From: Awaskow@aol.com
Date sent: Fri, 30 Aug 2002 08:32:10 EDT
Subject: Acts of courage
To: undisclosed-recipients:;

Dear Chevra,

Gush Shalom, the Israeli "Bloc of Peace," is one of the strongest,
clearest,
and most consistent voices in the Israeli peace movement. Many of us have
met
its founder, Uri Avnery, and been moved by his courage and commitment. (I
first met him in 1969, when the Occupation was only two years old and he
was
already clear about the dangers it posed to Israel.)

Today, Israeli authorities are threatening Gush Shalom with prosecution
for
treason -- because they have warned Israeli soldiers that it is illegal
under international as well as Israeli law to comply with military orders
to
commit acts that are manifestly illegal and that such acts might lead to
their being charged with war crimes.

(The group's catalog of such acts routinely committed by specific persons
in
the Israeli security forces includes execution without trial, preventing
medical help from reaching the injured, shooting at ambulances and medical
teams, allowing populations to starve, dropping bombs onresidential areas,
wholesale destruction of houses, penalizing families for the deeds of one
of
their members by expulsion and home demolition.)

I very much remember the years when I and others with me were accused by
US
authorities of violating the law through our firm opposition to the
Vietnam
War, when it was the US government itself that was violating international and
domestic law.

Today Israel is certainly caught in a much more difficult situation than
the
US was then. We did not have to contend with Vietnamese suicide bombers in our
cities, for example. It is clear that some among the enemies of
Israel
are themselves committing war crimes.

Yet as Torah, Israeli law, and international law -- the contemporary
equivalent of the "Seven Mitzvot of the Children of Noah" -- make clear,
there are acts we are forbidden to do even in time of war, and some
Israeli
soldiers under orders from the current Sharon government seem to be
committing such acts.

The Sharon government has claimed that such actions by Israeli forces are
necessary in order to prevent and deter the war crimes of our enemies.
Far
from deterring, however, these acts by Israelis have served to inflame
still
more outrageous attacks against us. It is not surprising that every act
that
shatters the agreed ethical and moral standards of the human race makes
likely the commission of more such acts by others.

Indeed, the teaching of our own tradition that we must "love our neighbors
as
ourselves" can be understood not as an admonition to be nice but as a
prediction of reality, to mean: The ways in which we fail to love our
neighbors will recoil upon our own heads, often in worse form than the
unloving actions that we take.

Or to put it in the words of the first ethical teaching that we give our
children, simple and profound: Two wrongs don't make a right.

So I have decided to join with others in making clear to the Israeli
public
my own personal and individual support for Gush Shalom's courage and
tenacity, by signing and helping to purchase a support ad in the Israeli d
aily Ha'aretz. (This initiative is being coordinated by Chicago's Not in
My
Name, but participation in the initiative does not require support for any
of
NIMN's other work.)

To see the text of the ad, learn more about the issue, add your name, or
contribute to the cost, log onto

http://www.nimn.org/gushad

(Please note that you don't have to contribute in order to sign the ad,
and
conversely you can contribute to publishing the ad without adding your
name
as a signer.)

Shalom, Arthur

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