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CounterPunch
February
5, 2003
Free Israel's Prisoners of Conscience
How
You Can Help Conscientious Objectors
by NEVE GORDON
Dear friends and supporters
of the conscientious objectors,
The abuse of the conscientious
objectors continues. The Israeli military
is sentencing them to repetitive prison terms, with no end in
sight. We must step up the campaign to release these courageous
prisoners
of conscience.
Below is a short petition
we plan to publish in Israeli press soon. Please read and sign
by sending a message to conscienceobjector@yahoo.com
Mention your name, first
and then last in the subject of the message. In the message ad
title and institutional affiliation.
Please spread the petition
widely. We need as many signatories as possible.
Please note: The success
of this campaign depends to a large extent on the funds we gather
to support it. Placing an ad in a leading daily is very expensive.
PLEASE, in addition to signing, contribute towards covering the
cost ($10, $25, $50, $100, $200... $1,000).
Information how to contribute
follows the petition.
Free the Prisoners
of Conscience!
The State of Israel has
been consistently abusing a group of young men who have refused
to be conscripted on grounds of conscience. While religion continues
to be a reason for exempting young men from army or national
service, conscientious objection is considered a serious crime.
Despite the fact that these objectors have announced their willingness
to serve the state through some kind of civil service, the military,
led by Menachem Finkelshtein the head military prosecutor, is
punishing these young men again and again for the same "offence."
It seems that there is
no limit to the abuse: eleven young men have been sitting in
jail for terms that just keep getting longer, and there is no
end in sight. Finkelshtein wants to try them over and over again,
until they break or give in. As far as he is concerned, these
men can rot in jail forever. Finkelshtein has also created a
committee of "experts" whose
job it is to determine that not one of the young men is a "true"
conscientious objector; every single one, the committee proclaimed,
is lying and thus deserves to sit in jail.
These prisoners of conscience
refuse to serve in an army that systematically violates the human
rights of the Palestinian people. Yoni Ben-Artzi, the most veteran
prisoner, has sat in jail for almost 200 days. By contrast, the
soldier who killed a 95-year-old Palestinian woman was sentenced
to 35 days in prison.
Names of the prisoners
days in jail
Yoni Ben-Artzi 196 days
Dror Boymel 166 days
Uri Ya'acobi 134 days
Haggai Matar 112 days
Yoni Yekhezkel 111 days
Hillel Goral 70 days
Noam Bahat 70 days
Adam Maor 70 days
Matan Kaminer 56 days
Shimri Tzameret 38 days
Avshalom Ben-Zvi 21 days
We, the undersigned,
demand an end to this abuse and the immediate release of these
prisoners of conscience
conscienceobjector@yahoo.com .
Please pay online or
send a check.
Contribute Online:
To make a credit card contribution to support the prisoners of
conscience, go to www.refusersolidarity.net and click on the DonateNow button
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