From: "shlomo jacobson" <jacobson@actcom.co.il> To: <editor@haaretz.co.il> Copies to: <info@gush-shalom.org> Subject: 6/8 editorial Date sent: Fri, 23 Aug 2002 19:38:43 +0200 sir, it was with deep sadness that i saw you being cornered to a position of de-facto defending the "right" of war criminals to act undisturbed while attacking the right of gush-shalom activists to publicly draw their attention to the meaning of their action. those are really harsh times, and a newspaper, as everybody else, has to survive, but one should not cross the lines beyond which one's very soul and essence will be denied. unfortunatelly,olive-green uniforms imprinted with hebrew initials do not render anybody imune from comitting such crimes anymore than other colours and initials, past and present, did. your definition of "officers in an army that operates under the law in a sovereign state, according to the instructions of an elected government" can be applied to many cases in the local and world recent history in which war crimes were perpetuated. sadly enough, the mainstream press reaction in those case was, up to a certain point, also similar to your reaction. this changed only when the trend of public opinion turned against such policies. so, in order to see in your paper an editorial that unechivocaly criticizes such crimes, we have to wait until the moment in which such an editorial will not matter very much anyway. gush shalom did not want to wait until then, and tries to stop soldiers from both killing and crying. this is not a reason for your paper to attack gush shalom. shlomo jacobson carmiel