A British Union recruits for the Israeli Army!

Based on my personal experience in Leeds University and the National Union of Students (NUS), I couldn't agree more with the brave ex-Israeli Jewish academic Ilan Pappe when he accused Jewish campus groups in the UK and some Jewish students of being ""ambassadors of Israel". However I could never imagine that the Union of Jewish Students (UJS) is shameful enough to call the Jewish British students for "National Service" in Israel by voluntarily serving in the Israeli Occupation Army.

In their campaign for this summer's activities which was given the motto "Whatever you do this summer, do it in Israel with UJS", UJS offered Jewish students the chance to participate in the Sar-El program. The advert reads "Join students from around the world on a national project with the Israeli army. Spend 2 weeks volunteering with Israeli peers and make a difference where it is really needed!"

Sar-El is an Israeli Army unit which aims at recruiting volunteers from both Israel and the rest of the world to help the Israeli army. The majority of Sar-El volunteers serve in army bases and are assigned a variety of tasks which according to volunteers include " doing maintenance on tanks and heavy vehicles " and "refurbishing used or damaged military equipment, which saves Israel millions of dollars." During their "National Service" volunteers wear the Israeli army uniform and work alongside or under the direction of soldiers.

Although it is not a crime for a British citizen to serve in a foreign army, The Foreign Enlistment Act 1870 makes it a crime for a British subject to enlist in the army of a foreign nation that is at war with any country that the UK is at peace with. On the other hand Israel -since its foundation in 1948- has been in a continuous state of war with the Palestinians (or more accurately against them), the Lebanese and Syrians (whom Israel is occupying part of their lands since 1967) and with most Arab countries. It is obvious that when two states negotiate mutual peace agreements they explicitly -or implicitly- look for an end to the state of war between them, otherwise it won't be true that you make peace with your enemies. The daily crimes of the Israeli occupation army against the Palestinian civilians in West Bank and Gaza strip and the war against Lebanon in 2006 are just examples of that state of war. The UK however is not by any means at war with any of the Arab countries, including the Palestinians and the Lebanese, and hence Jewish British citizens who serve in the Israeli occupation army become theoretically guilty of an offence against the law.

I need not to say, but I will do, that it does not need me to be dictated by the British law to make me realise that it is a betrayal to my humanity to proudly serve in an army which evolved from Zionist terrorist groups which was responsible for hundreds of massacres against the Palestinians in 1948 and 1949 and for the displacement of half of the Palestinian nation from their homeland. It does not need laws to forbid an English, Scottish, Irish or Welsh (whether Christian, Muslim, Jewish or atheist) from involving in the repair and maintenance of the Israeli army artillery which is directly responsible for the killing of thousands of Palestinians and for jeopardising the lives and well being of millions of Palestinians through its practices which include, but are not limited to, hundreds of checkpoints, invasions, curfews, imprisonment of more than 10,000 Palestinians (Men, women and children and quarter of the Palestinian Parliament), building the apartheid wall (including its 40-meter wide electrified fence and 8-meter high concrete wall parts), the ongoing construction of Israeli settlements among Palestinian communities in the Occupied West Bank and the continuous judaisation of the holy city of Jerusalem by demolishing Arab properties and replacing them with Jewish communities.

It is a shame that while only half of the Jewish Britons consider themselves as Zionists (based on a survey pubished by IJV), Zionists still insist to hijack every institution which is supposed to serve the followers of Judaism regardless of their political stances (including UJS and the Board of Deputies) and to silence every Jewish voice which speaks against Zionism or the Zionist regime and its racist and apartheid policies and practices. UJS is already in breach of this common-sense commitment by being a member of the Zionist Youth Council, an organisation which adopts Zionism as a basis for its agenda despite its racist and discriminatory nature and the fact that many Jews disagree with it. The schizophrenia of the UJS proves to be far worse than the most pessimistic could have feared. What else can we expect from a British "National" Union after it openly called its membership to break the law for the sake of another country? Probably officially launching a program to recruit Jewish youth to fight in the Israeli Occupation Army would be the next good idea?!

Until Politicians decide to wake up and shut the UJS unless it stops acting as an Israeli National Union, all universities and colleges in the UK should take a firm stand against the national Union's dual-nationalism by giving no platform to Jewish campus societies that affiliate with UJS "the ambassador of Israel".