#0202_A_View_from_West_Jerusalem

“An open letter to the authors of the letter, [1]

My brothers loved to live; they hated war.
My brothers and thousands of brothers, sisters, parents, mothers, the elderly and children altogether wanted to dream without fear,
To grow, fall in love, study and work, build houses, drink good beer at the end of the day,
To breathe, without running in search of shelter,
Without fearing a strange man wearing a leather jacket in the summer,
Without being alarmed by a truck or a passing minibus [2],
Or a knock at the door on a Friday.

But they understood one thing that you, the signatories of the letter, do not understand. My brother Uriel described this well during his service in the Golani Brigade Special Forces unit: [3]

'With the number of thorns and plants that have splintered my body [crawling on the ground in the army], it is possible to build a flowerbed a meter by meter long. But, these are not just ordinary thorns; these are the thorns of Eretz Yisrael.'

To live in the State of Israel is to be prepared to pay a price, to be pricked by thorns (and unfortunately also by terrorist murderers), and to deal with a difficult and painful reality.

You are the ones who decided not to pay a price, but for your personal ego, but for your personal morality, but for your truth that tramples on a whole generation of those who sacrificed their lives and those who endanger their lives every day.
You will bear the hardest burden of all,
To face your reflection in the mirror each day.

From this, unfortunately, you can not ‘evade.'”

– Elyasaf Peretz [4]

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0202 Editor's Notes:
[1] A group of 63 teenagers publicly declared in a letter that they will refuse, or ‘evade,’ being drafted into the Israeli army. The letter stated that "The military carries out a racist government policy that violates basic human rights… We, therefore, have decided not to participate in the occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people." To read more on the letter, see: https://goo.gl/XVJpsC
[2] These descriptions allude to different scenarios that are considered as ‘acts of terror:’ truck-rammings, running for shelter during missile attacks, attacks in public places by individuals, ‘lone wolves.’
[3] Golani Brigade Special Forces Unit: A special operations unit within the Golani Brigade. The unit has a rigorous and selective training process and thus is associated in and outside the Israeli army with prestige. The writer of the post, Elyasaf, also has a personal connection to the Golani Brigade, as explained in note 4.
[4] Elyasaf Peretz lost two of his brothers who were officers in the Israeli Army. In November 1988, Lieutenant-Colonel Uriel Peretz, 22 years old, commander of the 51st Battalion's Special Forces Unit in the Golani Brigade, was killed in combat in Southern Lebanon. Nearly twelve years later, Major Eliraz Peretz, also serving in the Golani Brigade, fell in battle on the Gaza border.

#Army #IDF #Compulsory_Service #Draft_Evasion #Fallen_Soldiers https://goo.gl/H8Qn5w

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