| January 25, 1930 Mohandas Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and other leaders of the anti-colonial movement in India pledged to achieve complete independence, or Purna Swaraj, from Great Britain. Nehru said: “The British Government in India has not only deprived the Indian people of their freedom but has based itself on the exploitation of the masses, and has ruined India economically, politically, culturally and spiritually . . . We hold it to be a crime against men and God to submit any longer to a rule that has caused this fourfold disaster to our country.” |
January 25, 2002 Israeli Refuseniks A group of Israeli reservists issued a declaration saying they would not serve the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) if assigned to the occupied West Bank or Gaza Strip. It was called the Combatants’ Letter, and the organization Courage to Refuse grew out of their resistance. Captain David Zonshein and Lieutenant Yaniv Itzkovits, officers in an elite unit, realized the missions assigned to them as commanders in the IDF had in fact nothing to do with the defense of the State of Israel, but were rather intended to maintain control of the occupied territories at the price of oppressing the local Palestinian population. Within three months, 69 such refuseniks had been jailed. 629 Israeli soldiers ultimately signed the pledge. Over 280 members of Courage to Refuse were court-martialed and jailed for periods of up to 35 days as a result of their refusal.  The Israeli refusnik movement today |
Tag: Refuseniks
Peace & Justice History for 1/12
| January 12, 1954 Secretary of State John Foster Dulles announced U.S. would go beyond of President Harry Truman’s doctrine of “containing Communism” for a new policy: “. . . there is no local defense which alone will contain the mighty landpower of the Communist world. Local defenses must be reinforced by the further deterrent of massive [nuclear] retaliatory power.” More on Massive Retaliatory Action (We might check in on this in light of recent Republican rhetoric; some history need not be made nor repeated -A.) |
| January 12, 1957 The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) was founded by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other African-American clergymen who wanted to press for civil rights long denied members of their community.  Sixty black ministers from ten states went to Atlanta, Georgia, to set up the coordinating group. They elected King as its first president, with the Reverend Ralph David Abernathy as treasurer.  SCLC history |
| January 12, 1962 Federal workers were guaranteed the the right to join unions and bargain collectively after President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order 10988.“Employees of the Federal Government shall have, and shall be protected in the exercise of, the right, freely and without feel of penalty or reprisal, to form, join and assist any employee organization or to refrain from any such activity.” Eventually, regulation of labor-management relations in the federal government was codified under the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978.  President Kennedy signing executive order |
| January 12, 1971 Reverend Philip F. Berrigan, founder of the Catholic Peace Fellowship anti-Vietnam War organization, was indicted along with five others on charges of conspiring to kidnap National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, and to bomb the tunnels of federal buildings in Washington, D.C. They became known as the Harrisburg Seven.  At the time, Berrigan was serving a six-year sentence at a federal prison in Connecticut with his brother, Daniel, for their destruction of military draft records in Maryland during 1967-68. The Berrigans’ ethic of nonviolence towards others made the charges questionable, and eventually all six were acquitted of the conspiracy charges. Phil Berrigan and Elisabeth McAllister, later his wife, were ultimately convicted and sentenced on just one count of smuggling mail out of a federal penitentiary, the only person in history to be prosecuted on such a charge. More about Philip Berrigan The Harrisburg Seven |
January 12, 1971  “All in the Family” premiered on CBS-TV. The sitcom focused on the major social and political issues of the day such as racism, war, homosexuality and the role of women. In-depth background on the show |
| January 12, 1987 Twenty West German judges were arrested for blockading the U.S. Air Force base at Mutlangen, West Germany where Pershing II nuclear-armed cruise missiles were deployed. Judge Ulf Panzer stated: “Fifty years ago, during the time of Nazi fascism, we judges and prosecutors allegedly’did not know anything.’ By closing our eyes and ears, our hearts and minds, we became a docile instrument of suppression, and many judges committed cruel crimes under the cloak of the law. We have been guilty of complicity. Today we are on the way to becoming guilty again, to being abused again. By our passivity, but also by applying laws, we legitimize terror: nuclear terror.Today we do know…” More on “Judges and Prosecutors for Peace” |
January 12, 1991 The United States Congress voted to authorize the use of military force against Iraq to end its occupation of Kuwait. House: 250-183; Senate: 52-47. The military, political and diplomatic situation at the time |
| January 12, 2002 The “Refusenik” movement began when 53 Israeli soldiers signed an ad refusing to serve in the West Bank or Gaza Strip. Their letter concluded: • We shall not continue to fight beyond the 1967 borders in order to dominate, expel, starve and humiliate an entire people. • We hereby declare that we shall continue serving in the Israel Defense Forces in any mission that serves Israel’s defense.  • The missions of occupation and oppression do not serve this purpose – and we shall take no part in them. [The term originally referred to Jews in the Soviet Union who had applied to emigrate but were delayed or refused by the Communist government, in one case for more than 22 years.] Video interview with Yonatan Shapira, refusenik and former captain in the Israeli Air Force |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjanuary.htm#january12
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