Author: admin

Vi har modtaget, fra www.refusersolidarity.net:

Dear supporters of the Israeli refuser movements:

Stymied by the United States, the international community has been unable to establish a cease-fire between Israel and Hizbullah. The consequences are horrible and horrifying: Lebanese innocents continue to be killed by IDF jets, tanks and ground troops at a terrifying pace. More and more of the infrastructure of Lebanon is destroyed by IDF bombings. And Israeli civilians continue to die from the missiles fired by Hizbullah from southern Lebanon.

The Israeli peace movement has organized several powerful demonstrations, but they are clearly in a minority at this time. As more and more Israelis die, as more and more atrocities occur in Lebanon, as it becomes more and more obvious that Hizbullah cannot be destroyed by the IDF, the insanity of this war will become more clear and the peace movement will grow.

Two weeks ago, we sent an appeal to you to support the refuser movements in Israel. You responded with extraordinary generosity, contributing over $10,000. These funds will be passed to the refuser groups to help them get out a different message regarding Lebanon War II, and also so that they can support those active duty soldiers and reservists who once again feel compelled to refuse duties they consider immoral and illegal.

As we fully expected and hoped, the refuser movement is springing back into action and prominence, as the consequences of their actions become clear to an increasing number of IDF combatants.

You will find below the text of a recently-published and very important article that shows some of the cracks appearing within the Israeli Defense Forces. In addition, we saw recently the emergence of Staff Sgt. Itzik Shabbat as the first Lebanon War II refuser. He has now been joined by Capt. (Res.) Amir Paster, 32, an infantry officer and student at Tel Aviv University. Capt. Paster has been sentenced to 28 days in military prison for his refusal to take part in the current Lebanon campaign. In announcing the imprisonment, the veteran refuser group Yesh Gvul indicated that it had been contacted by another dozen officers and soldiers who had told them they planned to follow suit.

We encourage you to send a letter of support to Captain Amir Pasteur at the following address:
Military Prison No. 6
Military Postal Code 01860, IDF
Israel

We also urge you to take a public stand in your community, contact your elected representatives to pressure them to support an immediate cease-fire, write a letter to your local newspaper. Please mention these brave individuals when you do – show the American people that not all Israelis support their government, and not all Americans do either.

Finally, if you have not already made a contribution from our last appeal, it is not too late to help! Help the refusers in their efforts to end this terrible war before it spreads and kills so many more. Simply click here and you will be taken directly to the donations page of the Refuser Solidarity Network website.

On behalf of the RSN Board of Directors and the refuser groups, I thank you for all your support!

Steven Feuerstein
President, Board of Directors
Refuser Solidarity Network

Israeli pilots ‘deliberately miss’ targets

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1838437,00.html

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.’

Her er en længere, men ganske spændende artikel om kristnes vilkår i Israel/Palæstina, hvor ca. to procent af befolkningen i de besatte områder og otte procent af den arabiske befolkning i Israel er kristne:

Palestinian Christians belong to several traditional communities of faith, communities that can be grouped into four broad categories. The first are the traditions of the Eastern Orthodox churches. These would include the Greek Orthodox communities, claiming a continuous presence in the Holy Land since the times of the apostles. The second group is made of up what is sometimes referred to as the “Oriental” Orthodox churches, such as the Syrian, Coptic, and Armenian Orthodox communities. A third category consists of those churches belonging to the Catholic family of churches. In addition to Roman Catholic communities, referred to in the Middle East as the “Latin” church, one finds “Eastern Catholic” or “Eastern Rite Catholic” churches. These churches, though in communion with Rome and recognizing the authority of the pope, have maintained their own distinctive liturgy and traditions. Members of such communities as Greek Catholic or Syrian Catholic outnumber the number of “Latin” Catholics in Palestine and have a long history of involvement in the Palestinian struggle for justice. Finally, there are various Protestant communities, including not only Anglican and Lutheran churches, present since the nineteenth century, but also independent evangelical churches, including Baptist, Pentecostal, and more.

Today in Palestine, Christianity is experiencing what many would consider a crisis. This is not due to the growth of so-called Islamic fundamentalism or the persecution of “believers” by their Muslim neighbors, misrepresentations that are unfortunately used to distract from the realities of occupation. Instead, the plight of the Palestinian Christian is very much connected to that of the Palestinian Muslim in that both, whether in the Occupied Territories or inside Israeli itself, are experiencing daily injustices at the hands of oppressive and discriminatory policies imposed on them by the Israeli government.

Palestinian Christians, like their Muslim brothers and sisters, have experienced a long history of dispossession and have not been immune to Israeli policies of occupation and discrimination. If anything, they have felt more strongly the feelings of forsakenness, knowing full well that many Christians in North America and Europe support without question the state of Israel in its oppression of their people. Daily experiences of humiliation at checkpoints, of land confiscation to make way for the separation barrier, the illegal occupation and colonization of Palestinian territory, lack of mobility and access to basic services, unemployment, poverty, and no sense of hope for a better future for their children have all contributed to this growing emigration of Palestinian Christians from the historical land of Palestine.

Like their Muslim neighbors, who are prevented by checkpoints and roadblocks from making pilgrimage to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, Christians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are denied basic religious freedoms, routinely prohibited from traveling very short distances to worship in one of the most holy sites in Christianity — the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in the Old City of Jerusalem, where the church commemorates Jesus’ crucifixion, burial, and resurrection from the dead.

Noget lignende kan i øvrigt siges om den meget lille gruppe af samaritanere, det “kætterske” oprindelige folkeslag, vi hører om i Det Nye Testamente, bl.a. i historien om den barmhjertige samaritaner: Samaritanere behandles også i dag med foragt af bosættere og israelske soldater, som palæstinensere på linje med alle de andre – hvilket naturligvis også er, hvad de er: “Palæstinenser” er en etnisk kategori, ikke en religiøs.

Ze’ev Sternhell i Ha’aretz:

The Six-Day War and Yom Kippur War were wars of survival, and through them the IDF was revealed in all its greatness. The present war is the most unsuccessful we have ever had; it is much worse than the first Lebanon War, which at least was properly prepared, and in which, with the exception of gaining control over the Beirut-Damascus highway, the army more or less achieved its goals as determined by then-defense minister Ariel Sharon.

It is frightening to think that those who decided to embark on the present war did not even dream of its outcome and its destructive consequences in almost every possible realm, of the political and psychological damage, the serious blow to the government’s credibility, and yes — the killing of children in vain. The cynicism being demonstrated by government spokesmen, official and otherwise, including several military correspondents, in the face of the disaster suffered by the Lebanese, amazes even someone who has long since lost many of his youthful illusions.

Som man kan se ovre på min anden blog, har jeg kastet mig ud i lidt af et eksperiment, som et offer for den stigende kommercialisering: Google Ads.

Mon jeg så snart kan køre Mercedes? Nej, som overskriften antyder, er det mest af alt et eksperiment. Hvis jeg er heldig, kan det måske tjene udgifterne til webhotel hjem igen, så jeg i det mindste får dét betalt – resten tager skatten det meste af.

Eksperimentet går også lidt på: kan man overhovedet det, integrere annoncerne på en måde, så de ikke ødelægger læseoplevelsen? Og det er jo derfor – for at finde ud af det – jeg udfører eksperimentet.

Hop blot over på modspil.dk og se, hvad du synes – feedback er velkommen (kan gives i kommentarfeltet her).

Mens diverse politiske hoveder strides om, hvilken metode mon er den rette til at bekæmpe en guerillalignende milits, når “bomb dem tilbage til stenalderen!” ikke lader til at virke, er der en israelsk reservist, som stemmer med fødderne ved at gøre det eneste rigtige:

Han stemmer med fødderne ved at nægte selv at deltage i en krig, han ikke føler, han kan stå inde for. Som vi læser i Ha’aretz:

the first person to refuse to do army service during the current fighting was yesterday sentenced to 28 days in a military prison.

According to the refusal organization Yesh Gvul, which issued a public statement yesterday 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.

Lad os håbe, mange flere vil slutte sig til ham, efterhånden som flere og flere israelere begynder at se sandheden i øjnene.

Jyllands-Posten gengiver et telegram fra Ritzau:

Børnene på to af landets asylcentre får fra efteråret lidt mere plads at bo på med deres familier. Og de slipper for at dele værelse med mor og far.

Det sker på trods af, at regeringen og Dansk Folkeparti i forsommeren gjorde det klart, at der ikke skulle laves mere plads på centrene.

Det er de to kommunedrevne asylcentre i Hanstholm og Brovst, der har valgt at bruge en del af en ekstrabevilling til at give mere plads til familier med børn. Ekstrabevillingen på 37 mio. kr. blev givet efter voldsom debat om forholdene på centrene. Og her var det netop pladsforholdene, der blev kritiseret, understreger Jan Arnbjørn, der er leder af Hanstholm Asylcenter.

Og det var da også mildt sagt uanstændige forhold, man tidligere på året kunne høre om – hele familier, med fire eller flere børn, tvunget til at leve sammen i årevis på helt ned til 14 kvadratmeter.

En opdeling, så der i det mindste blev ét værelse til børnene og ét til forældrene kan da kun være af det gode, ikke?

Nej, mener Dansk Folkeparti, der åbenbart ikke mener, at asylsøgere kan have det for skidt – her repræsenteret af integrationsordfører og præst Jesper Langballe:

Det var helt klart, at de 37 millioner ikke skulle bruges på mere plads. Vi ville overhovedet ikke drøfte kvadratmeter. Så det er et klart brud på den ordre, de har fået fra integrationsministeren og os, der står bag regeringens udlændingepolitik.

Det forlyder, at Jesper Langballe er villige til at høre om, hvad der kan gøres for at skaffe børnene færre kvadratmeter – evt. fulgt op af tremmer for væggene.

Stramninger for stramningernes egen skyld, uanset hvem og hvordan de rammer – Dansk Folkeparti i en nøddeskal.

Fra Sha3teely.

I tråd med dagens indlæg på min anden blog.

Hvem er venner, og hvem er fjender i Mellem-Østen lige for øjeblikket?

Check selv på The Middle East Buddy List på Slate.com.

Af Mazen Kerbaj.

Meget, meget svagere, end man skulle tro om et land med både forsvar, udmærket sikkerhedsgeografi og masser af oliemilliarder:

Landet er ødelagt, rendt over ende, gået i forrådnelse.

Hvad er der sket – hvad har ødelagt vort broderland?

Vel, i Oslo har der været en demo mod Israels fremfærd i Libanon , og til den demonstration kunne avisen Verdens Gang finde ikke mindre end TRE deltagere, der havde noget pænt at sige om Hizbollah. Og andet skal der simpelt hen ikke til at vælte vort broderland totalt af pinde, rende det over ende og ødelægge det for alle andre.

I hvert fald hvis man skal tro Pullimutten, den sædvanligvis velunderrettede kilde til oplysning om alverdens fortræd.

Ville visse kredse måske simpelt hen foretrække, at demonstrationer vendt mod f.eks. Israel simpelt hen var forbudt og skulle opløses ved politikølle, og er det i virkeligheden i denne manglende politikølle, at forrådnelsen ifølge disse mennesker består?

Vel, det finder vi selvfølgelig først ud af den dag visse mennesker får magt, som de har agt, og det sker forhåbentlig aldrig.

I mellemtiden vil jeg, om selve sagen, nøjes med at citere Gideon Levy fra dagens Ha’aretz:

Israel is hoping for the elimination of Nasrallah. That’s an atavistic impulse, even if understandable, which seeks the head of the enemy in order to prove our victory over him. There’s no wisdom or practicality in it. Once again it is worth reminding ourselves of the dozens of people Israel assassinated in Lebanon and the territories, from Sheikh Abbas Mussawi to Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, each replaced by someone new, usually more talented and dangerous than the predecessor. The goals of the war should not be dictated by dark impulses, even if they come in response to the wishes and demands of the mob. The only advantage that would benefit Israel from the elimination of Nasrallah would be that maybe it would bring about an end to the warring. But it can be halted even without that. The other desired goal, the return of the prisoners, will anyway only be achieved through negotiations to release prisoners. Israel could have done that before the war.

It is still too early to weigh out the balance of achievements and failures of this war. The day will come when it will become clear that it was purposeless, as are all wars of choice. Ceasing it now guarantees a limited achievement at a limited price. Continuing it guarantees a heavy price without any guarantee of a suitable reward. Therefore, Israel must cease and desist. The president of the United States can push us to continue the war all he wants, the prime minister of Britain can cheer us in parliament, but in Israel and Lebanon, the blood is being spilled, the horror is intensifying, the price is rising and it is all for naught.

Er det “forrådnelse”, om borgere i dette land eller Norge mener som Levy, og går på gaden for at vise det? Then so be it …

PS: Mavepusteren er inde på noget lignende.