Courage to Refuse -a call to IDF officers and soldiers

31/7/06 -

Capt. (Res.) Amir Paster is the first refuser of the 2nd Lebanon war to be imprisoned.

Capt. (Res.) Amir Paster ImprisonedCapt. (Res.) Amir Paster (32) an infantry officer and student at Tel Aviv University, has been sentenced to 28 days in military prison for refusal to take part in the current Lebanon campaign.

At his trial, Capt. Paster declared that "taking part in this war runs contrary to the values upon which he was brought up".Speaking on behalf of the refusenik support group Yesh Gvul, movement spokesman Ishai Menuchin reported contacts with about a dozen reserve officers and soldiers who have received emergency call-up and plan to refuse to take part in the Lebanon operation.


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16/7/06
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/739959.html
Lily Galili Haaretz

The Lebanon 2006 war has produced its first conscientious objector - Staff Sergeant Itzik Shabbat, a 28-year-old TV producer. He refused to comply with an emergency order (Tsav 8) to report today for reserve duty in the territories in order to free forces in the standing army for the war in Lebanon.

Shabbat, a resident of Sderot, had not yet decided last night whether he would go to his reserve unit today and announce there that he was refusing to do reserve duty or whether he would not report at all and be considered absent.

"I know people will attack me and ask how could I not take part in this war when Qassams are falling on my hometown and Katyushas on the towns in the north," he told Haaretz. "In my opinion, only this type of opposition that I've chosen will put an end to the madness that is going on now and will shatter the false feeling that the entire home front supports this unnecessary war that is based on deceptive considerations.

" He added: "Someone has to be the first to break the silence and it will be me.

It is a shame that my order was signed by another Sderot resident, Defense Minister Amir Peretz." Shabbat says he has already informed his commander and other officers in the unit of his intentions and he is prepared to pay the price.

In the past Shabbat, considered an outstanding commander, also refused to serve in the territories and sat in prison for 28 days.

He was one of the signatories to the petition of the refusal movement, Courage to Refuse. However he says that his present decision is not connected with the need to relieve a unit in the territories but rather with his opposition to the war in Lebanon. The larger Yesh Gvul movement started by opposing the 1982 Lebanon war and only later the territories, too

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Petition signed by reserve combat officers and soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces

Current signers number: 550

http://www.seruv.org.il/defaulteng.asp
http://www.refusersolidarity.net/
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a call to all others ..do you have the courage to refuse?

Qana..Another massacre

Just For you my dear bloggers who might pass by..Please stop and read

Israeli missiles hit several buildings in a southern Lebanon village as people slept Sunday, killing at least 56, most of them children, in the deadliest attack in 19 days of fighting



Qana, in the hills east of the southern port city of Tyre, has a bloody history. In 1996, Israeli artillery killed more than 100 civilians who had taken refuge at a U.N. base in the village. That attack sparked an international outcry that helped end an Israeli offensive.

And Today..More Children and civilians were brutally murdered

and more........







54 killed including 37 children






Is this in any way connected to humanity?

Lebanese war victims buried in mass grave

By KATHY GANNON, Associated Press Writer

TYRE, Lebanon - The coffins were turned in the direction of Mecca, the Muslim holy city, and a Shiite cleric recited the prayer for the dead before the 31 plywood caskets were lowered Saturday into a new mass grave

The smallest of the crude coffins belonged to 1-day-old Sawsan Tajeldin. She died in her mother's arms when an Israeli missile smashed into their white-flagged car five days ago. They were fleeing their home in Bazouriya for Tyre, just three miles distant

Sawsan's body, along with that of her mother, was trapped in the car for two days before ambulance workers were prepared to risk the road to retrieve them, said Abdul Shadi, a volunteer civil defense worker in Tyre.

At the grave site, Sawsan's tiny body, wrapped in a black plastic sheet, was taken from the back of a refrigerated truck where it had been kept along with 30 other victims until Saturday's mass burial.

The overpowering smell of decaying bodies hung in the air. Volunteers and Lebanese military men wore rubber gloves and surgical masks as they lifted each body from the truck and placed them in the marked coffins.

At the grave site, the cleric Sheik Akil Zain from Bint Jbail led prayers. Four of his relatives were among the dead.

"Today my heart is crying, not just for them but for all those who are talking but doing nothing, the United Nations. I cry for them. This is not humanity this war."

Oil from bombed plant covers Lebanon shore

AP Photo: A layer of crude oil covers the Ramlet el-Beida* public beach in Beirut, Lebanon Friday,...

BEIRUT, Lebanon - A black coat of oil now covers the Lebanese capital's once-beautiful sandy Mediterranean shore, spilled from a power plant that was knocked down by Israeli warplanes two weeks ago.

Fishermen say hundreds of oil-coated fish have been washed ashore in what is the country's worst ever environmental disaster

About 80 miles of Lebanon's shores had been affected by a spill of more than 110,000 barrels of oil from the Jiyeh plant, about 12 miles south of Beirut, the city's mayor, Abdel Monem Ariss, said Friday. The plant was in flames after it was hit in Israeli air raids, cutting electricity to many areas in the capital and south Lebanon.

A shipment of 10 trucks from Kuwait containing material and equipment was to arrive Friday night via
Syria to help contain the spill, but crews cannot get to the shores to start cleanup work because of the hostilities, Ariss said.

"It's going to take a long time to clean it because most of our shores are rocky shores and when the oil sticks to the rock you have to scrub it (by hand)," he said.

Fishermen on Beirut's only sandy public beach of Ramlet al-Baida said the black slick appeared about 10 days ago. Some residents have said they had problems breathing.

*Ramlet el-Beida

in arabic means the white sand..Now ..Black!!!!!!

To Beirut With Love

No, I will not write about the attack on Lebanon,I will not write about the war or the death of children and civilians,or about the cruelty of the indifferent world,not even about the silence of the lambs..

I just want to write about Beirut..The city I love and visit every year, that when left ....It was being attacked viciously

Lebanon,that small tiny country that clings to the Mediterranean Sea like child clings to a mothers side,thriving on the life of that ancient sea,flaunting its beauty that is rarely found in any other country,with its green slopes and greener valleys,and mountains covered with snow even in hot summer days.


Lebanon now is being attacked with merciless weapons,Lebanese people,who cherish life are being murdered their bodies lie there in the streets waiting for some paramedic to pick the pieces and announce another statistic

Four and a half million live there and seven millions are scattered all over the world..The Lebanese have left their beautiful country and lived elsewhere. and Now it is happening all over more are leaving more are waiting for a decision to end this craziness and stop this massacre Why would a country's fate be decided by others other than its citizens?

Why Do we sit there and wait,wait for others to decide for us what should it be? life or Death? >>>>

I've always hated politics and politicians as much as I hate liars and lying,hypocrisy and hypocrites..So I'll stop here

Morality is not on our side

In Their own Words

Morality is not on our side
By Ze'ev Maoz

The writer is a professor of political science at Tel Aviv university.

There's practically a holy consensus right now that the war in the North is a just war and that morality is on our side. The bitter truth must be said: this holy consensus is based on short-range selective memory, an introverted worldview, and double standards.

This war is not a just war. Israel is using excessive force without distinguishing between civilian population and enemy, whose sole purpose is extortion. That is not to say that morality and justice are on Hezbollah's side. Most certainly not.

But the fact that Hezbollah "started it" when it kidnapped soldiers from across an international border does not even begin to tilt the scales of justice toward our side. Let's start with a few facts. We invaded a sovereign state, and occupied its capital in 1982.

In the process of this occupation, we dropped several tons of bombs from the air, ground and sea, while wounding and killing thousands of civilians. Approximately 14,000 civilians were killed between June and September of 1982, according to a conservative estimate.

The majority of these civilians had nothing to do with the PLO, which provided the official pretext for the war. In Operations Accountability and Grapes of Wrath, we caused the mass flight of about 500,000 refugees from southern Lebanon on each occasion.

There are no exact data on the number of casualties in these operations, but one can recall that in Operation Grapes of Wrath, we bombed a shelter in the village of Kafr Kana which killed 103 civilians.

The bombing may have been accidental, but that did not make the operation any more moral. On July 28, 1989, we kidnapped Sheikh Obeid, and on May 12, 1994, we kidnapped Mustafa Dirani, who had captured Ron Arad. Israel held these two people and another 20-odd Lebanese detainees without trial, as "negotiating chips." That which is permissible to us is, of course, forbidden to Hezbollah. Hezbollah crossed a border that is recognized by the international community.

That is true.

What we are forgetting is that ever since our withdrawal from Lebanon, the Israel Air Force has conducted photo-surveillance sorties on a daily basis in Lebanese airspace. While these flights caused no casualties, border violations are border violations.

Here too, morality is not on our side.

So much for the history of morality. Now, let's consider current affairs. What exactly is the difference between launching Katyushas into civilian population centers in Israel and the Israel Air Force bombing population centers in south Beirut, Tyre, Sidon and Tripoli?

The IDF has fired thousands of shells into south Lebanon villages, alleging that Hezbollah men are concealed among the civilian population. Approximately 25 Israeli civilians have been killed as a result of Katyusha missiles to date. The number of dead in Lebanon, the vast majority comprised of civilians who have nothing to do with Hezbollah, is more than 300.

Worse yet, bombing infrastructure targets such as power stations, bridges and other civil facilities turns the entire Lebanese civilian population into a victim and hostage, even if we are not physically harming civilians.

The use of bombings to achieve a diplomatic goal - namely, coercing the Lebanese government into implementing UN Security Council Resolution 1559 - is an attempt at political blackmail, and no less than the kidnapping of IDF soldiers by Hezbollah is the aim of bringing about a prisoner exchange.

There is a propaganda aspect to this war, and it involves a competition as to who is more miserable.

Each side tries to persuade the world that it is more miserable. As in every propaganda campaign, the use of information is selective, distorted and self-righteous.

If we want to base our information (or shall we call it propaganda?) policy on the assumption that the international environment is going to buy the dubious merchandise that we are selling, be it out of ignorance or hypocrisy, then fine.

But in terms of our own national soul searching, we owe ourselves to confront the bitter truth - maybe we will win this conflict on the military field, maybe we will make some diplomatic gains, but on the moral plane, we have no advantage, and we have no special status.

The Savage attack on Lebanon_Update

*Over 400 civilians were killed

*More than 1600 wounded *Over 700,000 persons (Lebanese population: 4,000,000) were forced to leave their homes

*Massive destruction of Lebanon's infrastructure: Beirut international airport, fuel depots, sea ports, roads,bridges

*Use of internationally prohibited chemical weapons *Raids on Lebanese army all over Lebanon *Destruction of mobile network systems

*Destruction of Lebanese TV channels main antenna receivers

*Complete destruction of privately owned industry in South &Bekaa of Lebanon: dairy, paper towel, plastic, cartoon, glass and pharmaceutical factories.

*Psychological terror war: *Israel threatens civilians in South Lebanon, by leaflets and phone calls, ordering them to leave their homes or causing them enough fear to make them do so.

*Air, sea & land siege all over Lebanese territory

* This is the up date of the savage Israeli attack on Lebanon over seventeen consecutive days that has destroyed lives, properties and infrastructure.

Is it a justified Israeli revenge because Hezbollah imprisoned two soldiers? A simple exchange of those two soldiers with Lebanese hostages that UN &international community have forgotten in Israeli prisons for over twenty years could have solved the whole issue. Of course that was only a fake pretext.

The truth is that Israel, strongly backed by USA have been preparing for this war for over a year in order to terminate Hezbollah, the Lebanese resistance, as part of the final steps to achieve its ultimate goal: "the New Middle East" as per Mrs. Rice. The "New Middle East", whereby there will be a unique economic & military power:"Great Israel" dominating all other neighboring countries creating disequilibrium of forces & wealth in this part of the world. In this respect US & other Western countries have been supplying Israel over decades with most sophisticated weapons that makes it the most powerful military force in Middle East .

The military wealth of Israel goes up to internationally prohibited chemical weapons (that they are currently using against Lebanese civilians) & nuclear bombs (estimated to close to 200 nuclear explosive devices). The terrorist state, as the atrocious photos show, is teaching its kids to sign on rockets & send them as gifts to Lebanese children, which only raises hatred among Israeli children towards their neighbors & leaves no space for peace even on long term.

For the past decades, the Lebanese national army was not supplied with weapons due to international pressure protecting Israel interest and aiming to have the army as a simple police on the Israeli border without any significant weapons to defend the country.

Lebanese urge all free and civilized nations around the world to stand beside Lebanon, support our country, put pressure on you governments to stop this humanitarian crisis and oppose the slaughterer Israel. We thank all who still believe in justice and that they should preserve what is left of human rights and United Nations and all who stood beside Lebanon.History will recall it for all of You!

We hold all who supported Israel or remained silent responsible for the genocide in Lebanon and for all the terror around the world. And if our destiny is not to rely on world's justice, we still believe in God's justice that will curse all those leaders.

Long live Lebanon Strong, Free & United!