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Israeli Soldiers Talk Of
Abuses
July 11, 2005 -- CBS
News
(CBS) CBS News Correspondent Elizabeth
Palmer reports on a controversial exhibit in Tel Aviv created by former
members of Israel's military.
No one can criticize Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza like the
soldiers sent to occupy.
A year ago, three young men, all former
soldiers in the Israeli Defense Force, founded "Breaking the Silence" to do just
that. It is a forum for former combat veterans - most of them in their 20's and
early 30's - to talk about the way a brutal occupation made them brutes.
"It's hard for me to pinpoint the worst thing I did", says Avichai
Charon. "It's not the extreme cases. It's the trivial day to day."
"What
haunts me? It's the memories of 6-year-old, 7-year-old Palestinian children
watching with tears
in their eyes (video) when you're tossing their room, breaking their wall,
taking their father and slamming him into the wall before arresting him."
Anyone who has watched television news pictures of the Israeli army
blowing up the homes of Palestinian militants and their families, or rounding up
Palestinian men and boys in blanket neighborhood sweeps has wondered whether the
soldiers ever feel a stir of pity; or wrestle with their consciences.
They do. But until recently, they weren't inclined to talk about it -
not when they came home on leave, and not after they were discharged.
"When I came back from my military service to a weekend leave, I never
spoke about it. I never told my parents," says Charon. "I had a neighbor, a
friend serving in my unit. We would play basketball when we were out together on
weekend leave and we wouldn't ever speak to each other about what we'd been
doing the week before."
Some didn't talk because they believed other
Israelis weren't willing to listen. Some felt it would be unpatriotic, cowardly,
or that they were alone in their disquiet. Others thought that although the
occupation was violent, there was no other way for Israel to defend itself.
But a year ago, soldiers Avichai Sharon, Yehuda Shaul and Noam Chayut
organized an exhibition of photographs and soldiers' testimonies from their
military service in the West Bank city of Hebron. They acted for the sake of
their own mental health and, they say, to force Israel to confront the truth
about its policies.
Seven thousand Israelis went to see the exhibit in
Tel Aviv. Since then, "Breaking the Silence" has attracted hundreds of new
members and a lot of controversy.
The Israeli Defense Force is a
conscript army. Every young Israeli has to do military service - two years for
women, three years for men. Ever since the most recent Palestinian uprising in
2001 and the wave of suicide bombings that followed, soldiers posted in the West
Bank and Gaza have done hard time - difficult and dangerous.
The
problem, says Breaking the Silence, is that the conscripts believed they were
going to fight a war; that they were soldiers of the most ethical fighting force
in the world. Instead, many found themselves despised occupiers of disputed
land.
"Who is the enemy?" asks Avichai Sharon. "I never saw the enemy. I
saw society. I was three years fighting society in Palestinian cities."
"Ninety-eight percent of the army's energy is aimed against society.
It's even said among the higher ranks, 'We will burn into the consciousness of
Palestinian society that it's not worthwhile to fight the IDF.'"
It's
been a costly strategy; the price well known to any army fighting a prolonged
guerilla conflict. A casual brutality infected the troops, say the soldiers of
Breaking the Silence. Morale was poor. Stress levels high. And they ceased to
feel compassion for Palestinian civilians.
"The
apathy you feel, (video)" says Yehuda Shaul. "You just don't care. ....
about anything at all. You just want to sleep, come back home, see your
girlfriend."
Of course, for Jews, it has distressing associations.
During his service in the West Bank, Noam Chayut obeyed orders to keep
Palestinians off certain roads - even though they linked Arab villages. Now, he
is deeply
ashamed (video).
"Controlling a road that is for Jews only - as the
third generation descendent of Holocaust survivors! That is an atrocity."
Soldiers who have joined Breaking the Silence have described, for the record,
simple -- and chronic -- abuses of power:
turning a Palestinian family out of their house for no other reason than the
soldiers wanted a warm place to watch a soccer game on TV
tossing grenades at illegally parked Palestinian cars;
responding to a provocative pot shot from a Palestinian with bursts machine
gun fire - into the heart of a civilian neighborhood.
The Israeli
Defense Force is sharply critical of Breaking the Silence.
Spokeswoman
Sharon Feingold says "They chose not to bring up the issues that have posed
those dilemmas for them while in service. They did not come to their commanders
and speak about the injustices that they saw."
But Breaking the Silence
says it just wasn't possible. Many soldiers didn't understand how callous they
had become until they were discharged. And some of the ethical breaches of the
occupation are army policy, therefore not reportable.
For example, when
Noam Chayut's unit spotted a package that might be booby-trapped, his orders
were to find a passing Palestinian to investigate.
"I, the brave
soldier, would send a woman who could have been my mother."
"We were
afraid to lose the life of a soldier, so we would send civilians to check
suspicious bags that might explode," says Chayut. "And then you come back home
and hear the stories about the most moral army in the world."
Sharon
Feingold responds that an unconventional war demands unconventional tactics -
many of them unpleasant - and it is the Palestinians who have chosen this
unconventional war.
"We've been facing a campaign of well-orchestrated,
well-organized terrorism from the Palestinian side, and in these circumstances
over 1,000 Israelis have lost their lives,'' he said.
"The Palestinians
side is using the civilian infrastructure, hiding behind civilians, conducting
activities from houses, from backyards, launching mortars ... The IDF and our
young soldiers have been faced with serious moral dilemmas."
The young
soldiers of Breaking the Silence won't be drawn into debate on the politics of
Israel's occupation. All they say is that Israelis must understand what their
country is doing, and where it is sending its young poeple.
"I'm trying
to come back to my parents, to my society and to tell them 'This is where you
sent me,'" says Avichai Charon. "This is what you sent me to do.You didn't send
me to fight Syrian tanks. You didn't send me to fight the Egyptian army. You
sent me to fight 6-year-old kids in Jenin. To break down their house. You sent
me to put 3,000 Palestinians under curfew for half a year; to fire grenades into
Abu Sneinah neighborhood."
Of course, there's a political judgment
implicit in the soldiers' testimony collected by Breaking the Silence. It is
that the price of occupation is too high; that Israel needs to leave the West
Bank and Gaza; that its army should be proudly defending new borders and
legitimate sovereignty.
But the soldiers who joined Breaking the Silence
are hoping that Israelis and their political leaders will come to that
conclusion on their own.
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