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Continuing
the Struggle for Freedom of Conscience & Against the Occupation After having been sentenced to an additional year in prison, the five, Noam Bahat, Adam Maor, Haggai Matar, Matan Kaminer and Shimri Zameret presented themselves on January 7,2004, by order of the court, to the authorities at Military Prison Number 6, near Haifa. Just a few days later, on Saturday, January 10, 2004, more than five hundred Israeli, Jews and Arabs, answered a joint call by Yesh Gvul and the Parents Forum and made the traditional climb up the hill opposite the prison to express their determination to continue the fight against the draconic sentence and their personal solidarity with the five. Dirty Tricks Never Stop Just a few days after the five entered prison and were still in the process of settling in, they were informed that a hearing by a special committee was being convened to examine a proposal that the five be transferred to civilian prisons. Neither the five, nor their lawyers or any of their many supporters were acquainted with this procedure. In a positive development, the Israeli Association for Civil Rights agreed to represent the five during the committee proceedings and their representative, Att. Avner Pinchuk met with the five and informed all parties regarding the nature of the proceeding. While the five and their attorney were preparing for the meeting scheduled for January 20, 2004, the five, their families and their attorney, Dov Khenin reached a final decision to appeal the verdict and the sentence. Khenin requested that the committee desist from discussing any matter related to the five, since the courts decision was not final. The IDF refused to delay the meeting of the special committee. High Level Internal IDF Committee Convened at Request of Prison Authorities It turns out that the IDF Prison System and the Israeli Prison Service have an agreement which permits the IDF to transfer military prison inmates to regular civilian criminal prisons. The decision on the IDF side is made by a high level committee composed of representatives for the prosecution, the Medical Corp, and a judge from the IDF Court System. The Israeli Prison Service is also represented. The committee, it was learned, met at the request of the Military Police which runs the military prison system. The suggestion to relocate the five was based on the following arguments. The five are really not soldiers, they refuse to become soldiers and the military prison system is devoted to getting soldiers who have erred back into harness. Moreover, the representative, backed by a thick file of what he referred to as antics by other refuseniks imprisoned on previous occasions, concerning such serious crimes as graffiti and wearing provocative tee-shirts, explained that the prison authorities had to devote the same amount of time and effort to several refuseniks as they needed for the rest of the whole prison population. He went on to explain that the five, even if they did not violate any rules are a living incitement and could corrupt prison discipline on a serious scale. The argumentation by the IDF Prison authority in demanding the relocation of the five was in direct contradiction to the position of the prosecution which claimed that "soldiers they are" and "soldiers they will be" and that they will be made to suffer until they accept that fact. At any rate, faced by the opposition of the five and lack of coordination in the IDF position, the committee decided to postpone its decision for a month. We are not rid of this new gambit by the IDF bureaucracy. The Five Appeal In the broadest of terms, the appeal submitted by Att. Dov Khenin argues that the lower court erred in not taking into account constitutional developments in Israeli law and their implication for freedom of conscience. It was mistaken in ascribing a serious social danger to the defendant's exercise of the right to refuse to conform. The court erred in concluding that the defendant's deportment constituted any danger to state security and judging them as though they were involved in a campaign of civil disobedience. The court erred in using against the five acts and beliefs they held as free citizens before their induction to the IDF. The appeal also argues that the court did not give do weight to the previous periods of incarceration in fixing the sentence, ignored previous less onerous punishment, and mistakenly included deterrence of others as a factor in sentencing the five. The date for hearing the appeal has not yet been fixed. If we do not destroy the occupation, the occupation will destroy us. http://www.refusersolidarity.net/default.asp?content=parents_forum_jan2504 |