Gush Shalom buiten de wet!!??
Tom Welschen - 08.08.2002 12:04
Gush Shalom is één van de meest aktieve israelische organisaties tegen de bezetting en voor een rechtvaardige vrede in het land van Israele en Palestina. De regering Sharon lijkt voorbereidselen te treffen on haar buiten de wet te plaatsen
Ha'aretz editorial joins the choir against Gush Shalom
Adam Keller of Gush Shalom
The following is the editorial of today's Ha'aretz - and our answer which we prepared. It is disappointing to see that a liberal paper has no word of criticism of governmental incitement against peace activists - several ministers calling us names, and Justice Minister Shetreet using the word "traitors" on the radio.
Haaretz:
The blindness of political purity
Activists from Gush Shalom, the leftist peace group, have sent letters to 15 Israel Defense Forces officers, warning that the movement is collecting evidence about actions that took place under their command in the territories for submission to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, on suspicion that the officers committed war crimes.
This week, the prime minister asked the attorney general to investigate the Gush Shalom leaders. Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein said that the state prosecutor had yet to form an opinion on whether legal steps could be taken against the Gush Shalom activists. But irrespective of the legal questions, it is difficult not to regard Gush Shalom's action as injudicious and wrong, and its damage is certainly going to overshadow the pure intentions of the activists.
Gush Shalom is a political movement that promotes the campaign against the occupation in various ways. These include organizing rallies and demonstrations, as well as monitoring IDF activity in the territories and publishing the results of this monitoring through various media channels.
This is all acceptable in any democracy. Collecting seemingly incriminating material against officers in an army that operates under the law in a sovereign state, according to the instructions of an elected government, can also be considered worthy civic action, on one condition - that the gathered information is published or presented to the law enforcement agencies in the country.
A Gush Shalom spokesman told Ha'aretz that the movement was considering passing on the information it collected to The Hague "only if our appeals to the courts in Israel are to no avail." But even with this reservation, the decision to warn IDF officers is problematic. The inherent working assumption of the activists and the implicit threat in the letters to the officers is that those state institutions meant to implement the principles of democracy and protect the rule of law - including the courts, the parliament and the press - are insufficient, in Gush Shalom's eyes, as legal institutions. The movement is in effect stating that if it is not satisfied (presumably with convictions), it will seek out international forums to get what it believes would be true justice.
With this political purity, Gush Shalom is causing great damage to public life in Israel - and harm to its own cause. Of all people, leftist peace activists are the ones who are needed to strengthen the press and to find ways to convince the public and encourage the state prosecutor and the legal system to investigate every problematic incident in the army. Putting the International Criminal Court - with all the problematics of its structure - above the state's legal system is a blunt vote of no confidence in the
institutions and public opinion in Israel.
The decision to send evidence to the international court in The Hague shows contempt for those who have not given up the continuing campaign for an end the occupation and for peace - people who also work under difficult conditions in the bitter conflict that has given birth to profound disappointment and a crisis in the left, but are interested in doing so in an open and legitimate political debate.
_
Handing over evidence to the international court will not inspire Israeli public opinion to turn against blatantly illegal orders given or executed in the territories. On the contrary, it could even achieve the opposite result.
[If you want to react, you can do it by writing a letter to the editor:  letters@haaretz.co.il - or by addressing the editors at: editor@haaretz.co.il What follows is our own reaction - which was sent to the Hebrew and the English edition:]
Dear Sir
The editorial of Ha'aretz, Tuesday Aug. 6, was devoted to an attack upon Gush Shalom, which in fact joins the campaign launched against our movement by Prime Minister Sharon.
It is rather disappointing that the editorial uses factually untrue arguments. In it you take the position that "collecting seemingly incriminating material against officers in an army that operates under the law in a sovereign state, according to the instructions of an elected government, can also be considered worthy civic action, on one condition - that the gathered information is published or presented to the law enforcement agencies in the country."
The editorial writer(s) seem unaware that Gush Shalom did precisely that. Each one of the letters sent to various military officers was simultaneously sent to all the papers, including Ha'aretz, and as a matter of fact we made considerable efforts at the time to get your reporters interested - to no avail.
Also, from each of these letters there were copies sent to the military prosecution, to the army chief-of-staff and to the Minister of Defense, so that the competent authorities had a full chance to take judicial action had they wanted to. We were not surprised that they didn't, since the actions about which we wrote to various officers mostly constituted part of the official policies of the state of Israel and its armed forces. Such acts as the demolition of houses, collective punishments and the arrests of family members of suspected terrorists for the sole reason of their being family members are common and approved parts of official policies - and nevertheless, they constitute serious violations of international law and specifically of the Fourth Geneva Convention. We had no difficulty in finding evidence connecting a particular officer to such acts. In most cases, the evidence was provided in press interviews in which the officers admitted - often boasted of - the particular act. In such cases, we felt duty bound to write such an officer and warn him that his acts, or those which he had ordered his subordinates to do, constitute violations of international law.
It is difficult for us to believe that the existing Israeli judicial system, military or civilian, could deal with offences of this kind - though we will be extremely happy to be proven wrong. Possibly, at some time there will be created in Israel an institute similar to the "Truth Commission" of post-Apartheid South Africa, which could take up this burden. Otherwise, the issue is likely to arrive, sooner or later, at an international judicial forum of one kind or another.
It is surprising that Ha'aretz did not see fit to refer to the article published yesterday (August 5) by your correspondent Amir Oren, in which he referred to plans being prepared at the Israeli Army's general staff for "a new operation, more harsh than 'Defensive Shield' and 'Determined Path', whose
implementation may result in "The death of thousands of Palestinians"(!). Without knowing the details, which your correspondent did not enumerate, this horrifying news item arouses a terrible suspicion of mass war crimes being prepared. If these crimes ever come to perpetrated, the International tribunal in the Hague is likely to initiate action on its own, without waiting for "Gush Shalom".
Adam Keller, spokesperson of Gush Shalom, Tel-Aviv
 http://www.indymedia.org.il/imc/israel/webcast/display.php3?article_id=34723
In today's Israel, if you are Jew and fight occupation, you are a TRAITOR! Israeli peace group Gush Shalom needs our support NOW!
Dear brothers and sisters-in-arts,
Israeli peace group Gush Shalom is being targeted by Ariel Sharon and his gang. Since the movement sent letters to many military officers and Israeli media informing that was collecting evidence about war crimes commited by Israel Occupation Forces against Palestinian civilians, Gush Shalom activists has been victims of governmental incitement, including Justice Minister Shetreet refering to them as "traitors". Major Israeli paper Ha'aretz have joined this defamation campaign trying to move Israeli opinion against pacifists, who are among the few voices contrary to illegal and immoral occupation of Palestinian territories by Israel, a nation sinked in a nationalist hysteria. We can't leave those courageous activists alone. I beg you, decent and good sense people worldwide, to send both SUPPORT messages to Gush Shalom and PROTEST letters to Ha'aretz newspaper.
Gush Shalom: webmaster@gush-shalom.org
Ha'aretz editor: editor@haaretz.co.il
Thank you very much!
www.gush-shalom.org
Yes, but let's look into it...
by Shabtai 3:36am Thu Aug 8 '02
I agree- Gush Shalom needs our support now. They have done nothing illegal (since when is keeping records illegal in a self proclaimed demacracy, such as ISrael), and the whole thing reminds of Salem in the 17th century. Witch hunt.
However, before we attack Haaretz (which we will do in a minute), let's remember one thing- Haaretz gave the most favorable report of all. You should have read some of the other papers.
Now, let's trash Haaretz. I am not suprised by the editorial. In today's paper there was an advertisment (which those who only read the online version didn't see) for Moledet Party- the group which prides itself with the phrase "transfer will bring peace". A few months back Haaretz printed an ad for "Oslo criminals to justice", which called for the arrest of Yosi Bailin, Shimon Peres, etc., for their part in Oslo. Not because Oslo was a plan that raped the Palestinians, but rather since it "gave them guns to kill us with". Since it gave them hope of a country of their own.
Any paper willing to print such advertisment, obviously has no moral value. Hence, the criticizm of Gush Shalom, which is in essence a criticism of democracy, is just like an ad- making money, this time by keeping the readers. Trash the "bad guys" and you won't lose readers.
Israel, instead of wasting time and money on frying Gush Shalom at the stake, should use those resources to actually look into Gush Shalom's claims, and jail the officers who are guilty- after, of course, since we do believe in democracy, a court trial.
But Israel is all about frying the innocent and pampering the guilty.
For more on that read:
http://www.indymedia.org.il/imc/israel/webcast/34735.html
In the meantime.... carry on Gush, we are behind you one all the way!
http://www.indymedia.org.il/imc/israel/webcast/display.php3?article_id=34753
 E-Mail: welschen@tiscalinet.it  Website: http://htpp://www.gush-shalom.org
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