- On Thursday I set fire to my Israeli military deferral
papers across the street from the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC. This
act of civil disobedience took place during a protest organized by a Jewish
American peace organization against the atrocities that Israel is committing
in the occupied Gaza Strip.
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- In the first half of May, Israel made homeless close
to 2,200 Palestinians through the purposeful destruction of their homes.
Since Tuesday in Rafah, Israel has killed at least 40 Palestinians, some
of whom were children engaged in nonviolent protest when they were killed.
Amnesty International has described these acts of wanton death and destruction
as "war crimes."
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- Although I am a Jewish American, born and raised in the
United States, I am also a citizen of Israel by virtue of my father's birth
in that country. Israel's laws automatically confer citizenship on the
children of citizens regardless of their place of birth. Like all other
Jewish citizens of Israel, I am required to serve in the Israeli army.
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- I decided to burn my military deferral papers, the closest
equivalent I have to a draft card, to protest the policies of the government
of Israel and to declare my intention never to serve in an army of occupation
and oppression.
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- By doing so, I stand in solidarity with more than 1,300
Israelis who have stated openly, at the risk of jail time, that they refuse
to serve Israel's occupation of Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza Strip,
and East Jerusalem and commit war crimes and flagrant breaches of international
law.
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- Perhaps my burning of these papers constitutes a crime
according to Israeli law. But what is my trespass compared to the criminal
acts committed by Israel? As a result of the creation of the state of Israel
in 1948 and the policy of ethnic cleansing that accompanied it, millions
of Palestinians and their descendants have been dispossessed of their homeland
and remain refugees to this day because their human right to return to
their properties has been denied.
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- For the past 37 years Israel has enforced a brutal occupation
on the Palestinians of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem. This
military occupation works hand in glove with the government's plans to
transfer its civilian population into Palestinian areas -- a violation
of international law -- and its illegal expropriation of their land and
resources to make impossible the formation of a viable Palestinian state.
These policies deny Palestinians their internationally recognized human
rights, including the right to national self-determination.
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- Like the woes of Job, the injustices of Israel's policies
are numerous. No amount of rationalization, justification, moral equivocation,
brainwashing or sophistry can shake my firm belief: Israel's treatment
of the Palestinian people is a moral outrage and a blight on the soul of
the Jewish people. The fact that Jews have been dispossessed and stripped
of their dignity and human rights on numerous occasions in the past is
not a license for Israel to do so to the Palestinians in the present.
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- I know that many Jews, both in Israel and in the Diaspora,
will view my symbolic act and the political opinions which I have come
to hold as being "self-hating" at best and traitorous at worst.
Many will chide me for removing myself from the community, as we are admonished
not to do in our religious teachings.
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- So be it. However, let me clear: It gives me no pleasure
to have burned my military papers; I derive no comfort from having to condemn
the policies of the government of a country that is supposed to embody
Jewish self-determination.
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- I believe in self-determination for the Jewish people.
I believe that our common history, our shared language, culture, and religion,
and our interwoven destiny constitutes us as a people. And I was raised
to believe that Israel is an exquisite manifestation of this self-determination,
that our "return to Zion" and the establishment of a new Jewish
society there was the culmination of the ethical teachings of our religion.
It was only later in life that I realized that such blind adoration for
the actions of a state are, in the words of the late Israeli theologian
and philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz, a modern form of idolatry.
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- How can I reckon Israel's settlement program, involving
the blatant theft of Palestinian land, with the commandment not to covet
the possessions of one's neighbors? How can I square the fact that Israel
has uprooted thousands of ancient olive trees to dry up the lifeblood of
the Palestinian economy with the Biblical prohibition of cutting down fruit-bearing
tress even in times of warfare?
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- How can I support the daily humiliations, indignities,
and human rights abuses to which Palestinians are subjected living under
Israeli occupation with the story of creation, which teaches that human
beings are created in the image of God and therefore are due respect and
dignity regardless of their ethnicity or religion?
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- In the Torah, it states "justice, justice you shall
pursue." Rashi, the medieval biblical and talmudic commentator, gave
an ingenious answer to explain why the word "justice" is repeated
in this commandment since Jews believe that no word in the Torah is superfluous.
The repetition of the word is necessary, Rashi explained, to teach us that
both the means and the ends have to be just in order to be moral in the
eyes of God.
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- The return of the Jewish people to its ancient land --
no matter how noble or how disingenuous were the intentions or motives
of the Zionist movement -- must be measured by its effect. If we have "returned
to Zion" in order to subjugate, humiliate, and dispossess its indigenous
inhabitants then we have turned our backs on our religious obligations
and should cooperate with this evil enterprise no longer.
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- - Josh Ruebner is the cofounder of Jews for Peace in
Palestine and Israel (JPPI) and a former Analyst in Middle East Affairs
at Congressional Research Service (CRS).
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- http://www.counterpunch.org/ruebner05222004.html
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