Time for the soldiers to speak out
By Gideon Levy
When will the soldiers at long last start talking? When will their
consciences get the better of them? When will they sit at home and
tell the truth about what they did in their army service in the
territories? Recently there have been a few signs that this inevitable
process, already very late in appearing, may be about to occur. If so,
it could signal an important shift. The refuseniks made their
contribution but apparently have exhausted their strength and their
influence. Now, the talking soldiers' turn has come. Those who do not
refuse to serve - indeed, they are ready to go on bearing the burden -
but who at least will tell the unvarnished truth at home.
It is not only the pursuers of peace and the advocates of human rights
who should welcome this - so, too, should the Israel Defense Forces.
In the meantime, though, fear is paralyzing the few who have arrived
at the awareness that they have to tell their story. The organizing
activity that has taken place in the past few weeks, encompassing a
few dozen soldiers and recently discharged soldiers, has taken place
in deep secrecy, for fear of getting into trouble. In any case, they
are a minuscule minority. The majority of the soldiers apparently
don't bother to ask themselves why they are there; who decided that
they have to decide the fate of the Palestinians day in and day out;
why they have to risk their lives in order to protect groups of
delusional settlers; what their systematic abuse of the Palestinians
has to do with security; and how many innocent people they have killed
and are killing.
Victims of the process of the Palestinians' dehumanization, tainted
with feelings of the intoxication of power and rule - alongside the
fear, the soldiers for the most part probably see nothing wrong about
their actions in the territories. It's a lot easier to carry out their
orders without asking too many questions. Still, it's hard to believe
that among the tens of thousands of soldiers who have served in the
territories, there are none whose conscience bothers them, if not
during the service, at least afterward, when they have matured and are
at some distance from the horrors. It's difficult to imagine that with
the exception of 600 or so refuseniks, all the rest of the IDF troops
are totally in harmony with what they are doing.
The soldier who last Thursday shot to death a youngster who was
throwing stones at Yakir junction knows the truth. He knows that the
explanation offered by the IDF spokesperson, to the effect that the
soldier fired at the young person's legs, but because he bent down the
bullet struck him in the head and killed him, is a very dubious one.
Maybe he also understands that not all the stone throwers have to be
marked for death. The time has come for that soldier and his buddies
to tell us the truth. Similarly, the soldier who in mid-March shot to
death a 23-year-old woman, Delal Abu al-Hassan, as she was hanging out
laundry on the roof of her house, knows the truth about the
circumstances of her killing. Maybe one day his conscience will
torment him for taking the life of a mother of three children, one of
them a newborn infant. And the soldier who prevents a woman in labor
from crossing the checkpoint, and the soldiers who provoke the
children at Qalandiyah and kill them, time and again, and the soldiers
who open fire with live ammunition at people who are demonstrating
against the separation fence - we need their accounts.
The Six Day War with its heady victories - a war that was immeasurably
more moral than the current intifada - generated the courageous
"soldiers speak" phenomenon (manifested in the book Siah Lohamim,
translated into English as "The Seventh Day"), in which participants
in the war described looting and killing along with moral qualms after
their return home. The first intifada, in which the IDF was a little
more moral in its behavior - as can be gleaned, for example, from the
trials that were conducted against soldiers - engendered a film that
contained harrowing testimonies by soldiers about what they had done.
Yet now, when soldiers are daily perpetrating acts which in the
enlightened world are defined as war crimes in every respect, from
mass destruction to wholesale killing, from imprisoning a people to
preventing the sick and the wounded from receiving medical treatment,
total silence prevails. No one is wrestling with his conscience, no
one is talking.
The Israelis have been in a blackout for the past three and a half
years. They have no information about or interest in what is going on
in the occupied territories. Only the soldiers can now lift this
screen, which is the fruit of a very dangerous collaboration between
the security authorities and the media. The Palestinians aren't
believed, the Israeli press is keeping its distance from the
territories and the international press is perceived as hostile. Only
the soldiers themselves can break the vicious circle in which the
absence of information brings about distorted and ultimately
disastrous conceptions. One soldier who did that, Liran Ron Forer, was
vilified for his efforts, but his book, "The Checkpoint Syndrome," has
had an impact in Israel and internationally. Another soldier, Y.,
brought to Haaretz the keys he found in an IDF base - keys that belong
to vehicles of Palestinians that were arbitrarily confiscated in the
territories, though the IDF Spokesperson consistently denies that this
is done. His conscience troubled him. What Y. did is important, and
not least for the IDF itself. Now it's time for others to stand up and
speak out. For them to relate how they killed and jailed and
humiliated for no good reason. No one will be able to deny their
accounts. They were there, and they are soldiers in the Israel Defense
Forces, not alienated detractors of the country. Israel is still a
very long way from establishing truth and reconciliation commissions.
Their time, too, will come, but in the meantime story hour has already
arrived.
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