How we grew up: an Israeli veteran on the dehumanising power of military control

*Yehuda Shaul is a co-founder and member of Breaking the Silence, an organisation of almost 1,000 Israeli veterans who work toward ending the Israeli occupation

Yehuda Shaul writes of how he and his friends learned to glorify power, and lost their ability to see Palestinians as people whose lives are no less valuable. Now, he and hundreds of others are working to end the occupation.

by Yehuda Shaul Published 29 August, 2014

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Israeli soldiers in front of the barrier between Ramallah and Jerusalem. Photo: Getty

The current round of violence in Gaza has come to an official close. In Israel we have begun to summarise the events of the past few weeks and question the future. As summaries reenter the public discourse, I am reminded of past rounds of summarisation. I try to grasp what has changed from one summary to the next. From Operation “Defensive Shield” (2002) in the West Bank, to “Summer Rains” (2006) in the Gaza Strip – from “Cast Lead” (2009) to “Pillar of Defense” (2012) to the most recent operation in Gaza.

In 2002 a fighter jet dropped a one-ton bomb on the home of Salah Shehade, the former head of Hamas’ military wing, in a residential neighborhood. The bomb killed him in addition to 14 other innocent people, 11 of whom were children. The incident didn’t blow over quietly. Reservist pilots heavily criticised this type of operational activity in an open letter. The Supreme Court encouraged an independent inquiry into the situation, and as a result the government appointed a committee to investigate the operation. Throughout the last month we bombed dozens of houses inhabited by Palestinians – some targeted by the Air Force and others using artillery and mortar fire. These bombs killed hundreds of men, women and children. The bombing of the homes of Hamas members, who do not pose an immediate security threat to Israel, has become an explicit Israeli policy – even when it is known that innocent civilians are inside.

When Shahade’s home was bombed, there were people who questioned the morality of the action. Throughout the last month, over a decade after the aforementioned bomb, hardly anyone in Israel and among its allies around the world criticises the policy of bombing the homes of Hamas members. The lone voices that are heard speaking out against it are hastily silenced. After a month of fighting, over 2,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza. According to the UN, at least 1,400 of the deceased were civilian casualties, 458 of which were children. Israeli society remains silent.

What has changed? My reply begins with a memory from the year 2004, two months after I was released from my service as a soldier and commander in the Occupied Territories. During that period, my friends and I reflected back on our years of service and understood that as soldiers in the Territories we had each gradually erased our moral red line. We understood that in order to carry out our routine activities as soldiers, whose role is to control the territories and the civilian Palestinian population – we needed to erase the humanity of Palestinians along with our own humanity. And that’s what we did. This understanding led us to produce an exhibition of photographs and video testimonies of soldiers from Hebron, the city in which we served for a year. Our goal was to share with the Israeli public the things that we did daily there, in their name.

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/08/how-we-grew-israeli-veteran-dehumanising-power-military-control