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

Margaretta D'Arcy and Nall Farrell sentenced to two weeks

Court set alight in Ennis

national | anti-war | news report Wednesday June 25, 2014 21:09 by Justin Morahan

Metaphorical fires of justice and truth set court room ablaze

SUMMARY: I arrived in Ennis without pen or notebook to support the action of Margaretta D'Arcy and Niall Farrell who protested on the runway of Shannon against the US military use of the airport. The following is a colour story of happenings on the day relying on memory only. I hope that someone else may provide a fuller report and my apologies for any errors in this report which are entirely my responsibility.

Margaretta D'Arcy set the court on fire in Ennis yesterday in the defence of her action of sitting on the runway at Shannon airport with Niall Farrell to protest against US war planes using the Irish airport as a warport for transporting US troops and weapons to war in Afghanistan, Syria or elsewhere. Her witnesses Clare Daly, Tom Clonan, Mairead Maguire, Ed Horgan and John Lannon lit similar fires in her defence. The courtroom was alight with passion and truth. It was an historic day on which Margaretta and her witnesses filled an Irish courtroom with palpable joy. The day belonged to Margaretta and Niall. Their action in non-violently opposing Irish participation in war was vindicated. The court, the State, the prosecuting Gardaí were the big losers. The legal jargon of the court was drowned in the passionate voices of Margaretta and her witnesses.

There was applause in court. Not afterwards but during the proceedings. The procedure allowed Margaretta who was defending herself to call her witnesses in the latter part of the trial. One after another they took their seats in the witness box, identified themselves and were questioned by her. The list was impressive. Clare Daly, T.D. who had tried on so many occasions without success to get the Irish parliament to inspect flights at Shannon and stop US military from passing through the civilian airport on their way to war. Dr Tom Clonan, retired Captain of the Irish Army, now security correspondent for the Irish Times who visited Guantanamo and gleaned there the usefulness of Shannon for the US military projection of power. Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate co-founder of the Peace People in Northern Ireland who had visited countless war zones on peace missions including Iran, Syria and Iraq, and who knows the situation on the ground there. Dr John Lannon, author, lecturer in Knowledge Management at the University of Limerick, Systems developer, Project manager and Software designer, chief organiser of the Shannon monthly protest. Dr Edward Horgan, retired Army Commandant, researcher and part-time lecturer in the University of the University of Limerick, with experience on behalf of EU, UN, OSCE and Carter Group of election monitoring in Bosnia, Croatia, Nigeria, Indonesia, East Timor, Zimbabwe, Armenia, Ghana, Ukraine, Tunisia and Congo DRC., co-ordinator of Shannonwatch.

All five of these these very different people declared their firm belief to the court that what Margaretta D'Arcy and Niall Farrell had done at Shannon was right and proper. Tom Clonan said it was spot on. He had learned that payments for Shannon airport were included in the US Defence budget. He mentioned how a leading member of Hizbollah had told him how disappointed he was that an airport in Co Clare was being used by US military. His knowledge of the location of Shannon made Dr Clonan fear that the airport could easily be a soft target for a terrorist attack. Clare Daly, John Lannon and Ed Horgan believed the protest of Niall and Margaretta was in line with best international law. Mairead Corrigan agreed but added that it it was in line also with the highest law of all, the law of conscience. The judge did not like her perceived inference that he should be lectured on how his conscience might direct him and he told her so.

Looking around the courtroom, it was energizing to see so many people of conscience there, themselves victims of legal and Garda injustice, - including Maura Harrington with husband Naoise Ó Mongáin, Pat the Chief O'Donnell and his son, other supporters from Shell to Sea and Rossport, people who have endured long hours and days in courtrooms such as this one with scant heed for their health and safety, let alone their human or judicial rights. Tim Hourigan, recently found not guilty for Shannon surveillance activities, was looking on. Support groups Shannonwatch, PANA and CND were there in force. (Carol Fox of CND was Margaretta's McKenzie friend). Long term human rights and peace activist, Colm Roddy, travelled from Dublin. Ann Patterson had driven from Belfast. Tommy Donnellan was there with his camera, as he is always there, wherever right challenges might, wherever the weak confront the strong.

The prosecution wasted a lot of time getting Gardaí to "prove" the fact that everyone knew, namely that Margaretta and Niall were on the runway on the day in question. In the process, something emerged that very few people knew, namely the arresting Garda had handcuffed both Margaretta ad Niall although they were fully cooperative with Gardaí, and Margaretta told the Garda that she had denied her request for water.

It should be recorded that Judge Durcan imposed sentences of two weeks imprisonment on Niall and Margaretta, suspended, with conditions attached including the signing of a bond. He admonished the Garda for having used handcuffs on both defendants but did not let this influence his judgement.

No-one was surprised. The law of the land, as perceived by the judiciary and the Irish State, had superseded both international law and the law of conscience in an Irish courthouse - as it always does in such cases as these.

Two cultures - the cultures of Right and Might - clashed in an Ennis courtroom on an historic day. Might was given the verdict and Right was the winner. 

[Article first published in Indymedia Ireland 25/6/2014]

For fuller reports and comments see  http://www.indymedia.ie/