Letters to Israeli Ambassador No 4

SHAME

Sent to: Israeli Ambassador in Ireland
info@dublin.mfa.gov.il
25 July 2014 

Dear Boaz

I read in the Irish Times that you said “I don’t feel even a bit of shame; I feel a lot of pride being part of this country. I was also in the Israeli army, the most moral army in the world.”


You feel "a lot of pride" being part of Israel.  Most people feel pride in their country - until their country shames them.  Your country has shamed you yet again but you feel pride?  Then you are part of the shame.

You were in the Israeli army.  Most people who are unfortunate enough to go into killing armies are taught that their own armies are wonderful.  Most thinking people realize in time that they have been lied to.  Thinking soldiers in Israel have recognized this.  Many brave young people have refused to take part in the bloody deeds of your bloody Army and have gone on record to say that they refuse to work in an army that acts immorally throughout Palestine.

Listen to one of them: "I regard it my moral duty to refuse serving in the army. My conscience does not allow me to join an organization that demolishes, by fiat of the state, the homes of innocent people, kills children who are not part of the armed fighting, and which prevents sick people from getting due treatment. The army interferes with the freedom of movement, undermines human rights and robs people of their land because they are not Jews. Implementing government orders, the Israeli army brings oppression and terror upon three and a half million Palestinians."

Listen to another: "I have witnessed this army demolishing, shooting and humiliating people whom I did not know, but have learnt to respect for their ability to go on dealing with these horrors on a daily basis. There’s supposed to be a good reason for all of this. This reason is supposed to be my defense. I feel like screaming: ‘This does not defend me! It hurts me!’ It hurts me when people, Palestinians, are being so brutally assaulted, and it hurts me when they later turn their hatred towards me because of it"

And another: "I don’t think there is any justification for terrorism.  The cynical use of the phrase “self-defense”, widespread in Israel, is disgraceful in my opinion. No one should have the right – just because they wear a uniform and have signed up as members of a certain organization – to mess up or even destroy the lives of others, whatever their background or nationality. No one has the right to do such things. Occupation is not the same as self-defense. When emergency laws are activated in order to do things that run counter to Israel’s professed democratic principles (the Nazis, too, by the way, used such laws in order to gain access to power) – this is not self-defense. Such acts are the outcome of the economic/personal interests of those who are financially and otherwise powerful. They are a choice and not dictated by necessity. We can always choose against violence and for peace."

And yet another: “I refuse to enlist in the Israeli military. I shall not be part of an army that needlessly implements a violent policy and violates the most basic human rights on a daily basis.

Like most of my peers, I too have not dared to question the ethics of the Israeli military. But when I visited the Occupied Territories I realized I see a completely different reality, a violent, oppressive, extreme reality that must be ended.

I believe in service to the society I am part of, and that is precisely why I refuse to take part in the war crimes committed by my country. Violence will not bring any kind of solution, and I shall not commit violence, come what may. “

These are the testimonials of great young people that any nation could be proud of.  You reject them and when you do you reject decency, you reject greatness, you reject morals.

These testimonials don't even touch on the crimes against humanity during three holocausts in Gaza.

Boaz, Don't give us any more guff about the IDF's "morals".  We know it is an immoral army.  We know from the mouths of your own rejected and jailed sons and daughters  who have rejected it  precisely because of its immorality. 


In utter disbelief at the inhumanity of your words and actions.
Justin Morahan
pacifist, human rights activist

Letters to Israel no 3

STOP THE MURDERS IN GAZA 

To: the Ambassador of Israel in Ireland 

Sent 24 July 2014 
e-mail:  info@dublin.mfa.gov.il

Mr Ambassador

STOP THE MURDERS.

STOP THE MASSACRE

STOP THE CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY

STOP THE LIES

STOP THE HOLOCAUST

OTHERWISE SHAME ON YOU

Justin Morahan
Human rights activist

Series of Letters to Israel No 2

To
Dear Sir

With dismay I write to you.

You continue to carry out a massacre in Gaza - the third within six years.  Each massacre is given a fancy name "Operation this or that" but never "Operation Murder"
 
The Goldstone report (headed by an Israeli Jew) damned your actions in the first massacre.

On All Fools Day Mr Goldstone retracted parts of the report - following incredible suffering by boycott, ridicule and bullying from his erstwhile friends in Israel.

Who will tell the truth about this latest massacre?

We have seen it live online - murder under the cover of darkness of sleeping or terrified human beings including many many children.

Cheered on by inhuman tweets from your most ardent supporters who are human.

Oh yes, you are the victors.  Your power is second to none.  Your protector is the United States of America.  The US fund your aggression and your defence. You control the world's corporate media in most western countries.  You control large chunks of social media.  You have
money and influence.   Elected governments, allegedly independent and democratic, kow-tow to you.  TV and radio presenters allow you to repeat lies and propaganda for public consumption. Newspapers give you large
column inches.  You speak good English.  You have a nuclear arsenal but can deny its existence.  You can complain that other countries might develop nuclear weapons.  You brutally occupy and control Palestine
including the West Bank and Gaza ignoring UN resolutions.  You hold the record as the UN member state that has most defied UN resolutions.  You get away with it and continue to act with impunity. 

In spite of all of this power, you present yourself to the world as a victim. Not just victims of the Holocaust that ended in 1945, but victims of the very people whom you are murdering with impunity in Gaza in 2014.  Victims of the children whom you murdered on the beach?  Victims of the disabled in the hospitals you have shattered?

Tonight you will murder dozens more of civilians and children and all of us who abhor and detest these murders must confess that we are powerless to prevent you from carrying them out.  Know that we no longer believe
your lies.

Your own people - the bravest and best of them - have revealed that they are lies. The protestors in Tel Aviv, the Shministim, the resisters, Gush Shalom, Jewish Voice for Peace.... you are not short of good people in all of this darkness.

We share their anger.

And we will continue to shout STOP, murderers, while there is still time.

With best personal wishes

Justin Morahan
Human rights activist, pacifist

Series of Recent letters to Israeli Ambassador in Dublin

Letter 1:  What has Israel become?

1 July 2014   To the Israeli Ambassador;  Sent to:info@dublin.mfa.gov.il

Dear Ambassador

Further to my telephone call just now to the Embassy I should like to confirm in writing how I feel about the recent conduct of Benjamin
Netanyahu in his governance of the State of Israel.

Mr Netanyahu has used every ploy, seized on every opportunity andexploited the horrible abduction and killings of three youths from
settler families to his own political advantage, to continue to stir
up unrest in Israel, Palestine and throughout various war zones around
the world.  My sympathy goes out to the families of those youths.  I do
not believe that Mr Netanyahu has shown the slightest genuine sympathy
for those boys since their abduction.  He has used the brutal killings
to stir up more disunity between the Palestinian political groups who
try to "govern" patches of territory in spite of your unjust occupation
there.

While they were still alive your parliament brought in legislation which
made it impossible to save their lives by bargaining or prisoner exchange. 

What hypocrisy now to pretend that Mr Netanyahu or his government cared
a whit for those young hitch-hikers.

Your Prime Minister gets inordinate coverage in the media but he does
not convince.  Today he is interfering in Iraq - already destroyed by
Messrs Bush and Blair - urging the Kurds to form an independent state.

What has Israel become under the long list of war-lovers who have
governed it?

The lives you destroyed in Gaza six years ago counted as nothing to you. 

No parents should have to suffer what the victims of terror and
kidnapping have suffered.

But you cannot make fish of one and flesh of the other.  Evil is evil,
wherever it happens and whether the perpetrators are against Israel or
for Israel.  Don't pretend otherwise.

With best personal wishes

Justin Morahan
human rights activist and pacifist