Israeli high school students imprisoned for refusing to join Israeli army

SIGN A PETITION TO FREE THEM

& Read more here:

*********
*********

The imprisoned youth are refusing to join Israel's army -- the military force used to occupy Palestine (unofficially since the post-WWI era/1918 and officially since 1948, the year the state of Israel was established), and thus, continue the history of depriving Palestinians of their rightful claim to their ancestral lands; supress its independence movement by depriving innocent civilian children, women and men of food, water, and fuel (more on this issue); and to commit other horrific acts of violence against Palestinians.
(After World War I, the British government/British imperialists literally gave Palestine to European Jews -- a clearly unjust political act that is the source of the violence in the region to this day).

****

****
A quote from one of the jailed Israeli youth:

[unable to upload pic]

Name: Omer Goldman

Location: Tel-Aviv, Israel

Age: 19

“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.”

If you believe these young people should not be jailed for refusing to fight in an imperial war -- a war that perpetuates the Israeli government's history of depriving Palestinians of rights to their ancestral lands, full citizenship rights, and the right to live free of armed government aggression

SIGN A PETITION TO FREE THEM & Read more here:
http://december18th.org/

Name: Raz Bar-David Varon

Location: not given

Age: 18

"I wasn’t born to serve as a soldier who occupies another, and the struggle against the occupation is mine too. It is a struggle for hope, for a reality that sometimes feels so far away. I have a responsibility for this society. My responsibility is to refuse.”

Varon calls the Israeli soldiers terrorists because they:

-- dro[p] bombs on people in Gaza or on the West Bank from his fighter plane;
-- demolishes homes;
-- shoo[t] at people and sows fear and enmity;
-- enforc[e] a tyrannical, undemocratic military regime;
-- rul[e] over (nearly) all aspects of the lives of three and a half million Palestinian men and women;
-- stan[d] guard at the army checkpoints which seriously limit Palestinians’ freedom of movement;
-- ente[r] people’s homes (with state permission) in order to conduct searches at any hour of the day or night;

-- humiliat[e], at a whim and unsupervised, old people, children, men and women...

p.s. :) Varon's gender is not given -- I'm guessin' this person is "family;" if not, this person does gender-nonconformity very well.

p.s.s. My teaching related workload has has had me singularly occupied since my last blog -- I won't be able to blog much (or perhaps, at all) until mid-December. will blog regularly after this date -- so visit again soon!