The Cry of the Jewish People
Holy Land in Turmoil – The Only Solution
This statement was delivered by Rabbi Yisroel D. Weiss of Neturei Karta International, a world wide movement of anti-Zionist Jews, at the “Free Palestine & End Israeli Occupation Rally” hosted by “The Coalition of Arab-American, Muslim Organizations” in Washington DC on February 7, 2002.
Daily the death toll mounts in the Holy Land.
Innocents of all faiths – Moslems, Christians and Jews, are killed, wounded and maimed.
Politicians search for answers. On both sides of the conflict there are calls for more war or more peace.
Yet, despite all the efforts of hawks and of doves, a true and lasting peace seems to be further and further away.
Why?
Why after a century of struggles, of half a century of wars is there no peace in the Middle East?
We, Orthodox Jews, believe that the Torah supplies us with the answer.
We believe that the Creator has told us that Zionism is wrong.
We believe that he has told us that until the Zionist agenda is ended there can be no peace in the Holy Land.
Why is Zionism wrong?
In simple terms it is wrong because it is a movement that demands of the Jewish people that they replace the Holy Torah with a secular nationalism.
It further demands that we violate the terms of our exile by conquering the Holy Land.
And, last, its cruel treatment of the Palestinian people is against the Creator’s imperative that we deal justly and kindly with all men.
The solution to the seemingly never ending war in the Middle East is simply stated-It is the placing of the entire land -including Jerusalem and al-Aksa- under Palestinian rule.
Too many innocents have died already for this urgent agenda to be delayed any longer.
There are many Jews in Jerusalem, throughout the Holy Land and the entire world who sympathize with Palestinian suffering. There are many Jews who desire that the Palestinian people secure their just rights. There are many Jews who work and pray daily that this happen.
To all our Arabic and Islamic brethren around the world, let the message go forth today, that your quarrel is not with the Jewish people, the people of the Torah. We stand with you in your suffering. We feel your pain. We are with you.
Let there be no more innocent victims, neither Palestinian nor Jew.
Let us pray that the Zionist state will, with God’s help, soon become a distant and dismal memory.
Let the Jewish people around the world devote themselves to their only proper task, God’s service and the sanctification of His name by acts of kindness towards all men.
May the Palestinian people know no more agony and may we all be worthy of the day when we will all worship the Creator in joy and peace and the world shall no more experience suffering. Amen.
www.netureikarta.org – info@netureikarta.org
Israeli Soldiers Protest, Refuse To Serve in Occupied Palestine.
Feb 10 2002 (UPI) – Two hundred Israeli officers and men in reserve combat units have signed a petition saying they will no longer serve in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
When the petition was first published last week, 50 officers and men had signed it. By Friday, their numbers had quadrupled amid a heated debate on what soldiers in uniform may — and may not — do in a democratic society.
The group — including majors and lower ranking officers in paratroop, infantry, armored corps, artillery, intelligence and other units — said they had served all over the occupied territories and were issued “commands and directives that had nothing to do with the security of our country.” The orders sole purpose was “perpetuating our control over the Palestinian people,” they said.
The West Bank and the Gaza Strip were occupied by Israel in the 1967 war. Gaza and areas of the West Bank were returned to Palestinian control as part of the 1993 Oslo agreement. Israeli troops have moved back massively into Palestinian areas since September 2000 when violence erupted as the start of a new intifada, or struggle.
The price of the continued occupation “is the loss of the Israel Defense Force’s human character and the corruption of the entire Israeli society,” they added.
The petition initiators belong to a paratroop company that recently concluded a tour of duty in the Gaza Strip. They were reluctant to talk to foreign reporters but outlined their criticisms in interviews to the local press.
Lt. David Sonnestein, a computer engineer, complained to Yediot Aharonot about the callousness in which the army destroys Palestinian greenhouses, fields and houses. Having served in the settlement of Kfar Darom, in the central Gaza Strip, he said: “You stand in a position with soldiers shot at all the time, because they (the Palestinians) do not want us to be there and you, as a commander, shoot and order to destroy houses.”
Staff Sgt. Ariel Shatil, an artilleryman in the reserves and a computer specialist in civilian life, said he was at Nisanit in the northern Gaza Strip. “Every night there was shooting. We begin, then react,” he said.
Uri Dotan, discharged from an infantry unit, recalled a boy who ran to their roadblock with a rubber bullet stuck in his bleeding hand, and a pregnant woman who was not allowed through a roadblock his soldiers manned because she did not seem to be in her ninth month. The woman was forced to take a route around the roadblock and lost her baby, he told the Ha’ir weekly newspaper.
Soldiers talked of settlers beating Palestinians.
“They place you at roadblocks, you break into houses and make arrests and then tell yourself ‘God, I am a good guy. How did I get to be on the bad side?'” Yishai Rosen-Zvi told Ha’aretz.
Military Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Shaul Mofaz slammed the petition signatories as having an ideological ax to grind.
“There is no room for reservists to decide which tasks they fulfill and which they do not,” he told the army’s general staff. Mofaz said the move was “incitement to rebellion.”
Critics have argued soldiers have every right to protest when they are out of the army and express their preferences when they vote, but they must perform such tasks when ordered. Others argued it is precisely these type of people, who are sensitive to morals and human rights, who should be out there in Palestinian areas to keep others in check.
Some senior officers have talked of sacking men who refuse to serve wherever ordered, but the army seems to be inclined to settle the problem quietly. Sometimes it is possible to do so by sending soldiers to watch towers or army kitchens so they do not come in touch with Palestinians.
Combat reservists units are under special strain as their numbers are relatively small and anyone who really wants to get out can. The way to deal with the problem is to try to persuade them rather than punish them, a senior military source indicated Friday.
The move nevertheless signals an undercurrent that rattles the apparent Israeli unity in the face of the year-and a-half intifada.
“When we get to the point at which reserve soldiers think they’re in the wrong war, that’s when we’ll know we have crossed the red line,” commentator Joel Marcus wrote in Haaretz Friday.
The petition initiative recalls past protests by combat officers who returned from the front lines.
The commander of one of the Israeli positions that the Egyptians overran near the Suez Canal in the 1973 war launched protests that eventually led to the downfall of the then Prime Minister Golda Meir.
In 1978 three officers who feared then-Prime Minister Menahem Begin was going to renege on the peace arranged another protest that led to the creation of the Peace Now movement that is still active.
Officers who took part in the 1982 Lebanon War played a key role in causing unrest over the real aims of the conflict and misleading accounts by then-Defense Minister Ariel Sharon.
That unrest, and the massacre of Palestinians by the Lebanese Christian militia allied to the Israelis in the Sabra and Chatila Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut sparked protests that eventually led to Sharon’s resignation. Sharon remained in the cabinet but was barred from being defense minister.