Israeli Soldiers Talk Of Abuses

'Breaking The Silence' Exhibit Documents Abuses Of Palestinians By Military

(CBS)  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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