"Occupation of the Territories" is being published in Hebrew and by Breaking the Silence -- a group of Israeli ex-soldiers with an established record of gathering first-person accounts of IDF operations. The information was meticulously checked and re-checked for accuracy; there is no mistaking the ring of truth in the reports, which reveal consistent patterns, and thus have a powerful cumulative force. To read them is to see the profound moral corruption of the occupation in all its starkness. They show us ordinary, decent young soldiers, caught up in an impossible situation, sometimes trying desperately to make sense of that situation, but mostly following their orders without question. In a number of cases, those interviewed have clearly been psychologically and spiritually scarred by their participation in horrific events of which they had little understanding at the time.
"Most painful of all is the inescapable realization that the events reported by the soldiers -- in straightforward, unpretentious, searing language -- are in no sense unusual. They describe the rule and the norm, the very stuff of the occupation, now forty-three-and-a-half years old and going strong. No one involved in maintaining it gets away unscathed in heart or soul, including the ordinary soldiers who do what they're told, although only a small number are capable of the kind of articulate reflection on their experience that we find in this book.
"But it is not only the soldiers and the policemen and the judges and the bureaucrats who pay a personal price, along with their Palestinian victims. As the Israeli philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz predicted forty-three years ago, the occupation has brutalized Israeli society as a whole and eroded the moral foundation of our very existence. If there is still hope for Israel, it lies with those remnants of the peace camp that remain active and, in particular, with groups such as Breaking the Silence, who offer a taste of the bitter, but perhaps ultimately healing, truth." [1]
In 2009, the testimonies of 54 Israeli combat soldiers who participated in Operation Cast was published by Breaking the Silence. The testimonies exposed significant gaps between the report by the Israeli military and the events on the ground.
Israeli Forces "accepted practices" included the needless destruction of hundreds of homes and mosques, the firing of phosphorous gas into populated areas, the killing of innocent victims with small arms, the destruction of private property, and a permissive atmosphere in the command structure that enabled soldiers to act without moral restrictions.
The testimonies revealed that the soldiers
were not given directives stating the goal of the operation and one soldier
testified, "there was not much said about the issue of innocent
civilians."
Many soldiers said that they fought without seeing "the enemy before their
eyes."
"You feel like an infantile little kid
with a magnifying glass looking at ants, burning them," one of the
soldiers testified that "a 20-year-old kid should not have to do these
kinds of things to other people."
Mikhael Mankin said, "The testimonies prove that the immoral way the war
was carried out was due to the systems in place and not the individual soldier.
This is an urgent call to Israel's society and leadership to take a sober look
at the foolishness of our policies."
On the last day of my fifth trip to Israel and Palestine, on 27 July 2007, I met with Mikhael Mankin, a religious Jew and former Infantry Lieutenant in the Israeli Defense Force/IDF who had served six years in the occupied territories of Bethlehem, Hebron, Ramallah, Jenin and the Gaza Strip.
Mikhael was discharged from the IDF in 2002 and had become the Foreign Relations Manager of Breaking the Silence, and he said:
"I am a practicing Jew and in two weeks we go into the month of repentance; which requires acknowledging our sins. We cannot change things until we acknowledge our culpability."The problem is government policy that is implemented by young soldiers and whenever religion is involved, we will have fundamentalism. The Israeli peace and justice activists are less than 1% of Israeli society and anybody who is an activist is an optimist. You cannot do anything if you do not believe you can do something to change the situation. We have to remind ourselves that we are the minority; [it appears that] we are loosing, but we remind ourselves we are right!
"Everybody in Israel knows somebody who has served in the occupied territories. The situation in 2007 is worse than 2006 and it looks worse for 2008, but more and more activists-like Anarchists Against the Wall and Tayoush are actively working with Palestinians against the occupation, they are not afraid to travel in the occupied territories and are learning Arabic. Two, three years ago you wouldn't have heard anything; but now every week Israelis are getting arrested for fighting the occupation.
"A few years ago, the soldiers you have encountered at the checkpoints would have been me. Soldiers like myself who served during the second intifada, got our education on the job. You all have visited more places [the past nine days] than most Israelis ever have. Israeli's have no idea what is happening in the occupied territories. But, so far in 2007 we have given more Israeli's a tour through Hebron than we did in 2005 and 2006 combined. Hebron is a ghost town, the settlers are unbearable and every soldier who is stationed there understands the 600 settlers there are psychotic; insane.
"I became very opinionated while in the army, but I kept it all to myself. Nobody talks about it in the army and I was the commander and did not know until after I got out that one of the other soldiers in my unit was feeling the same way, until he gave his testimony. Israeli society wants you to believe you are a bad apple for speaking out because unless you trust the system, it will fall apart. Most Israelis who get out of the army leave the country and are probably all drugged out. They suffer post-traumatic syndrome but we are the victimizers. My age group is getting the hell out of here or walling themselves off from society and are not involved in anything.
"Over 450 former soldiers have now given their testimonies and we don't publish any stories without the corroboration coming from another former soldier and the testimonies are kept anonymous
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