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Tag: soldier
U.S., Canada Air Defenses On Alert After Ottawa Shooting

U.S., Canada Air Defenses On Alert After Ottawa Shooting

Washington — U.S. and Canadian air defenses were put on heightened alert Wednesday following a shooting in Canada’s parliament, and the American embassy in Ottawa was placed on lockdown, officials said.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) “is taking appropriate and prudent steps to ensure we are adequately postured to respond quickly to any incidents involving aviation in Canada,” said a U.S. defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The move came as a precaution after a gunman suspected of killing a Canadian soldier guarding a war memorial in Ottawa stormed the Canadian parliament, before being shot dead by police.

NORAD spokesman Captain Jeff Davis declined to provide details but said steps had been taken to ensure defenses were “adequately postured.”

State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf confirmed the U.S. embassy in the Canadian capital was on lockdown, and staff movements had been restricted.

Just outside the U.S. capital at Arlington National Cemetery, military commanders “authorized additional security to be implemented at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier” as a precautionary measure.

President Barack Obama spoke by telephone with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, while Secretary of State John Kerry was also briefed as he flew home from a visit to Germany.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families,” Harf said, adding all U.S. embassy staff had been accounted for.

While the shooting incident in Ottawa raised fears of a potential link to extremists, NORAD’s Davis said there were no signs of possible hijackings or imminent threats to aviation.

“We’re not aware of any current, specific threats against the aviation system,” he told AFP.

U.S. intelligence officials were not immediately available to comment as to whether there were any suspected links to extremists in the shooting in Canada.

NORAD, founded during the Cold War, is a combined U.S. and Canadian military command designed to safeguard the air space over the two countries, with its headquarters at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado.

Since the attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001, the command regularly scrambles fighter jets to intercept private aircraft that enter prohibited areas over the U.S. capital or elsewhere, escorting them to the nearest runway.

AFP Photo/Peter McCabe

Video Of Israeli Soldier Confronting Palestinians Yields Outpouring Of Support

Video Of Israeli Soldier Confronting Palestinians Yields Outpouring Of Support

By Joel Greenberg, McClatchy Foreign Staff

JERUSALEM — An Israeli soldier caught on video as he loaded and aimed his rifle during a street confrontation with Palestinian youths has become an unlikely hero in Facebook postings by Israeli soldiers, embarrassing the military.

The video was posted online by a Palestinian group, Youth Against Settlements, to highlight abusive behavior by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank. But rather than provoking outrage, it triggered a wave of support in Israel.

The incident and the online responses have caught the army off-guard, highlighting the challenge that social media poses to traditional channels of command in the military. The episode has also thrust a spotlight on the challenges that Israeli combat soldiers face doing occupation duty, much like police work, in close contact with a civilian population.

The video was shot in the volatile West Bank city of Hebron, where Israeli forces protect several hundred Jewish settlers who live in the heart of the city. In the video, the soldier, who’s been identified as David Adamov, is seen in a close-quarter face-off with a few Palestinians.

In the video, one of the Palestinians touches Adamov, who pushes him away, then loads his rifle and brandishes it as another youth passes behind him. Adamov curses, lashes out with a kick and threatens to put a bullet in the head of the Palestinian who’s shooting the video.

Many Israelis who viewed the video saw not military brutality but a soldier under threat. Outrage grew when rumors circulated that Adamov had been jailed over the episode. In fact, he’d been sentenced to 20 days in a military prison for an unrelated incident in which he was charged with assaulting two of his superior officers.

Scores of soldiers posted images of themselves on Facebook and on other social media, holding homemade signs that said, “We are also with David of the Nahal Brigade.” The brigade is one of the army’s infantry branches whose soldiers do stints in the West Bank.

A popular Facebook page that’s garnered more than 127,000 “likes” features images of soldiers from various units — their faces covered to avoid disciplinary measures — holding up messages of support for Adamov. One image shows a soldier’s handcuffed hands opposite stones, a Molotov cocktail and a knife — all weapons that Palestinians have used against Israeli soldiers in the West Bank.

At the top of the page is a call “to end the abandonment of Israel Defense Forces soldiers,” along with the message, “The blood of our soldiers is not cheap.”

Amos Harel, military commentator for the liberal newspaper Haaretz, called the phenomenon “the first digital rebellion” in the military and a signal of frustration by soldiers who must serve occupation duty.

“It reflects the lack of agreement by combat soldiers in the field with the policy of restraint dictated to the units in dealing with Palestinian residents,” Harel wrote. “Soldiers even complain a great deal about lack of backing from their commanders for those who have gotten caught up in such confrontations.”

Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups argue that soldiers often show a lack of restraint in their treatment of Palestinian civilians, frequently resorting to violence and opening fire in cases when they could have used nonlethal weapons and made arrests.

But the case of the soldier in Hebron didn’t provoke much soul-searching in Israel, where it was widely perceived as another example of the trying conditions under which service members operate when facing a hostile Palestinian population.

Economy Minister Naftali Bennett, the leader of the rightist Jewish Home party, said in a Facebook posting that he would have acted the same as Adamov, who’d “done the right thing” against a group of provocateurs.

“This isn’t a reality show on TV,” Bennett wrote. “This is a complex and very dangerous reality that IDF combat soldiers face every day.”

The episode also drew attention to the subversive role that digital technology can play in the military, where Israeli soldiers carrying smartphones can get protest messages out to the public easily, circumventing army discipline and the chain of command.

The army chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, ordered an investigation into the Hebron incident and the social media campaign by soldiers.

“It’s important to remember and tell our subordinates clearly that Facebook is not a command tool,” he told a meeting of the army’s general staff, according to Israeli media. “It is here, and that’s a fact, but it is not a replacement or even a parallel channel for dialogue between commanders and their soldiers.”

Yehuda Shaul, a leader of Breaking the Silence, an Israeli anti-occupation group that publicizes accounts by former soldiers of their service in the West Bank, including descriptions of brutality and abuse, said the online campaign in support of Adamov drove home an important message that should serve as a wake-up call to the Israeli public.

“I see it as a good thing,” Shaul said. “By coming out and supporting him by the hundreds, the soldiers are saying what we’ve been saying for years: That’s what we do all the time. This is how you behave. This is the only way to maintain an occupation.”

AFP Photo/Mahmud Hams

Republicans Starting to Regret Letting Crowd Boo Gay Soldier

At the last Republican presidential debate, a gay soldier serving in Iraq named Stephen Hill asked candidates whether they would “circumvent the progress that’s been made for gay and lesbian soldiers in the military” by repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” When he finished speaking, the crowd began booing him, and Republicans stayed silent. Rick Santorum, the former governor of Pennsylvania known for his extremely conservative stances on “social issues” like gay rights, answered the soldier’s question, and refused to thank the soldier for his service.

Republicans have since realized it is not in their best interests to disrespect a war veteran — no matter his sexual orientation — and are frantically trying to backtrack. The day after the debate, Santorum went on Fox News to thank Hill for his service and condemn the audience for booing him. On Sunday, presidential candidate Herman Cain explained that “in retrospect,” it would have been “appropriate” for him to speak out against the crowd when they booed Hill.

But Republicans still refuse to take full responsibility for the situation. Santorum claims that he “seriously did not hear those boos” because he was “too focused on the question and formulating [his] answer,” while Cain argues “that maybe they were booing the whole ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ repeal more so than booing that soldier.”

These belated half-apologies are meaningless. The boos were disrespectful, but they’e only a symptom of a much larger problem the Republicans face. The problem is that every Republican presidential candidate has gone on record saying they want to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and force gay soldiers out of the military.

There is no way their desire to expel soldiers from the military who have volunteered to defend their nation and are already fighting overseas can be seen as anything but profoundly disrespectful to both gay and straight soldiers. If Republicans actually valued or respected American soldiers, they would not deny them service just to make a foolish political point.

President Obama made a similar point on Saturday. “You want to be commander in chief?” he asked. “You can start by standing up for the men and women who wear the uniform of the United States, even when it’s not politically convenient.”

Hopefully, the attempts to distance themselves from booing a gay soldier indicate that Republicans still have some respect for the military, although we won’t know for sure until one candidate — maybe Romney — finally does the presidential thing and drops his support for the discriminatory and disrespectful policy of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”