a new campaign is out by the Israeli Ministry of Tourism, it’s titled Each one brings one!

On Wednesday, December 5^th 2012, the Israeli Supreme Court will conduct a hearing on the petition filed by the Coalition of Women for Peace against the anti-boycott law, which was passed by the Knesset in July 2011. This anti-democratic law is a blunt violation of political and civil liberties and is clearly a political attempt to violently crush civil protest and legitimate criticism against Israel’s policy in the occupied territories. The petition was filed alongside with Adalah, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, the Public Committee against Torture in Israel, HaMoked: Center for the Defence of the Individual, Yesh Din and other organizations.

The law refers to economic, cultural or academic boycott based on the specifics of its “linkage to the state of Israel, one of its institutions or an area under its control”. Individuals, bodies or corporations can prosecute anyone who knowingly publishes a public call for boycott or publicly participates in a call for boycott, without proving damages. Therefore, this law actually imposes sanctions and financial penalties on individuals who chose a non-violent political protest which includes boycott.

The Coalition of Women for Peace, who initiated Who Profits project several years ago, with the aim of exposing the economic aspects of Israel’s occupation, sees the anti-boycott law, first and foremost, as an attempt to silence this discourse. The law suppresses the protest against the occupation economy and silences the discussion on the financial interests of companies and state actors in the continuing Israeli control over Palestinian and Syrian land, resources and labor force.

Moreover, the law is unconstitutional, as its clear aim is to pose political censorship against organizations and civilians employing universally acceptable, legitimate and non-violent means of protest, such as boycott, in order to motivate the Israeli government and corporations to respect International and Israeli law and to cease from their violations of human rights.

The anti-boycott law received harsh criticism from the Israeli civil society and from the Knesset Members from the Left and from the Center. In February 2011, over 50 Israeli civil society organizations have signed an appeal to halt the legislative proceedings of the anti-boycott bill. European Parliament Members expressed decisive objection to the law. Yet, to no avail. This law, which interferes in personal moral decisions of every person, and violates the freedom of speech and political expression, the freedom of opinion, and the right to organize – came into force on July 11, 2011.

As the day of the Supreme Court Hearing approaches, we call on our allies and supporters, civil society organizations and individuals of conscience, to raise a clear voice of objection to the law.

We will not be silenced.
www.facebook.com/GlobalActionToBlockIsraelsAntiBoycottLaw

For further details please contact us:
whoprofits@gmail.com | cwp@coalitionofwomen.org

MOT (Ministry of Transport) is expected to run Palestinian buses from Tel-Aviv to West Bank, taking back Palestinian (slave) labor during the afternoon to their bantustans while avoiding interaction with the ethnic-supremacists on their buses to “Judea & Samaria”. if i understand correctly the buses are planned to make a final stop at the military checkpoints.

the article also includes a recent video (one of many) of a bus driver not allowing a Palestinian board the bus heading back to “Samaria”. it also raises the question of whether this is a type of racist policy but justifies it with recent friction between Jews and Palestinians on such buses. mostly blaming the Palestinian passengers, and thus such a policy will basically benefit everyone and is not racist.

official MOT response denies such segregation but acknowledges the intention of adding a bus line for the benefit of Palestinian workers. this decision was taken after consultation with Afikim bus company, police and Israeli army.

http://www.bdsmovement.net/2012/stop-a-new-israeli-massacre-in-gaza-boycott-israel-now-10030

Occupied Palestine, 15 November 2012 - On December 8, Israel carried out an attack on civilians in the occupied and besieged Gaza Strip, shooting 13-year-old Ahmad Abu Daqqa while he played football with friends. By December 14, Israel had intensified its attacks on Gaza and begun to implement an intensive plan of aggression that at the time of writing has killed at least 15 Palestinians, including at least 6 children, and injured over 150, predominantly civilians.

Despite biased Western media reports to the contrary, it is clear that Israel has initiated and escalated this new assault [1] on the eve of its upcoming parliamentary elections, underlining the time-honoured Israeli formula of Palestinian bodies for ballots.[2]

It is worth noting that a great majority of the Gaza population are refugees ethnically cleansed by Zionist militias and later the state of Israel during the 1948 Nakba and denied by Israel their UN-sanctioned right to return to their homes of origin.

This belligerent aggression is the most murderous and inhuman Israeli attack on the Palestinian people since the Gaza massacre of 2008-09, which killed more than 1,400 and injured more than 5,000 Palestinians, mainly civilians. The US and Europe have so far been successful in preventing Palestinian recourse to international justice mechanisms for Israeli crimes against humanity that took place during the massacre and that were documented by a UN Fact Finding Mission as well as a team of international law experts commissioned by the Arab League. Urgent action must be taken to prevent Israel from acting with such impunity again.

The 1.6 million Palestinians in Gaza have endured the worst of Israeli impunity and violence including being placed under a medieval siege, being subjected to deliberately created food insecurity and frequent acts of Israeli  state terrorism. It is the duty of all supporters of international law and universal human rights to hold Israel accountable through effective measures, such as those called for in the global, Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), the broadest coalition in Palestinian civil society, including all major political parties,  trade unions, social movements and NGO networks, calls on:

- People of conscience around the world to intensify BDS campaigns to hold Israel accountable, and to pressure their governments to immediately suspend arms trade with Israel, implement trade sanctions, and bring to justice all Israeli officials and military personnel who took part, at all levels, in Israel’s crimes against Palestinians in Gaza.

- Civil society organisations, including trade unions, universities, trade unions, student groups and NGOs, to boycott Israeli goods, divest from all Israeli and international companies that are complicit with Israel’s occupation and apartheid, and call for governments to implement military embargoes and trade sanctions on Israel.

- Governments, especially Arab and friendly governments, to respect their legal obligation to protect the Palestinian right to life and self-determination and to impose sanctions on Israel to immediately end its assault on, and cease its illegal siege of the occupied Gaza Strip and its policies of colonialism and apartheid that oppress the Palestinian people.

As this new attack on the people of Gaza shows, Israel will continue its belligerence, aggression and state terrorism unless it is made to pay a heavy price for its crimes against the Palestinian, Lebanese and other Arab peoples. As the last seven years of the global BDS movement and the long history of past international solidarity with the struggle against apartheid in South Africa have shown, the most effective, sustainable and morally consistent form of solidarity with the oppressed is for international civil society and conscientious people around the world to apply boycotts, divestment and sanctions against the oppressor and all institutions that collude in maintaining and justifying its oppression.

It is high time for BDS against Israel.  This is the clearest path to freedom, justice and equality for Palestinians and the entire region.

BDS National Committee (BNC)

[1] For a timeline that explains how Israel has initiated this new attack, see  http://imeu.net/news/article0023227.shtml

[2] http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/11/15/bodies-for-ballots.html

Oct 26, 2012 09:18 am | Adie Mormech

Mahmoud Sarsak’s refusal to attend the Barcelona Vs Real Madrid Classico match is a historic act of non-normalisation against Israel. For the hero of the Palestinian national team who fought his way free from an Israeli prison throughout a 96 day hunger strike ordeal, this is an act that sends a message to all others faced with the same question, “to normalise or not to normalise”

The huge debate sparked across Palestine was vigorous and at times went right to the core of the Palestinian resistance strategy against Israeli colonisation and apartheid. On Monday 1st October Mahmoud Sarsak called a press conference, accompanied by BDS activists, at the weekly demonstrations by prisoners’ families outside the Red Cross Offices.

“There is a difference between a person arrested with his weapon, in military uniform from inside his tank… and the arrest of an athlete at a crossing who was on his way to a professional sports club in the West Bank”. Mahmoud said on his refusal to attend the game. “I announce my readiness to meet Barcelona or any other Spanish club outside of the context of a joint invitation with Gilad Shalit, inviting me as a Palestinian athlete who experienced… the suffering of a hunger strike for freedom and dignity.”

The refusal came on the back of a chronology of events that began with a former Israeli corporal Gilad Shalit having a request accepted by a member of the Israeli foreign ministry to be hosted at the club for the ‘Clasico’ football match between Barcelona FC and Real Madrid. The decision was met with uproar as Spanish solidarity groups and supporters clubs began pressuring the club to reverse the decision. A statement was issued by over 30 Gaza clubs, within which Sarsak had commented that boycotts and non-normalisation were the only course of action, “until they allow Palestinians their basic rights, including the right to participate freely in sport and sports competitions.”

Despite the statement, the former Palestinian Authority preventive security chief Jibril Rajoub and now head of the Palestinian Football Federation, made a parallel application for himself, the Palestinian Ambassador to Spain and Mahmoud Sarsak to attend the clasico match in response to Shalit’s attendance. Barcelona duly accepted, and the Catalan football club made a statement entitled, “for peace and harmony in the Middle East” which could have been the name for so many collaborations that veil the coloniser-colonised relationship between the two sides.

Intense pressure was mounted from those in the PA affiliated media, such as journalist for Al Kas Qatari sport Mohammed Al Nakhala telling him to, “please go”. Sarsak courageously refused the invitation, upsetting those of the Palestinian Authority whose normalising exploits had become so “normal” as to rarely be challenged. The Palestinian Authority has proved after 19 years to have been nothing more than a Palestinian guard for Israel’s brutal occupation instead of confronting the aggressor or taking any forward steps towards justice in the region.

Critics also overlooked the fact that Mahmoud could later make the case without being tarnished by adhering to the typical Western political and media line that the conflict is about “two sides” needing to walk forward “together” towards “peace and reconciliation,” the strategy that has failed so demonstrably.

The Spanish group BDS Catalunya, together with 34 solidarity groups in Spain, had already organised another invitation for Sarsak to come to Spain, attend a Barcelona match and meet those footballers who had supported him during his prison ordeal. This platform would prioritise the voice of an innocent under military siege and occupation, as opposed to diluting it through an appearance alongside the former Israeli corporal Gilad Shalit in what Western media would at best have presented as some kind of ‘Middle East conflict football personality contest.’

Sarsak’s stance was a sobering reminder of the unshakeable steadfastness that the Palestinian struggle for liberation from Israel’s continuing colonisation had for so long embodied. It’s no surprise that it took one of the many who put their lives on the line with hunger strikes in Israeli jails to re-invigorate this spirit of resistance that on principle is not prepared to tolerate a status quo scenario with those entrenched in a process of denying a people freedom.

Blogger Shahd Abusalama, who with other Gaza youth produced a video in support of Sarsak’s decision said, “It was clear that Israel was going to use this platform to beautify their image in front of the watching global audience who are ignorant about the practices of occupation soldiers such as Shalit. We are proud of Mahmoud Sarsak for refusing to legitimise this attempt by Barcelona FC to equate Israeli occupation forces with Palestinians living under Israeli Apartheid.”

Importantly, the decision was itself a media story, but this time one that put a spotlight on the failed collaborative initiatives that have emerged since the signing of the Oslo accords in 1993. It has been one of the highest profile rejections to date of the relentless investment since then, mainly by Western countries, to hoodwink and redirect the energies of those fighting the Palestinian cause through joint hostings, meetings, initiatives, discussion groups all across Palestine and the world, while Israeli illegal settlements, land expropriations and violent attacks multiplied.

Oslo helped create a culture whereby normalisation became more and more acceptable, and it spread across the Arab world. It was in stark contrast to the first intifada from 1987-1993 at the heart of which were blanket strikes, widespread boycotts of Israeli goods, refusals to pay taxes, alternative economies lead by women based on cottage industries and massive popular resistance.

Mise à jour le Mardi, 23 Octobre 2012 21:56

Source

Last week I saw a riveting new Israeli film about moral corruption in the government.  The Gatekeepers features lengthy interviews with six former heads of the security service, Shin Bet, who repudiate the security policy they carried out. The men say that Palestinians committed acts of terror due to political causes Israeli leaders refuse to address, that the Israeli methods of attacking the symptoms are themselves a form of terrorism, and Israel should be talking to Hamas.

In the takeaway moment of the movie, Avraham Shalom, a ruthless former official now old and reflective, tells filmmaker Dror Moreh that the Israelis are really no different from the Nazis in their occupations of Belgium, France and Czechoslovakia.

If a member of Congress or a mainstream columnist said any of this, he or she would be run out of town on a rail. Palestinians have said as much for years and been vilified. Israelis are allowed.

Of course it is great news that this stark and stylish film was featured in the New York Film Festival and that it has been picked up by Sony Pictures Classics. The film’s prominence, following the earlier success of The Law in These Parts and 5 Broken  Cameras, signals a new discourse in the United States: Our prestige media are going to start talking about the vicious cruelty of the occupation.

And when you consider that this film was essentially authorized by the six former Shin Bet men– “They all approved the movie,” Moreh said at the screening I attended– it is a sign of a fresh political development: The U.S. liberal establishment is beginning to echo Ehud Olmert’s warning of five years ago, that Israel is going to commit national suicide if it does not end the occupation.

Fears of Israel’s demise motivated the Shin Bet men to talk to Moreh. They are trying to save Israel.

“We are making the lives of millions miserable,” says Carmi Gillon, one of the film’s stars. “You become a bit of a leftist,” says the severely-handsome Ami Ayalon, who issued similar warnings at J Street 3 years ago. While a third, Yuval Diskin, says that the prophesy of the late Yeshayahu Leibowitz should be etched in stone: that governing a million “foreigners” in the occupied territories would turn Israel into “a Shin Bet state.”

Our informants are murderers. The Shin Bet men stared crossing the red lines on immoral conduct nearly 30 years ago, when Shalom authorized the killings of Palestinians arrested in a famous bus hijacking case, and the line keeps moving. They may think they’ve redeemed themselves with this film, I don’t.

And the movie says that the moral crisis began in 1967 with the occupation, and suggests that the crisis would go away if the occupation over “foreigners” were at last reversed. The settlers are seen as an alien and grotesque underbelly of Israeli society. A sharp distinction is drawn between the expansionism of 1967 and the expansionism of 1948. As if the messianic settlers who plotted to blow up the Dome of the Rock are all that different from the messianic settlers who built Jewish-only communities in the Galilee.

The settler terrorists who tried to blow up the Temple Mount, by the way, were soon set free, the movie shows, with frightening footage. The religious nuts have deep roots inside the Israeli political establishment. And Gillon, on whose watch Yitzhak Rabin was murdered, warns that if settlers are actually pulled out of the West Bank, “I believe we’ll see another political assassination.”

Netanyahu is shown in this film to be part of the rightwing crowd inciting against Yitzhak Rabin after he signed the Oslo Accords. And Moreh is eager for his film to be released in Israel well ahead of the January elections, so that it might undermine Netanyahu’s approach in public opinion.  But even if Netanyahu goes, the occupation is sure to continue.

The historical footage of the occupation is very moving. We see older women breaking up stones so that children will have something to throw in the First Intifada. We see a Palestinian tailor trying to mend a jacket as an Israeli soldier with a rifle paces back and forth in front of him; and there is no doubt who has all the humanity in that scene. But casting these people as foreigners is a basic problem with Zionism; and even if the occupation ends, that mindset has to change.

I embrace the new honesty in the U.S. about Israeli society that this film represents, the film hardly goes far enough. And yes, I find it uncomfortable that I’m getting this information at the behest of the Israelis. When we saw 5 Broken Cameras, Norman Finkelstein said that seeing the movie violates the BDS guidelines as it had the support of an Israeli cultural ministry. Myself I can live with that contradiction, especially because 5 Broken Cameras is told from the Paletinian point of view. But the larger point is well taken. Having Israeli liberal Zionists as messengers to Americans about the conflict is a narrow lens. I kept wondering what Israeli leadership would look like if the government were actually representative of all its citizens– a question Moreh doesn’t care to explore.

At the screening I attended, Moreh was proud of being backed by Sony Pictures Classics, and predicted that Ayalon might come to screenings, as a kind of movie star. Asked whether he will take the film to synagogues, he joked that the New York Film Festival feels like a synagogue to him. I wonder if this film is a kind of atonement. We did horrible things. Now let’s end the occupation and move on!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZepXBymtkUQ

Committee members, who urged changes at BGU, wonder why Israel’s Council for Higher Education decided to take extreme measures and close the department, while it ignored similar criticism of Bar-Ilan University.

The international committee that recommended a series of changes be made at Ben Gurion University’s Department of Politics and Government has denounced a decision by Israel’s Council of Higher Education to shut down the department.

The department has been accused in the past of having an “anti-Zionist” bias.

The international committee, headed by Thomas Risse of the Free University of Berlin, called on Ben-Gurion University to hire more faculty members and make other changes. More controversially, it also said it was “concerned that the study of politics as a scientific discipline may be impeded by such a strong emphasis on political activism.”

Neve Gordon, a professor at the department, has come under fire for speaking out in support for boycotting Israel.

However, rather than implementing those recommendations, an Israeli Council for Higher Education subcommittee decided to close the department altogether, forbidding it register students as of the 2013-14 academic year.

Two alternative draft proposals, praising the department’s progress and not mentioning the possibility of closing it, were set aside. In a letter addressed to the CHE, the members of the international committee wrote that they were not party to the decision to close down the department and questioned the motive behind the move.

The international panel presented a letter, which Haaretz has obtained, accusing the CHE of taking only punitive measures against the Ben-Gurion University department, while ignoring recommendations regarding the political science department at Bar-Ilan University. Moreover, the panel noted that the measures taken against the BGU department were far more extreme than those recommended.

Over the past week, more than 300 faculty members of academic institutions all over Israel signed a petition protesting the CHE subcommittee’s decision.

We sense that academic freedom in Israel’s higher education system is in severe danger,” says the petition, initiated by Prof. Gilad Haran of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot. “Closure of this department constitutes the first instance, but certainly not the last, unless the current trend is halted.”

Other signatories include Prof. Galia Golan, a member of a previous CHE committee that pointed out problems in the department but refused to sign the report because it was influenced by political considerations. Over the years, some of the department’s staffers have been labeled radical leftists and accused of calling for an international cultural, academic and political boycott of Israel. Im Tirtzu, a group that says it promotes Zionist values, called on the university to “put an end to the [department's] anti-Zionist tilt.”

In wake of the department’s closure, Ben-Gurion University has opened a legal proceeding against the CHE. In an unusual move, an attorney for the university sent the CHE a letter in which he charged, “The actions of the sub-committee… were intensifying the disappointing, hard feeling that the subcommittee’s position regarding the university’s Department of Politics and Government was oppositional, and stems from secret agendas, which are not academically relevant, and which the CHE was not at liberty to consider… especially in light of clause 15 of the Council of Higher Education Law, which defines academic freedom.”

The letter goes on to demand the CHE hand over all documentation and data pertaining to the department, accompanied by an explanation regarding the “false accusations made against the university.”

An official at the CHE expressed surprise over the university’s to “pursue legal action on the backs of taxpayers, instead of acting to correct academically what an international panel of experts required of it.”

In contrast to what was written by the international panel, the CHE responded that “pertaining to the issue in Bar-Ilan University, the institution submitted an action plan in accordance with the committee’s recommendations and needs to make further changes.” Regarding the letter, the CHE said “The sub-committee’s work was being done with coordination with the panel of international experts.”

Bar-Ilan University responded that “The international committee that checked the departments in all the universities found advantages as well as deficiencies. Actions are being taken to correct them and these actions are being reported to the CHE.”

Source

« Nous, un groupe de femmes et d’hommes féministes, sommes convaincus que nous n’avons nul besoin de vivre dans un état militariste. Aujourd’hui Israëlest en mesure de mener une politique tournée résolument vers la paix qui ne nécessite pas une société militariste….

Alors qu’on cherche à nous faire croire que le pays est confronté à des menaces qui échappent à son contrôle, nous réalisons maintenant que l’expression « sécurité nationale » a souvent masqué des décisions prises pour adopter des actions militaires en vue de la réalisation d’objectifs politiques.

Nous ne voulons plus partager de tels choix. .. Nous ne voulons plus être mobilisés en permanence, élever des enfants pour qu’ils soient mobilisés, soutenir des partenaires, des frères et des pères mobilisés, alors que les responsables du pays continuent à avoir recours à l’armée plutôt que chercher d’autres solutions… »

C’est ainsi que débute la « charte » de New Profile. Le service militaire de trois ans pour les hommes et deux ans pour les filles puis le rappel des réservistes sont les conséquences les plus visibles de la militarisation. Mais il en est bien d’autres qui conditionnent l’orientation générale assignée à l’Etat d‘Israël.

Ainsi, le rôle majeur joué par l’industrie des armements dans l’économie du pays, cinquième plus grand exportateur d’armes dans le monde.

Par ailleurs, les dépenses militaires grèvent lourdement le budget de l’État qui ne parvient pas à assurer le bien-être de l’ensemble d’une population de plus en plus précarisée par la diminution de toutes les allocations sociales, la hausse du chômage et les coupes sombres opérées dans les subsides à l’enseignement public.

Mais c’est surtout l’esprit militariste qui mine en profondeur la société israélienne car il marque de son empreinte tout le système scolaire depuis l’école maternelle. On y apprend déjà aux bambins israéliens à se défendre, à honorer les héros – masculins – qui ont lutté pour la patrie et à considérer lesArabes comme des êtres inférieurs et comme des ennemis, au moins potentiels. Dans la plupart des écoles secondaires, les noms des anciens élèves tués pendant leur service militaire sont affichés en bonne place.

On apprend ainsi aux jeunes, filles et garçons, à percevoir la vie à travers le prisme des valeurs militaires, indispensables dans les guerres et les conflits censés menacer constamment Israël, et à considérer le service dans l’armée et les grades qu’ils y conquerront comme un atout majeur pour leur vie professionnelle. Par contre, les objecteurs de conscience et ceux qui refusent de servir dans les territoires occupés sont socialement marginalisés et se voient souvent privés du soutien de leurs amis, voire de leur famille.

Quant aux responsables politiques, beaucoup d’entre eux sont d’anciens officiers d’active et ont gardé l’esprit de corps qui était initialement le leur.

Dire non

Joseph Algazy avait rappelé dans son article “Ces soldats israéliens qui disent non” que, déjà en 1970, durant la guerre d’usure entre Israël et l’Egypte, un groupe de lycéens avait, à la veille de leur mobilisation, adressé une lettre ouverte à Golda Meir, alors Premier Ministre, « l’appelant à ne pas rejeter toute chance de paix. » 

Yechayahou Leibovitz fut le premier en 1969 à encourager les objecteurs de conscience. Après que le mouvement eut pris de l’extension, en été 1982, lors de la première guerre du Liban et la création de l’association Yesh Gvul(« il y a une limite »), il déclara : « Si je dis que ces jeunes objecteurs de conscience sont de vrais héros d’Israël, c’est parce qu’ils refusent d’obéir au pouvoir et au commandement de l’armée. C’est-à-dire deux institutions légales, dont les ordres transforment le caractère de l’État d’Israël, qui n’a pas été établi pour dominer un autre peuple. » (2)

En 2001, dès le début de la deuxième Intifada, Yesh Gvul accorda son soutien à ceux qui refusaient de servir dans les territoires palestiniens occupés, avec tout ce que cela implique : tirer sur des civils palestiniens, détruire leurs maisons, leurs entreprises et leurs oliveraies, les priver de soins médicaux et d’approvisionnement en eau, en aliments et en carburants ; enfin, prendre le parti des colons israéliens même lorsqu’ils agressent injustement des Palestiniens.

Un travail en profondeur

Entre-temps, le 30 octobre 1998, le New Profile Movement avait organisé une journée d’étude au terme de laquelle les quelque 150 participants déclaraient : « Nous voulons un système éducatif radicalement différent, une éducation civique réellement démocratique, qui enseigne la pratique de la paix et la résolution de conflits plutôt que de dresser les enfants à être enrôlés dans l’armée et à accepter l’état de guerre. »

Il s’agissait pour New Profile de faire un travail en profondeur sur la société israélienne dans le sens de sa « civil-isation ».

Dès 2001, avec la deuxième Intifada, New Profile se rendit compte que cette « civil-isation » devait comporter un volet supplémentaire : la lutte contre le racisme des Israéliens envers les Palestiniens, tant ceux qui sont citoyens d’Israël que ceux qui vivent dans les territoires occupés.

Il ne pouvait donc plus être question de dépeindre le Palestinien comme un être inférieur qu’on peut impunément opprimer, humilier, dépouiller de ses biens, expulser de sa maison, voire tuer. Il fallait aussi détruire dans l’imaginaire collectif israélien l’image du soldat – masculin – présenté comme un héros qui non seulement défend la nation israélienne mais qui montre sa supériorité sur le Palestinien.

Les militants de New Profile mènent aussi des actions concrètes, par exemplee en aidant les Palestiniens à replanter des oliviers et à ramasser leurs olives à l’ouest du « Mur de séparation ». .Elles rejoignent ainsi d’autres associations pacifistes israéliennes, notamment la Coalition of Women for Peace.

Elles exercent surtout une grande influence en apportant leur soutien aux jeunes lycéens qui refusent d’être enrôlés (shministim). Beaucoup d’entre eux ne cherchent même plus à se faire réformer en obtenant une dispense pour raison de santé. Ils préfèrent faire savoir par des lettres ouvertes qu’ils ne veulent plus servir dans une armée qui a perdu toute moralité.

Les autorités militaires et politiques israéliennes ont bien compris le danger que de telles attitudes représentent pour le maintien du statut d’Israël, « An Army with a State », selon l’expression qu’on trouve sous la plume d’Ilan Pappe.(3)

C’est ainsi qu’en septembre 2008, le procureur général d’Israël a annoncé que l’incitation à ne pas faire son service militaire pourrait être puni d‘une peine de prison pouvant aller de sept à quinze ans de prison.

Et le 26 avril dernier, précisément la veille du Memorial Day où les Israéliensrendent hommage aux soldats morts pour la défense du pays, la police a investi les domiciles de 6 militantes et militants de New Profile, les ont soumis à des interrogatoires musclés et ont confisqué leurs ordinateurs, ainsi que ceux de leurs proches. Un décret de la police les enjoignait même de ne pas parler de ces événements pendant trente jours.

En réalité, c’est l’inverse qui se produisit. Des discussions eurent bon train au sein des associations pacifistes, surtout féministes. Et, le 30 avril, laCoalition of Women for Peace organisa une grande manifestation à Tel Aviv avec, entre autres, comme slogan : “We are all New Profile”. C’est un peu comme si « la mauvaise conscience d’Israël » s’éveillait davantage.

Le chancre militariste

La conjonction des actions entreprises par les divers mouvements pacifistes ne cesse de s’élargir et de s’approfondir. Elle atteint de nouvelles couches de la population et constitue une menace sérieuse à laquelle doivent parer le gouvernement et l’armée d’Israël. La créativité et l’audace des opposants témoignent de leur résolution à extirper le chancre militariste qui met en péril la société israélienne tout entière.

On assiste dès lors de plus en plus souvent en Israël à des épreuves de force entre, d’un côté, les politiques et les militaires partisans d’actions violentes contre les Palestiniens et, d’un autre côté, ceux qui, dans la société civile, s’y opposent, quelquefois au prix de leur liberté.

À nous, progressistes de la Diaspora, de leur manifester notre attachement et notre soutien matériel et moral. We are all New Profile. ¦

Source