Breaking the Silence activist wants fellow citizens to see stark realities of day-to-day Palestinian lifeOakland Ross
If you are heading to Hebron any time soon, do not expect Yehuda Shaul to act as your guide, not the way things are going.
The 25-year-old Israeli political gadfly would certainly like to escort you on a bracing tour of the powder-keg Palestinian city, where an enclave of Jewish settlers cohabits uneasily with the surrounding Arab populace. Shaul conducted 145 such tours last year alone, providing some 3,000 people with a first-hand glimpse of the starker aspects of the Israeli occupation.
Lately, however, Israeli authorities have pretty much put a stop to those journeys, following a series of unruly incidents involving Hebron's Jewish settlers, who do not appreciate Shaul's visits one bit.
The burly, bearded activist has appealed to the country's highest court. A ruling is expected next month, but Shaul does not expect the decision to go in his favour.
Still, he is determined to carry on with his four-year campaign aimed at bringing other Israelis face to face with the many unsavoury deeds done in their names by soldiers in Israeli uniforms.
"We have done some very, very dirty things," Shaul said the other day, sipping fruit juice in a peaceful West Jerusalem restaurant. For the past four years, Shaul has headed an organization called Breaking the Silence, whose mission is to "tell the story of the occupation through the eyes of the occupiers."
This is why Shaul conducts those tours to Hebron. Located 40 minutes by car south of Jerusalem, the Palestinian city is the site of frequent clashes between Israeli settlers and Palestinian inhabitants, with the Israeli army always on hand, ostensibly to keep the peace but often just fanning the flames.
Since March 2004, when he completed his three-year stint of military service – including 14 months in Hebron – the Israeli-born son of a Canadian father and American mother has been gathering testimony from Israeli soldiers about their experiences while enforcing the 41-year occupation.
So far, Shaul and his colleagues have interviewed more than 570 soldiers, and the record of those conversations – available in booklets, on DVDs or online – includes some extremely disturbing prose.
"If you want to occupy, it's dirty," he said. "We want to believe we're different, that we can occupy with silk gloves. But you can't be an occupier and not act as such. You can't be there and not be there at the same time."
When Israeli soldiers in the West Bank spot a suspicious-looking parcel in the street, for example, they do not destroy it with gunfire or call in the bomb experts.
Instead, says Shaul, they select a Palestinian man – any Palestinian man – and force him to inspect the parcel. Either he'll blow himself up or he won't.
To gain experience detaining suspects, rookie soldiers are ordered to enter a house almost at random, rouse everyone inside, collar a man – any man – and take him away, only to release him later and send him home, terrified but free.
Games played by Israeli soldiers using Palestinians as pawns include the choking game and the "shu" game, neither of them gentle. They can be seen on Shaul's website (www.breakingthesilence.org.il).
"Here, you have absolute power in the hands of 19-year-old kids," said Shaul. "For some people, it's very difficult to understand. But this is what people do. There's no big philosophy behind it."
Shaul insists such behaviour is standard, unremarkable, when one side in a conflict enjoys all but complete mastery over the other.
"Breaking the Silence is all about bringing people to understand these are not stories of rotten apples," he said. "This is the inherent price you must pay if you are there."
It is clear from Shaul's most recent booklet – containing testimony from soldiers who served in Hebron between 2005 and 2007 – that Israeli conscripts in the West Bank quickly stop regarding Palestinians as fully realized human beings.
"Your whole grasp of reality gets distorted," recalls one conscript. "After having such total control of so many lives, you can do anything you want to them. You can steal from them, sleep in their house, steal their car. You really can do anything. Anything. Anything."
Even soldiers who initially recoil at such conduct generally give in and "go with the flow," as one puts it in the latest booklet.
An ultra-Orthodox Jew, Shaul explains: "Something wrong was going on. I needed to do something about what I'd seen."
Out of that need, he established Breaking the Silence, which has six staff and a small army of volunteers.
They continue to collect testimony from Israeli soldiers and intend next year to publish a collection of accounts from female conscripts.
"We're not here to promote any political solution," he said. "We're here to promote a debate about the moral price tag of the occupation."
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