Rose Garden turns into protest grounds

The Rose Garden overlooking the Prime Minister's Office was transformed last night into a beehive of loud protesters.

Throughout the day and the heat, a few dozen protesters stood there, responding to the calls of two reservists - Roni Zwingbaum and Assaf Davidoff - for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Amir Peretz and Chief of Staff Dan Halutz to resign over failures in the conduct of the war in Lebanon.

Only a few of the protesters were reservists.

But later in the evening, a few minutes prior to the 8 P.M. news broadcasts, some 200 protesters were already in position, holding banners and signs. Dozens were reservists who had demobilized earlier in the day.

"From the first moment we were mobilized, we knew something was wrong," Zwingbaum says.

In danger for no reason

"For some reason, we were told to gather near Safed, as our rallying point, an area within range of the Katyushas. For no good reason they decided to endanger 1,000 reservists, instead of sending us to Elyakim, which was outside the range of the rockets. That is where we were sent immediately afterward, for training," sats Zwingbaum.

The testimonies of the reservists at the Rose Garden all sounded similar yesterday. All had to do with the halting handling of the war by the senior officers, the irrelevant considerations guiding them and the unnecessary missions the reservists claim they were assigned.

They also told of the soldiers' lack of training, food, water and ammunition during battle.

"In the field we saw that there was no one capable of handling this organization that is called the IDF. It isn't that a pilot does not know how to fly a plane, or an artillery man to use the gun. The problem was that the orders made no sense. If there was leadership, we would have destroyed Hezbollah," Zwingbaum says.

"With God's help, in a week, there will be 400,000 people in Rabin Square," one of the demonstrators shouted, and was applauded by the the crowd. Others were busy recruiting signatures for a petition.

One of the reservists who prepared to spend the night at the Rose Garden, just like he did in Lebanon for a month, could not tell if the modest demonstration would rally public support to the call for the resignation of Olmert, Peretz and Halutz.

"I can't tell you now if the demonstrators who are now here, are here to let off steam or whether the protest will take hold. Days will tell," he said.