing a cannon at Israel and it could be a house full of children, so it's a real dilemma; it's not black and white. But ... I'm calling on them to refuse, in order save our country from self-destruction.'

Meron Rappoport, a former editor at the Israeli daily Haaretz and military analyst, criticised the air force's methods for selecting targets: 'The impression is that information is sometimes lacking. One squadron leader admitted the evidence used to determine attacks on cars is sometimes circumstantial - meaning that if people are in an area after Israeli forces warned them to leave, the assumption is that those left behind must be linked to Hizbollah ... This is problematic, as aid agencies have said many people did not leave ... because they could not, or it was unsafe to travel on the roads thanks to Israel's aerial bombardment.'

These revelations raise further serious questions about the airstrike in Qana last Sunday that left dozens dead, which continues to arouse international outrage. From the outset, the Israeli military's version of events has been shrouded in ambiguity, with the army releasing a video it claims shows Katyusha rockets being fired from Qana, even though the video was dated two days earlier, and claiming that more than 150 rockets had been fired from the location.

Some IDF officials have continued to refer vaguely to Katyushas being launched 'near houses' in the village and to non-specific 'terrorist activity' inside the targeted building. In a statement on Thursday, the IDF said it the air force did not know there were civilians in what they believed was an empty building, yet paradoxically blamed Hizbollah for using those killed as 'human shields'.

Human rights groups have attacked the findings as illogical. Amnesty International described the investigation as a 'whitewash', saying Israeli intelligence must have been aware of the civilians'.

One Israeli commander from a different squadron called the Qana bombing a 'mistake' and was unable to explain the apparent contradiction in the IDF's position, although he insisted there would have been no deliberate targeting of civilians. He said he had seen the video of the attack, and admitted: 'Generally they [Hizbollah] are using human shields ... That specific building - I don't know the reason it was chosen as a target.'

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world...838437,00.html

troung

Class war in the IDF

By Staff Sgt. (res.) Ori Berzak

On a hill overlooking the bloody battleground of Waterloo, Meir, a British Jew, stood at noon on June 18, 1815. By 10:00 PM, when the battle was over and the sides began counting their dead - 25,000 French and 15,000 British and Prussian dead - Meir was already on the other side of the English Channel in a boat he had readied in advance. He was in a rush to buy stock on the London Stock Exchange while prices were still low. At the end of a single day of trading, on June 19, by the time Wellington had found the time to send letters summing up the battle and Napoleon's defeat, Meir Rothchild was a millionaire. Just like in any war, there are winners and losers.

On a hill near Jebel Bilat, on the evening of August 7, 2006, a supply convoy with reinforcements was being delayed. The cause: brigade commander Colonel Shlomi Cohen's convoy was getting public relations services from Yedioth Ahronoth reporter, Nahum Barnea. The Colonel received another dose of "promotion coverage," and his soldiers, who did not receive s upplies, had to break into local shops and steal foodstuffs.

On a hilltop overlooking the bay of Tyre at 8:30 AM, on August 15, 2006, slightly more than 24 hours since the cease-fire went into effect, reconnaissance unit 609 is sitting in a Lebanese house, taking cover from the anti-tank missiles that could appear at any moment. They are not sure about what the next day will bring.




Advertisement

The sniper on team 3 is waiting to receive a warning that he will be fired. He has been away from his new job for a month. The medic, the team leader and the guy handling the grenade launcher are unsure about what to do with the semester exams that they have missed. Those who are single are planning to flee the country. The family men are due home to wives who have not slept for a month, to children dying for their embrace, but also to mortgages and the rest of the payments that need to be made.

On the map, the company's movement looks like a green arrow, cutting through on the right of the security zone in a semi-circle. On the generals' maps, it is yet another promise to increase the defense budget, salaries for the career staff and for their stock options in their own personal, crazy start-up called "the next war." Just like in any war, there are winners and losers.

On the hills covered in pine and cypress trees in Israel, the fighting class is burying its dead and licking its wounds. The commanding class is granting another interview to reporters and waiting for the findings of the committees of inquiry. The debate over the budget has already been won, and the aid from the U.S. is already on the way. Just like in any war, there are winners and losers.

On a hill between Mount Meron and Safed, at 2:00 PM on August 16, 2006, the brigade commander talked with his troops from the reconnaissance unit. In response to the claims there had been no orders, no relevant training, about the hunger, the lack of equipment, and the journalists that risked our lives with their camera flashes prior to our entry into Lebanon, Colonel Cohen lectured us for lacking motivation. The soldiers quickly surrounded him, the tempers flared, the tones rose very high. Pretty soon there was booing. A moment before there was real violence, the brigade commander carried out a brilliant withdrawal. If he had a smoke grenade available, surely he would have used it.

A class war is a war between winners and losers. A new chapter was written in the age-long book on class war: the IDF class war. In such a war, the fighting class can only lose everything that sustains it: comradery, ethics and responsibility for the defense of the state

Ray

This thread requires to be archived.

__________________


"Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion, Instead of Truth they use Equivocation, And eke it out with mental Reservation, Which is to good Men an Abomination."

I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to.

HAKUNA MATATA