IDF - Breaking the Silence

Off-Topic Off Topic - Militaria
#1

A view from inside IDF operations and experience which contradicts Israel’s government’s public position as having “the most moral army in the world”: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1149572658286

http://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/index_e.asp

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37MFa7ZKQWo

The background to Breaking the Silence:

October 27, 2006

Breaking the Silence: Fmr. Israeli Soldier Tours U.S. to Expose Abuse of Palestinians by Israeli Military

We speak with Yehuda Shaul, a former Israeli soldier, who has just begun a tour of the United States to give an inside look at how the Israeli military treats Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

A leading Israeli human rights organization accused Israel on Thursday of breaking international humanitarian law by holding thousands of Palestinian prisoners in Israel.

According to B’Tselem, international law prohibits the transfer of civilians, including prisoners, from the occupied territories to Israel.

On Thursday B’Tselem issued a 53-page report outlining how Israel’s prison policies has made it nearly impossible for Palestinians to regularly visit relatives in jail.

Meanwhile, a former Israeli soldier named Yehuda Shaul has just begun a tour of the United States to give an inside look at how the Israeli military treats Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

Shaul is a co-founder of Breaking the Silence–a group of former Israeli soldiers committed to exposing human rights abuses by the Israeli military.

Last year the group revealed that Israel soldiers had been ordered to open fire on unarmed Palestinians. The group has also gathered photographic evidence that proved Israeli soldiers have abused Palestinian corpses.

YEHUDA SHAUL: Good morning.

AMY GOODMAN: Could you talk to us a little bit about what you’re hoping to accomplish on your tour?

YEHUDA SHAUL: I’m here in the United States, because, I would say, we in Breaking the Silence see the act of breaking the silence as an act of taking responsibility. As ex-Israeli soldiers, who’ve served as combat soldiers in the Occupied Territories and were there and committed all what we’re talking about, we’re part of the occupation. After we were discharged and realized what we were doing and what was going on around us, there was only two options, as I see it. There’s or to lock ourselves in the room, cry and ask forgiveness, or to stand up and take responsibility and demand from others to take responsibility.

So, in my eyes, breaking the silence, standing up and telling the stories and trying to bring people to know and to realize and to understand what it means, occupation, on a daily basis, through these testimonies that we publish and the pictures that we had in the exhibition, is demanding from Israeli society to take responsibility for it, for what is being done in their behalf.

And in my eyes, in our eyes, responsibility doesn’t end with ex-soldiers who served there or with Israelis, or the idea if our army as Israelis is doing all these things. Responsibility is to every human being in the world, and for sure for Americans, because in the end of the day for all what Israel does, there is only one country in the world that, you know, the chief of staff and the prime minister of Israel has to report in the end of the day, and that’s the United States of America. For that reason, I think that people of America must know what’s going on there and must break their own silence and take civil responsibility, human responsibility, to what is being done there.

AMY GOODMAN: Yehuda Shaul, tell us your story. How did you end up in the military? How did you decide to leave?

YEHUDA SHAUL: In Israel, every Jewish Israeli is obligated by law to serve in the military—men for three years, women for two years. And when I reached the age of eighteen, I was drafted for three years. I served as a combat soldier and a commander. Two years out of my three years were in the Occupied Territories, and fourteen months were in Hebron.

And during my service in the Occupied Territories, I just did whatever I had to do, whatever were my missions, fulfilling my missions, leading my soldiers, doing all sorts of things—what it means, occupation—and suddenly like three months before I was discharged, I was sitting down and trying to imagine myself as a civilian. I told myself, you know, in three months, I’m going to give back my weapon, my uniform, stop being a combat soldier, and again going back to civilian life. And for me, that same moment, you know, the exact moment of stop thinking as a professional combat soldier was a moment of—maybe I can call it an enlightenment, you know? It’s a moment of stop seeing things through the eyes of a soldier and start seeing things through an eye of a civilian. It’s like, again, stop seeing things from in the system and start observing it from outside.

And when I suddenly looked at myself from the outside and looked backwards, you know, to what I’ve done in the past two years and ten months in the Occupied Territories as a soldier, I was totally shocked. I realized that something mad was going around me. Suddenly I realized that the situation that I took part in brought me to do stuff that, you know—I wanted to believe that it wasn’t me. But, you know, I couldn’t escape it. It was me. And when I realized that, I felt that I can’t continue my life without doing something about it.

And that’s when I started to speak with some of my soldiers, some of my comrades, and I discovered that we all felt the same, but we didn’t have the courage to speak about it. You know, it was something that we didn’t—it was somewhere in the back of the mind, but we didn’t open it inside the unit. And because we all felt the same, we all felt that something wrong is going on around us, we decided to break the silence.

And I was discharged in March 2004. In June 2004, we started our activities with a photo exhibition and video testimonies from our service in Hebron. As I said, I served fourteen months in Hebron, so it was obvious that we’re going to start from there. And the idea of the exhibition, we called it then, is to break the silence surrounding what’s going on in the Occupied Territories, in what we called “Bringing Hebron to Tel Aviv,” because you must understand that, you know, what’s going on in the Occupied Territories is like the biggest secret in Israeli society. It’s like the taboo. You never talk about it. It’s like something that happens in the backyard. It’s the dirt from the back yard that no one wants to have it in the front. And for that reason—

JUAN GONZALEZ: I’d like to ask you about all of these thousands of Palestinian prisoners. From your perspective, as someone who’s obviously had to participate in the capturing and imprisonment of some of these Palestinian civilians, what is this doing to Palestinian society, to have so many people locked up for such a long period of time under Israeli control?

YEHUDA SHAUL: I have no idea. I’m not a Palestinian. Just, you know, looking from the outside, seems like breaking all the family structure. I don’t know, just trying to think of, you know, all the people that we arrested, bumping in the middle of the night through the windows, through the doors, through the roofs, waking up the family, taking people. No one knows when they’re going to get back, why they were taken. You know, this is—just, you know, almost every night in the Occupied Territories, you do an arrest operation. Every night you come back with what we saw in the pictures before, or you see now, of handcuffed, blindfolded Palestinians, who are just, you know, were now arrested, waiting to be taken to interrogations at the secret services.

But also, there’s another kind of Palestinians, as you see now in the picture, and that’s kind of what we call in Hebrew, or I will translate it, what we called “dry outs,” or if I would professionally translate it, “detainees.” And these are Palestinians, you know, when you stand in the checkpoint and you ask from all the Palestinians to stand in a very nice one line, and suddenly one of them starts screaming or leaves the line, so you must educate him, right? They must know who’s the boss. So you detain the man aside. You took him, handcuff, blindfold—five, six, seven hours, it could be more, it could be less. Or you call a Palestinian in the checkpoint, you ask from him his ID. He smiles too much. You must educate them.

And all the system is built on fear. It’s built of just oppressing, I don’t know, of not being able to treat Palestinians as equal human beings to you, because the job is to do things that you don’t do to equal human beings, you know, to bump in the middle of the night to a family from the roof and wake up all the family, separate men from women and just search all the house. It’s something that you don’t do to an equal human being to you. It’s something that I never done in Israel, but in the Occupied Territories, as a combat soldier, as an occupier, that’s my daily job, 24/7, house after house.

AMY GOODMAN: Yehuda Shaul, we have to leave it there, but we will link to Breaking the Silence and your tour, where you’ll be in this country, as we speak to him today in San Francisco.

#2

Nice thread mate.

And that’s when I started to speak with some of my soldiers, some of my comrades, and I discovered that we all felt the same, but we didn’t have the courage to speak about it. You know, it was something that we didn’t—it was somewhere in the back of the mind, but we didn’t open it inside the unit. And because we all felt the same, we all felt that something wrong is going on around us, we decided to break the silence

There is someting wrong at least since 1948 in Palestine:)
Do not need to have the courage to speak/see it.
Obviously the inner Israely society is sort of Religioun despotism- so harsh that awerage Israely shall own a “courage” to talk about wide violation of rights of palestinians.That is well known.

And in my eyes, in our eyes, responsibility doesn’t end with ex-soldiers who served there or with Israelis, or the idea if our army as Israelis is doing all these things. Responsibility is to every human being in the world, and for sure for Americans, because in the end of the day for all what Israel does, there is only one country in the world that, you know, the chief of staff and the prime minister of Israel has to report in the end of the day, and that’s the United States of America. For that reason, I think that people of America must know what’s going on there and must break their own silence and take civil responsibility, human responsibility, to what is being done there.

Oh what a deep revelation?
Any kid from muslim school of London know that it is “Great Satan” who is responsible for all , doing by “Little Satan” in near east.:smiley:

#3

If you claim to have the “most moral army in the world,” then you don’t…

60 Minutes, an American news magazine, did a brilliant piece on Palestinian-Israeli relations a month or so ago. I’ll see if I can dig it up. It showed how a Palestinian family that had the misfortune of living in the wrong house was continually occupied by Israeli soldiers quartering themselves in their abode at will and preventing even their children from going to school. It was pretty disgusting, and disturbing, and on some level is was disquieting for the long term prospects of Israeli nationhood…

#4

This ‘revelation’ about Israelis abusing palestinians isn’t new or suprising. I was at university with a former IDF tank commander and he told me they regularly demolished palastinian houses for ‘sh*ts and giggles’. Any occupying force is bound to have black marks against them, look at any occupation force in history to see that. The only remarkable thing about this story is that a Israeli is prepared to talk about it openly in the media.

#5

That isn’t new or surprising, either.

What would be really new and surprising would be for the IDF and or the Israeli government to admit that the IDF and Israel engage in such conduct, and much, much worse conduct and that they have for decades, such as the El Arish massacre of Egyptian POWs by the IDF and the Sabra and Shatila massacres facilitated by ‘the most moral army in the world’.

What would be even more novel and surprising would be if they admitted that it was and is still and will continue to be done to complete the Zionist task of driving the Palestinians out of their homeland, which has been going on at the hands of the Zionists since the 1920s but mostly since the 1940s when the Zionist terror gangs gained the state of Israel by a campaign of terror against all who opposed them and then went on to run their state acquired by terror and violence and to create and man the IDF. Leopards don’t change their spots.

There is a world of difference between bad conduct by some members of an occupying force and, as the Israeli governments have long done, a conscious national policy of using the occupying force to implement the national aim of driving the rightful inhabitants of the land out of their land to make way for the invader while all the time dishonestly claiming to be moral and above reproach.

I disagree.

There has been plenty of opposition among Jews in and out of Israel to the Zionists’ oppression of the Palestinians and the continuing abuse of their human rights. For one of many examples in Israel:

B’TSELEM - The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories was established in 1989 by a group of prominent academics, attorneys, journalists, and Knesset members. It endeavors to document and educate the Israeli public and policymakers about human rights violations in the Occupied Territories, combat the phenomenon of denial prevalent among the Israeli public, and help create a human rights culture in Israel.

B’Tselem in Hebrew literally means “in the image of,” and is also used as a synonym for human dignity. The word is taken from Genesis 1:27 “And God created humans in his image. In the image of God did He create him.” It is in this spirit that the first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “All human beings are born equal in dignity and rights.”

As an Israeli human rights organization, B’Tselem acts primarily to change Israeli policy in the Occupied Territories and ensure that its government, which rules the Occupied Territories, protects the human rights of residents there and complies with its obligations under international law.

B’Tselem is independent and is funded by contributions from foundations in Europe and North America that support human rights activity worldwide, and by private individuals in Israel and abroad.

B’Tselem has attained a prominent place among human rights organizations. In December, 1989 it received the Carter-Menil Award for Human Rights. Its reports have gained B’Tselem a reputation for accuracy, and the Israeli authorities relate to them seriously. B’Tselem ensures the reliability of information it publishes by conducting its own fieldwork and research, the results of which are thoroughly cross-checked with relevant documents, official government sources, and information from other sources, among them Israeli, Palestinian, and other human rights organizations.
http://www.btselem.org/english/About_BTselem/Index.asp

B’Tselem’s assessment of Israeli conduct in the occupied territories supports Breaking the Silence’s views rather than the denials of the government which is blessed with, and controls, ‘the most moral army in the world’. For example http://www.btselem.org/english/publications/summaries/200203_trigger_happy.asp

For one of many examples outside Israel:

Jewish coalition calls for open debate on Palestine

Ben Cubby

March 6, 2007

A COALITION of prominent Australian Jews, including the philosopher Peter Singer, publisher Louise Adler and Robert Richter, QC, has sparked a furore in the Jewish community by announcing it will challenge what it sees as extreme pro-Israeli bias among Jews in Australia.

The group, Independent Australian Jewish Voices, has been criticised by some Jewish authorities for calling for more open debate on Israeli’s treatment of Palestinians.

The organisation yesterday launched an online campaign to have “alternative voices” heard in the media. One organiser claimed many Australian Jews were “basically brainwashed” into unthinking support for Israeli government policy towards Palestine.

The Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, a major think tank, said the group was dangerous and unrepresentative.

“Some of the individuals are clearly committed to the delegitimisation of Israel,” said Colin Rubenstein, the executive director of the council.

“They’re simply using their Jewish ethnic background. It is clearly a small number of Jewish-born individuals who make their Jewishness known while they are being critical of Israel,” Mr Rubenstein said.

A visiting British author, Melanie Phillips, last week nicknamed a British version of the group “Jews for Genocide”, according to the Australian Jewish News. Phillips, who wrote Londonistan, a book criticising elements of the British Muslim community, could not be contacted to verify the claim yesterday.

Ms Adler, Melbourne University Press chief executive, a signatory to the group’s petition, said she was outraged by the council’s references to “Jewish-born individuals” when commenting on the group.

“When you are classified as Jewish-born or not, or who is a legitimate Jew - I don’t want to use this analogy but you can only go back to the Third Reich,” Ms Adler said.

“That criticism of Israel is automatically assumed to be anti-Semitism just equates to a way of shutting down debate. In Australia, in the early 21st century, we should be able to be more mature than that.”

Mr Rubenstein said the coverage received by the group “made a nonsense of the claim that they are somehow suppressed or silenced”.

The organisation is modelled on a similar Jewish group launched last month in Britain that includes the Nobel Prize winner Harold Pinter, the comedian Stephen Fry and the filmmaker Mike Leigh.

Peter Slezak, one of the Australian project’s founders and a senior lecturer in history and philosophy at the University of NSW, said supporters wanted “to stand up and let it be known that we have the right to question Israeli policy, that we believe in fair treatment of Palestinian people as well as Israelis.”

Professor Slezak, whose mother survived the Auschwitz concentration camp in World War II, said he had received a death threat at the weekend after his views were presented in the Jewish media.

“There are people out there in the community who respond to this dog whistling, these references to Jewish-born and so on,” Professor Slezak said. “There are simply a lot of people in the community who have basically been brainwashed over the years.”

He conceded that the group’s views represented a minority of Australian Jews, but said many were “quietly disturbed” by outspoken support for Israeli actions.

The organisation, which opened a website with 120 signatures yesterday, is supported by a list of prominent Australian academics and activists, including the Greens MLC Ian Cohen, the UTS lecturer Eva Cox and the La Trobe University professor Dennis Altman.

It hopes to gather thousands more signatures in coming days, hold forums and encourage further debate about Israel’s actions.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2007/03/05/1172943356185.html#

#6

In fairness to Israel, I should provide its proud and defiant response to yet another unfounded accusation by its many enemies in the rest of the world that Israel was not justified in its most recent assault on the Palestinians, which saw hardly any Palestinians killed, barely a mere 1,300 of them, while the Israelis endured yet another atrocity upon their defenceless people, losing the massive number of 13 of their own people when assaulted by the militarily superior Palestinians who, but for the brilliant tactic of the IDF in bottling them up and wiping them out like the Warsaw Ghetto, could have defeated Israel and converted it into a Taliban stronghold on the shores of the Mediterranean, pointing a blowtorch of radical Islamism at Europe’s heart. :rolleyes: :evil:

Israel slams UN rights report on Gaza

Djallal Malti

March 24, 2009

Israel on Tuesday slammed as “one-sided” a report by a United Nations human rights investigator that said its three-week war on the Gaza Strip was possibly a war crime.

“Unfortunately, this is a further example of the very one-sided, unbalanced and unfair attitude of the (UN) Human Rights Council,” government spokesman Mark Regev said.

“This sort of report does the service of human rights no good whatsoever,” he said. “It’s a politicisation of human rights.”

The United Nations special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories, Richard Falk, said in a report on Monday that there was “reason” to conclude that Israel’s massive military offensive on Gaza in December and January was a war crime.

Falk said that in order to determine if the war was legal, it was necessary to assess if the Israeli forces could differentiate between civilian and military targets in Gaza.

“If it is not possible to do so, then launching the attacks is inherently unlawful, and would seem to constitute a war crime of the greatest magnitude under international law,” Falk wrote in the report.

“On the basis of the preliminary evidence available, there is reason to reach this conclusion,” he added, pointing out that attacks were targeted at densely populated areas.

The 22-day war killed more than 1,300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis and left swathes of the impoverished Hamas-run territory in ruins.

Regev said the Human Rights Council “has been criticised for its negative Israel fixation by two UN secretary generals, Kofi Annan and Ban Ki-moon”.

Israel’s staunch ally the United States also lambasted the report, saying Falk was “biased”.

“Look, we’ve expressed our concern many times about the special rapporteur’s views on dealing with that question,” State Department spokesman Robert Wood told a press briefing.

“We’ve found the rapporteur’s views to be anything but fair. We find them to be biased. We’ve made that very clear.”

Falk had focused his report on the legal issues arising from the war, as he had been unable to enter Gaza to assess the human rights situation on the ground.

He attempted a mission in December - before Israel launched its 22-day offensive - but was detained by the Israelis and then expelled, with the foreign ministry accusing him of “legitimising Hamas terrorism”.

“Such a refusal to cooperate with a United Nations representative, not to mention the somewhat humiliating treatment accorded has set an unfortunate precedent with respect to the treatment of a representative of the United Nations Human Rights Council, and more generally of the United Nations itself,” Falk wrote.

Falk has been highly critical of Israel’s policies against the Palestinians, saying in December that they amounted to a crime against humanity.

Falk in January also charged that Israel’s military operations in Gaza raised the “spectre of systematic war crimes” and needed to be investigated.

Israel launched its war in retaliation over persistent rocket fire by militants in Gaza.

It ended after Hamas and Israeli each declared ceasefires on January 18 but sporadic violence has continued since and Egyptian-brokered efforts to forge a more sustainable truce have yet to succeed.
http://news.theage.com.au/breaking-news-world/israel-slams-un-rights-report-on-gaza-20090324-97q7.html

#7

“Unfortunately, this is a further example of the very one-sided, unbalanced and unfair attitude of the (UN) Human Rights Council,” government spokesman Mark Regev said.

Yeah, why the heck do these UN assholes always have to side with the Human Rights and not the Israeli interests?! Damn Anti-Semites…

:neutral:

#8

Last update - 12:40 19/03/2009

IDF in Gaza: Killing civilians, vandalism, and lax rules of engagement

By Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondent

During Operation Cast Lead, Israeli forces killed Palestinian civilians under permissive rules of engagement and intentionally destroyed their property, say soldiers who fought in the offensive.

The soldiers are graduates of the Yitzhak Rabin pre-military preparatory course at Oranim Academic College in Tivon. Some of their statements made on Feb. 13 will appear Thursday and Friday in Haaretz. Dozens of graduates of the course who took part in the discussion fought in the Gaza operation.

The speakers included combat pilots and infantry soldiers. Their testimony runs counter to the Israel Defense Forces’ claims that Israeli troops observed a high level of moral behavior during the operation. The session’s transcript was published this week in the newsletter for the course’s graduates.

The testimonies include a description by an infantry squad leader of an incident where an IDF sharpshooter mistakenly shot a Palestinian mother and her two children. “There was a house with a family inside … We put them in a room. Later we left the house and another platoon entered it, and a few days after that there was an order to release the family. They had set up positions upstairs. There was a sniper position on the roof,” the soldier said.

“The platoon commander let the family go and told them to go to the right. One mother and her two children didn’t understand and went to the left, but they forgot to tell the sharpshooter on the roof they had let them go and it was okay, and he should hold his fire and he … he did what he was supposed to, like he was following his orders.”

According to the squad leader: "The sharpshooter saw a woman and children approaching him, closer than the lines he was told no one should pass. He shot them straight away. In any case, what happened is that in the end he killed them.

“I don’t think he felt too bad about it, because after all, as far as he was concerned, he did his job according to the orders he was given. And the atmosphere in general, from what I understood from most of my men who I talked to … I don’t know how to describe it … The lives of Palestinians, let’s say, is something very, very less important than the lives of our soldiers. So as far as they are concerned they can justify it that way,” he said.

Another squad leader from the same brigade told of an incident where the company commander ordered that an elderly Palestinian woman be shot and killed; she was walking on a road about 100 meters from a house the company had commandeered.

The squad leader said he argued with his commander over the permissive rules of engagement that allowed the clearing out of houses by shooting without warning the residents beforehand. After the orders were changed, the squad leader’s soldiers complained that “we should kill everyone there [in the center of Gaza]. Everyone there is a terrorist.”

The squad leader said: “You do not get the impression from the officers that there is any logic to it, but they won’t say anything. To write ‘death to the Arabs’ on the walls, to take family pictures and spit on them, just because you can. I think this is the main thing: To understand how much the IDF has fallen in the realm of ethics, really. It’s what I’ll remember the most.”

http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1072040.html

#9

The UN might still be pissed off about the Israelis murdering four of their observers in 2006, and other things like the recent use of phosphorous shells which, among other things, damaged a UN school.

The Israelis should be glad that the UN isn’t run by people like the people who run Israel or parts of Israel would have been turned into a car park by now.

#10

Very true. Considering what they seem to think of as an acceptable retaliation to a couple of dead Israelis (Namely over 1000 dead Palestinians), Israel would already be no more if the UN was just as aggressive.

#11

True, but let us not favour just the Israelis with surviving due to the UN being largely useless.

Kampuchea, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Dharfur, Burma, Tibet and many other places (although I’m struggling to think of any that have been at it since the 1920s with the same growing enthusiasm, effect and international disruption as the Zionists in Israel) were pretty much ignored by the UN so far as any effective action to stop human rights abuses is concerned.

An awful lot of UN time and effort has been spent on Israel since the inception of the UN. I wouldn’t be surprised if it is the nation which has occupied more UN time than any other of similar size, and with the least progress.

It appears that Israel is a nation where, so far as the UN (and the rest of the world trying to bring peace to that region) is concerned, the law of diminishing returns applies.

Which, after more than sixty years of fruitless effort wasted on people who are determined to continue their past conduct to reclaim their ancient land of Israel regardless of international law and opinion, would be a sound reason not to bother with them any more.

But that would condemn Jews in Israel who do not agree with Zionist excesses and the Palestinians who suffer from them to more of the same.

Come to think of it, the car park solution has its attractions. :wink: Innocent people die in all conflicts. A few more won’t matter. At least it would clear the place out and allow a fresh start.

So the Arabs, whether nations or other groups, could start fighting over the car park. :rolleyes:

#12

Yep, there’s always too few parking spots to go around. And maybe the Arabs calm down a bit if they won’t have that hard of a time to find a parking spot anymore?

And if we make it Park & Ride, it’ll help the environment, too! :mrgreen:

#13

Who knows?

A top line, full house Mercedes bought with oil money or corruption dollars takes up a lot of space. And the Arab world is full of them.

Although nowhere near as many Mercs as poor people in the same countries.

Still, at least there is an endless supply of car park attendants, albeit perhaps slightly less experienced in the driving department for an internal combustion engine than might be expected of a modern Merc pilot.