Christian leaders tell youth to ‘tear up’ Israel army forms
by alethoMa'an - 25/04/2014
JERUSALEM - Orthodox Archbishop Atallah Hanna and former Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah on Friday urged Christian youth not to enlist in the Israeli military and to ignore Israeli "propaganda" encouraging them to do so.
The statement came after a meeting between the two religious figures on Friday, which followed reports on Tuesday
that Israeli authorities would distribute military enlistment papers to
Palestinian Christian youth who are citizens of Israel in order to
encourage them to voluntarily sign up for military service.
The
leaders called upon Christian youth who have received the enrollment
papers to "tear them up and throw them away and not to engage with them
in any way."
The
leaders also stressed the "firm national position of the Christians in
refusing to join a military that exercises violence against the rights
of the Palestinian people."
The
forms to be sent to Christian youth resemble the mandatory enlistment
forms distributed to Jewish and Druze Israelis, and the army hopes that
by sending these papers more youth will voluntarily sign up to enlist.
Although
Christian Palestinian citizens of Israel are currently exempt from
military service along with Muslims, a government decision made in
February to re-classify Christians as a separate ethnicity distinct from
"Arab" raised fears that mandatory enrollment would follow, as it did
for Palestinians of the Druze religion in the 1950s.
About
10 percent of Palestinian citizens of Israel, also called
"Arab-Israelis," are Christians, while the majority of the remaining are
Muslims and Druze.
Although
the majority of Palestinians were expelled from their homes inside
Israel during the 1948 conflict that led to the creation of the state of
Israel, some managed to remain and their descendants today make up
around 20 percent of Israel's population.
No comments:
Post a Comment