LETTER FRLOM SDEROT RESERVISTS TO OLMERT: When your approval rating hits 'rock bottom' and keeps falling, this is what happens. Translated--with correction--by IMRA:

The following is IMRA's translation of the abbreviated text as published in today's edition of Yediot Ahronot with the correction broadcast on Israel Radio at 10:00 AM this morning.

Israel Radio correspondent Nissim Keinan reported that the leaders of the reserve soldiers told him that the final version of the letter they gave Yediot Ahronot did not say that they would not serve - but instead "find it difficult" but the paper opted to publish an earlier draft of the letter.

Mr. Ehud Olmert
Prime Minister
Prime Minister's Office - Jerusalem

Greetings,

Re: Letter of Sderot Reserve Soldiers

We are residents of Sderot who are reserve soldiers and officers. We were inculcated with the values of Zionism, Judaism and sacrifice for the State and its citizens. We believed that service in the IDF is a right and an obligation on behalf of the State of Israel and all its residents and that only this way is it possible to insure the existence of a safe home for the Jewish People of Israel and the Diaspora.

Last summer we were called for the war in the North and we went out of a feeling of reciprocal pact, national obligation and common fate with the residents of the North. We feel that this pact was violated by the Government of Israel in Sderot and the communities adjacent to Gaza!

With a heavy heart and feelings of harsh disappointment we are writing this letter. We have already lost the ability to live normal civilian lives in our homes. Already for several years we cannot play with our children in the playgrounds or send them without fear to the parks and schools.

We have stopped believing that someone is doing everything he can in order to protect us. We cannot accept that our children and the rest of the residents of the region will continue to be the canon fodder of the State of Israel.

We have decided in light of the existing situation in which we are abandoned and our dear ones are unprotected without hope on the front - we find it difficult to do reserve duty and protect the rest of the residents of Israel!

We demand that the State of Israel draft all of its resources in order to grant us security again. If the State cannot provide us this basic need we ask to be evacuated to other places.

In a state where every man is for himself we have no alternative.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Sderot and Olmert.