Edition 2: No. 10
Editorial comment
Israel confronts a real peril from multiple forces within. On the one hand, there are reactionary elements that are intensely anti-democratic and racist. On the other, an increasing number of Israelis find the occupation suffocating and reject its unjust unconscionable patterns. Sherwood Ross, a Miami-based public relations consultant and director of the Anti-War News Service, aptly sums up the dilemma: “An intensifying conflict of values has put its (Israel’s) democratic nature under tremendous stress. When the government speaks daily about the existential threat from Iran, and urges an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, it ignores the existential threat that looms within.”
The peace movements may not be massive movements as yet, but they have been successful in stirring up the conscience of a critical mass of people who are creating the impact needed for a change in Israel. Reports of growing reverse emigration of Jewish populations only serve to demonstrate the empty claims of the regime whose Zionist ideological claims are not touching the popular chord they seek to with the masses.
Indeed, one sees upward rifts in the body-politic in Israel. And these have begun to worry the rulers who, in desperation, are frantically creating facts-on-the-ground and baseless propaganda to divert attention of the people from the crises within and of the very system of apartheid which now defines Israeli policies. These protests have found form and substance in a variety of movements across Israel and in the occupied territories. (For those Palestine Update readers who are keen to refer to their resources, we attach a wide ranging list).
Earlier this week, 18-year-old Israeli Noam Gur publicly announced her intention to refuse mandatory service in the Israeli army. Set to be drafted next month on 16 April, Gur stated in an open letter: “I refuse to take part in the Israeli army because I refuse to join an army that has, since it was established, been engaged in dominating another nation, in plundering and terrorizing a civilian population that is under its control”.
Gur is one of many who reject the claims of legitimacy by the occupation authorities. Palestine Update reproduces her interview and this can be found in the link:
http://electronicintifada.net/content/i-cant-take-part-these-crimes-israeli-refusenik-interviewed/11057
In solidarity,
Ranjan Solomon
Editor