Refusal By Elite IDF Reservists Angrily Dismissed As 'Political'

[Purveyor]

Following the public refusal of 43 reservists of the IDF’s 8200 intelligence unit, politicians and other veterans of the unit have openly denounced the reservists, viewing their refusal as an unacceptable politicization of their army service.

By Dahlia Scheindlin
|Published September 14, 2014

Political leaders both from the government and the opposition condemned 43 reservists from Israel’s prestigious 8200 intelligence unit who stated their refusal to take part in intelligence-gathering activities that, they claim, deepen Israel’s military rule over Palestinians. Unlike the issue of refusal during Protective Edge, which was hardly noticed or covered during the war, the 8200 letter grabbed headlines over the weekend, appeared on most major news Internet sites, and was one of the lead stories in television news.

Prime Minister Netanyahu encouraged the unit to continue its important work for the security of Israeli citizens. Haaretz reports that Defense Minister Moshe (Boogie) Ya’alon called the letter “an attempt to harm the unit and its activities.” He said the move was a deplorable attempt to assist the “campaign of delegitimization” against Israel and the IDF.

Yariv Levin, the Likud chairman of the governing coalition, repeated a common accusation from the Right equating opposition to the occupation with support for terrorism. In a comment likely to elicit guffaws from Palestinians living under Israeli military rule, Levin, a veteran of unit 8200, told Maariv, “One who refuses to assist in guarding his country crosses the border between those who support Israeli democracy and the freedom it represents, to the terror-supporting Palestinian side, and attacks the innocent citizens of Israel.”

Israeli army soldiers take part in the search operation for three kidnapped Israeli teenagers, on June 17, 2014 in the West Bank town of Hebron. [File photo by Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)
However, the members of the opposition and people associated with the mainstream Left also clamored to decry the reservists’ refusal.

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http://972mag.com/refusal-by-elite-idf-reservists-angrily-dismissed-as-political/96687/

[Jefferson23]

1. Listen to the Unit 8200 objectors

What should be causing a public storm is not the reservists' act of refusal, but rather the practices that spurred it.

Haaretz Editorial | Sep. 15, 2014 | 1:16 AM

Forty-three reservists in Unit 8200 have decided to refuse to serve. In a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and senior defense figures, they wrote that they’ve come to realize that the intelligence unit in which they served is part of the military control mechanism over the territories and the intelligence it collects is used for political persecution, to recruit informers and to extort them by various means, including exploiting the sexual orientation, illnesses and distress of innocent Palestinians.

The letter caused a public storm over the weekend. A near wall-to-wall coalition, from the Labor Party to the extreme right, vied over which could condemn its signatories more harshly. Several politicians called for them to be punished and jailed. Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz suggested assigning them to guard duty in the Negev; Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman Zeev Elkin declared that they had “stuck a knife in the back of the Israel Defense Forces,” and former Unit 8200 commander Hanan Gefen said they should be investigated “in the interrogation rooms of the Shin Bet security service or the investigations unit of the Military Police.”

It’s true that organized refusal to serve could undermine the foundations of the military and extract a heavy public price. An individual who refuses to perform military service for reasons of conscience is different from a group organizing to do so in a public and political fashion, with the aim of encouraging additional objectors.

But the response to this type of refusal of orders should not be sweeping and heavy-handed punishment. Such aggressive responses have no place in democratic society. Veterans have the right to protest what they perceive to be unethical or illegal military activity. At the same time, the country’s military and political leaders would do well to listen carefully to the protest that emerges from the very heart of an elite corps such as Unit 8200.

http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/1.615789

[Israeli]

2. If having a conscience....

...and feelings of remorse makes one an extreme Leftist in today's Israel ....then I guess yes it is political .

One positive thing it gives to us Purveyor......it gives us hope .

Four Boys, 43 Ex-Soldiers, 5% Opposed to the War: Three Thoughts on Numbers, Sadness & Hope

Hope: 43 Elite Ex-Inelligence Soldiers Refuse. Protest can keep hope alive even as the sadness feels overwhelming. This morning, a letter written by 43 ex-soldiers from the elite Israeli intelligence unit, 8200, declaring their refusal to serve in the reserves was publicized and has been sweeping the media, both Israeli and international. Pushing back against popular perception “that service in military intelligence is free of moral dilemmas and only contributes to the reduction of violence and harm to innocent people,” the 43 Israeli dissenters articulated a graceful, empathic and pointed case (it is worth read the full letter) as to how “intelligence is an inseparable part of military control in the territories.” The letter is a powerful one, and the background of its authors- having served in one of the most respected intelligence units in the IDF- will make it hard for The Pundits to write them off.

Source: http://thelefternwall.com/2014/09/12/four-boys-43-ex-soldiers-5-opposed-to-the-war-three-thoughts-on-numbers-sadness-hope/

[Israeli]

3. Avraham Burg ....

....one of the better known of our post zionist leaders speaks out ...


The dissenters are Israel's citizen heroes

The debate over disobedience and its boundaries, and about democracy and its limits, is reduced, among us, to the military sphere exclusively. That is a mistake.

We must never, but never, give up. One may not surrender even when the forces of evil seem like they are gathering strength and power, and the forces of good are in shamed retreat. Enormous, herculean strength is not always required to defeat the well-oiled, powerful machine. Sometimes all it takes is the courage of a few individuals – like the alumni of Unit 8200.

Discussion about their letter ought to go far beyond the act itself. It touches two very sensitive places in Israel: the place of the army, and that of conscience, in our lives. The bottom line, as of now, is that the army takes up a place in our lives that is too large, even total, while almost no room is left here for conscience. That is why the disobedience of the intelligence and surveillance troops contributes something toward a different balance in the equation of Israelis’ lives: less militarism and more conscience.

I am in favor of disobedience, on the right and the left, for reasons of morality and conscience. This is because a society that has no ability to contain the conscience of the individual is doomed to become a society with no conscience at all. Let the governments of Israel know that there is a boundary beyond which the fiction known as consent cannot be stretched. For this reason, even as the coalition and the opposition join in sweeping condemnation of their courageous civil act, I wish to add my support to them and to their letter.

Every country is justified in keeping a defensive army, and intelligence units are an inseparable part of this military act. The same people who signed the letter deserve credit for thwarting many plots, and many lives have been saved thanks to their fellow soldiers. But, as expected and as is well known, not everything in the dark kingdom is legitimate. It seems that the situation in which they are required to work has become utterly intolerable, compelling them to rise up and act.

A soldier serving in the intelligence branch, like any citizen who is anxious over the future of his community and his place, needs to take part in the defensive operations. But no government may make cynical and sweeping use of these citizens’ willingness to sacrifice their lives just to avoid making painful national decisions – or even worse, hide behind the army and its troops to commit political acts that run utterly counter to the good of those citizens.

The lines are clear: defense of life and protecting what is vital and existential – yes! And anything beyond that – absolutely not!

Here in Israel, we love to cling to the idea that “the Israeli army is the most moral army on earth.” I have no idea who the control group was or how one compares the morality of armies. To me, it is a hollow statement because the army is only a tool. It is not an ethical tractate, a policy or an ideology. The army is nothing but a weapon in the hands of the political leadership.

The problems in the Israeli army are not the embarrassing deviations that come to our attention on occasion, nor even the transition that happened to all of us: from a defensive army to an occupying one. The army cannot be the most moral in the world when the policy that guides it is absolutely immoral. The problem is not with the troops or their commanding officers. The problem is the political leadership that gives them their orders.

Is there anybody here who is willing to stand up and state that Israel’s policy is the most moral in the world? That is doubtful. As long as the alternatives to occupation and oppression exist, are available and rejected, there is no justification at all in participating in an act that is a crime against peace, in the oppression of a people for nothing. The act of disobedience is therefore a legitimate civil act that seeks, by taking personal responsibility, to convey a message that is sharp and clear: There is a limit to deception, and there must also be a limit to the malicious governments that have been taken over by the forces of occupation and settlement.

The debate over disobedience and its boundaries, and about democracy and its limits, is reduced, among us, to the military sphere exclusively. That is a mistake. It is wrong to put Israel’s entire burden of moral responsibility on the shoulders of young men and women who have only begun their lives as citizens. Disobedience should be much broader: Let the judges in the military courts disobey. Let the senior and junior clerks disobey. Let the teachers, sanitation workers, mail carriers and dock workers disobey. Each person can disobey a little wherever he is. They can delay a decision, stop action from being taken, let the public know of the injustice that he or she is being asked to commit.

The more Israelis, as individuals or in groups, refuse to continue the disregard, apathy and euphoria of the occupation’s injustice, the better it will be for us, because the one who disobeys is the best and most moral kind of citizen in any society.

Anna Quangel, the bereaved mother in Hans Fallada’s novel “Every Man Dies Alone,” wonders whether one postcard of protest will be enough. Her husband, Otto, hopes that their postcards will give other people the idea of writing similar ones, so that in the end there will be dozens and hundreds of people sitting and writing, flooding Berlin with postcards and so bringing an end to the war. But in another place in that same painful, courageous and universal novel, the question is asked: “And you really think it’ll bring results? Your little bunch and this bloody great machine ...”

“First of all, we’re not a little bunch, as you put it. Every decent German, and there are still two or three million of them, will make common cause with us. They just need to overcome their fear. At the moment, their fear of the future the Nazis are creating is still less than their fear of the present. But that will change before too long ...”

http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.615958