Support from the Jewish Peace Fellowship
Since 1941 the Jewish Peace Fellowship has supported and counseled those who believe Jewish ideals and experience provide inspiration for a nonviolent commitment to life. We provide counseling and peace education and since World War II and Vietnam have been committed to offering alternatives to young people in lieu of military service. .
The JPF and New Profile seek to end our nations’ culture of militarization as well as an end to ceaseless wars.
We support and salute New Profile and all Israelis seeking peaceful alternatives.
Jewish Peace Fellowship
Box 271
Nyack, N.Y. 10960-0271
www.jewishpeacefellowship.org
JPF@forusa.org
Al-Jazeera: “Israeli Citizens Reject Military Service”
Here’s a short feature on New Profile’s work (including support of conscientious objectors, our exhibition, and a report on the police investigation against us) that was aired on Al-Jazeera English on June 6th:
An update on our investigation and further recommended action
An update on our investigation and further recommended action
Dear Friends and Supporters,
So many have stepped forward to back New Profile during this time. We would like to thank you warmly. This has been deeply meaningful for us. In a truly amazing show of support, you have sent over 5,000 letters to Israel’s Attorney General, protesting the criminalization of New Profile, via the Jewish Voice for Peace website. You have, moreover, taken many other actions, as suggested on our website.
We are writing to let you know that your voice is getting through, apparently penetrating the indifference of Israeli authorities. The Israeli Human Rights and Foreign Relations Dept. has sent many of you a formal answer, indicating that they cannot afford to ignore the massive mobilization of New Profile supporters worldwide, and exposing their need to save face
We are writing to ask you to keep up your meaningful work; please stay with us and write the government again (see proposed sample letter below) that you are not convinced by their façade of human rights and legalese. (You can once again do this either through Jewish Voice for Peace or independently, to one of the addresses listed on our website).
Israel’s war against youth / Rela Mazali
About six months after Israel’s attorney general publicly announced an effort to criminalise dissent, state authorities have upped the ante in their “war” – as the daily Ha’aretz called it last September – against Israel’s youth and against the broad, grassroots protest movement of young Israelis who avoid serving their compulsory time in the military – slandered by officials as “draft shirkers”.
On 26 April, a day before Israel’s Memorial Day, Israeli police produced an absurd piece of political theatre – as Dimi Reider first reported here last Thursday. As if facing down dangerous organised criminals, they raided the homes of six activists in different parts of Israel, who were then detained for interrogation. Exploiting the emotions roused on a day of mourning for military dead, the police action singled out and branded anti-military activists as outside the legitimate Israeli community.
At the time of writing, police have summoned 10 additional activists for interrogation. The activists targeted are members of New Profile, a feminist movement working for over a decade to reverse the militarisation of state and society in Israel. I have been a member since its inception. New Profile intends to uphold the right to open discourse on the crucial issues young people face and we work to change the militarised thinking holding us, all the residents of Israel and Palestine, hostage. Our activism may enrage some, but our activities are totally legal.
The reality is that rising numbers of young Jewish Israelis – as well as the Druze minority who are also subject to conscription – find themselves unwilling to accept the Israeli dictate “There’s no other choice”. Four generations and over six decades of failed “military solutions” have engendered a broad social movement of young people who have severe internal struggles when asked to serve in the military.
Israeli law offers virtually no legal provision for conscientious objectors and Israel’s courts – both military and civil – class the reason for refusing service as “political”, “psychological” and only very rarely “conscientious”. The soul-searching brought on by deciding to serve has caused many young people real distress. In recent years, Israeli soldiers’ suicides have accounted for more deaths than all the other types of military casualties combined.
Support from American Friends Service Committee
The American Friends Service Committee sent a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Calling for her help in ending the investigation against New Profile:
Support from The Druze Initiative Committee
A letter of support from The Druze Initiative Committee:
The Druze Initiative Committee, partner to your just struggle against wars and compulsory enlistment, and supporting your conscientious and humane effort for a just peace and a civil society, identifies with your struggle, and opposes and condemns the authorities’ recent actions against your organization which is working day and night for the good of young Jewish and Arab Druze people in their just demand to be exempted from mandatory military service.
We wish you strength.
On behalf of the Druze Initiative Committee
Jihad Sa’ad, Secretary
Police Violence and Arrests During a Demonstration in Support of New Profile
On April 30, 2009 several scores of female and male activists demonstrated in front of the police office at which New Profile is currently under investigation [inaccurate? Raoul Wallenberg?] Police removed the demonstrators with much violence and arrested eight activists. A judge who saw the detainees in the morning following their arrests criticized the police’s action and released the activists.
Something to look into – But not by the police
The detention of New Profile members by the police is cutting evidence for what the group has been arguing all along: The military has invaded and corrupted every corner of our lives.
Now it’s time for a public investigation.
Annelien Kisch, Mirjam Hadar, Sergeiy Sandler, Amir Givol, Bilha Golan, Oshra, Rotem, Nimrod, and Raanan – they are friends of mine and of my daughter. Most of them have visited my home but since we found out that Annelien is allergic to my cat, our meetings take place in other homes. What unites us – along with another few scores of regular citizens, people with different professions and of a wide range of ages – is a profound concern about an ugly phenomenon: Israeli society is sliding fast down the slope towards becoming dominated by fear and defensive hatred, it is ready to invest itself totally in one, “secure” unifying factor – an organization which misleadingy calls itself “Israel Defense Forces”.
Mirjam Hadar, one of the recently detained and interrogated members of New Profile lit a torch
Mirjam Hadar, one of the recently detained and interrogated members of New Profile, and Adina Aviram lit a torch on behalf of New Profile at the Alternative Independence Day Ceremony in Jerusalem
Last Tuesday (April 28, 2009) , two members of New Profile, Adina Aviram and Mirjam Hadar (one of the activists recently detained and interrogated by the police as part of a criminal investigation against New Profile) participated in the annual alternative Independence Day ceremony organized by Yesh Gvul. Twelve torches in all were lit by various human rights, social equality and peace activists, who also each made a short public statement.
Below are Adina and Mirjam’s words:
I myself, Adina Aviram, and my friend Mirjam Hadar, are members of New Profile. We are honored to light a torch on behalf of our friends in New Profile. New Profile is a feminist movement whose activities are aimed to advance the civic nature of Israeli society. We, in New Profile, try to offer a different way of thinking, engendered by a critical perspective on our lives here. We do this because our conscience tells us so and from a sense of responsibility. We refuse to accept the militarist life style that dominates Israeli existence. This militarism makes it possible to delegitimize those who dare to question accepted wisdom and are guided by their conscience – as against society’s dictates and norms. Members of our organization are being politically persecuted these very days. The aim is to intimidate and silence us.
We are hoping for days of freedom.
Intimidation
By Mirjam Hadar Meerschwam
Intimidation, I am learning these days, is when you find that the law can turn against you: This does not come as a surprise to me: I live in a security-dominated country in which Palestinian citizens already live under a different interpretation and dispensation of the same law that still mostly protects someone like me. But now that I have been interrogated by a man called Amichai (literally: “My people live”) my knowledge has an added dimension: It takes a while into my interrogator’s list of questions until I figure out that this exchange is not conducted under the usual rules of conversation, of civilian communication. Nothing in my life has prepared me for this: every word I say not only freezes immediately (later I’ll have to sign the protocol and it feels as though I sign my words away, cut their lifeline) – it can and may well be used against me. In view of the misreading I mentioned before, I stand warned: even grammar stops counting here.