Translation of news item, Sept 12, 2002, Reshet Bet, Israel:

Officers of a battalion who were called in for Reserve duty have requested of the Chief of Staff that they be released from their duties if the commander of the battalion, lieutenant-general Geva Shagai, who is accused of abusing a Palestinian youth, is not suspended. [The officer is accused of entering a Palestinian home, forcing a youth to remove his clothing, waving burning toilet paper near his testicles and ordering him to sit on a bottle, as well as shooting at a family inside their home in a separate incident -- reported in Yediot Ahronot earlier this summer.]

The officers, including the lieutenant commander, the company commander, the battalion doctor and the operations officer informed the Chief of Staff and the commanding general that they will not be able to serve under the command of battalion commander Shagai, who is standing trial for the severe abuse of a Palestinian youth, and some of the men are witnesses in the case. In the letters, the officers wrote that they find it unacceptable that after all this time battalion commander Shagai has not been suspended from the army. They state that he is not fit to be a soldier and certainly not an officer in the Israeli army.