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Standing
at 6'1, with strong build, a full beard, and long dark hair, Yehuda
Shaul seems like an unassuming young man.
Wearing dark cargo pants, and a long-sleeved blue shirt, he paces back
and forth taking in the whole room. It's hard to notice at first but his
blue velvet kippa (skull cap) rests easily on his head.
His voice is mellow and calm. He has a disarming smile that lights up
his entire face when he's happy and talking about the things he loves
(one of which is football). But behind the smiles and the passion for
the world's most popular sport is a young man who has seen and done
things no young person should ever have to endure.
A soldier is born
He was born in Jerusalem, the son of an American born father and
Canadian-born mother who immigrated to Israel in 1973, the year of the
Yom Kippur War. The 24 year old, much like every other male in Israel,
was drafted into the army at the age of 18. Everyone is obliged by law
to serve in the military; men serve for three years and women for two.
Shaul wanted to serve in the Israel Army not because he was required,
but rather that he wanted to. "I went because to me, it was obvious
since I was five or six that I was going to be a soldier, that when my
time comes at the age of 18, I will join the army ... The only question
was, will I join the regular army or be an elite commander in the army,"
he says.
During a very powerful and emotional ceremony at the Western Wall, Shaul
swore an loyalty oath with his fellow soldiers, promising to protect
Israel.
But towards the end of his time in the army, Shaul remembers something
that began to change his view about the Israeli Army and Israel's
defense against terrorism.
He explains, "Somewhere around three months before the end of my time in
the army, I began to think about my life as a civilian. Trying for the
first time after two years and ten months of living military life ...
trying for the first time to ask myself who is Yehuda? Who am I, what do
I want to become? And for me that moment was a very terrifying moment.
It was a moment to stop thinking about being as a professional combat
soldier and start thinking like a civilian. Stop thinking from inside
and start observing from outside what's going on.
"It's a very terrifying moment because, in one second the military
terminology and the way of thinking doesn't apply to you anymore and in
one second you lose the justification for 95 percent of actions you took
part in the past two years and ten months.
"And when I felt that, I felt that something mad was going on around me.
I felt I can't continue my life without doing something. I didn't really
know what it meant, what I was going to do; but I started talking to
some of my comrades and I discovered that we all felt the same. We all
felt that something wrong was going on around us.
"We started talking about what we've done and that's how Breaking the
Silence got started."
Speaking Out
Breaking the Silence (BTS) is a group of discharged soldiers who are
veterans of the second Intifada, which began in September 2006. The
group has tasked itself to reveal to the Israeli public the daily
routine of life in the territories, a routine that gets no coverage in
the media.
For Shaul and his comrades it was obvious that they were going to do
something, and it was obvious that it was going to be about Hebron.
Hebron is a Palestinian city in the West Bank located to the south of
Jerusalem. It is considered a holy city to Jews, Muslims and Christians.
This is where Abraham, Isaac, Sarah, and Jacob are buried in what is
referred to by the Jews as The Tomb of The Patriarchs, and by the
Muslims as al-Haram Ibrahimiyah. Furthermore, Abraham is an important
figure in all three religions.
Out of the three years that he served in the occupied territories, 14
months were spent in Hebron. In March of 2004 Shaul was discharged. In
June 2004 he and some comrades started BTS with a photo exhibition about
Hebron.
The name Breaking the Silence was apt because what is going in the
occupied territories is one of the biggest taboos in Israel. "It's like
the thing you never talk about," says Shaul. "It's the dirt from the
backyard that you do everything to keep in the backyard. The last thing
you want is that this dirt will come to the front."
The title of the exhibit was Bringing Hebron to Tel Aviv. Shaul explains
that if anything symbolizes Israel, it's Tel Aviv. In Israel, Tel Aviv
is often called "The Bubble." It is a place where people would rather
sit down in coffee shops and not see anything more than a few feet
around them.
When the exhibition opened, it was a huge success. Over 7,000 visitors
attended the exhibition. Shaul and his fellow soldiers were shocked by
the attendance. For several days all the Israeli media spoke reported
the soldiers' testimonies from Hebron.
The act of the exhibit was a very personal one. None of them really sure
why they were doing it at the time, only that they felt they had to. But
something remarkable happened during the exhibition. Out of the 7,000
that came to see the works, some had also been recently discharged from
different units serving in the occupied territories. While Shaul and his
comrades stood by different works, the soldiers that came to see the
works walked up to many of them and said; "this picture you have on the
wall, I have the same from Nablus."
Shaul realized from these soldiers who served in various parts of the
West Bank and Gaza that the story of his battalion was not unique, but
rather the story of all his generation. It was then that those who had
put on the exhibit had to continue their work. They began to videotape
and audiotape the testimonies of soldiers who served in the occupied
territories. As of now, BTS has interviewed over 400 people who served
as conscript soldiers.
The goal of BTS was not just to show shocking pictures. Not to tell
horror stories about life in the West Bank or Gaza. The goal of BTS was
to help people understand the mindset of occupation, to understand the
mindset of an occupier.
Games Children Play
Shaul explains that when one is in the occupied territories, things
might seem exciting at first but over time the soldiers tend to get
bored; they become numb to the situation around them. "Eight hours on,
eight hours off, you start to get bored so you begin to make things a
game," he says. "You start to aim your rifle at kids and see them
through the scope of your rifle and take a picture. Then you aim at your
friends and take a picture. The rifle is no longer a killing machine;
the rifle becomes a part of your game, the way to pass time."
Often, these games would extend to the Palestinians who would have to go
through checkpoints.
"We use to say that there are two kinds of blindfolded and handcuffed
Palestinians. The first kind is called wanted terrorists. These are the
people that you get the ID numbers from the [security service], [and
their] address, you come in the middle of the night into the house,
catch the guy, bring him back to the barracks, blindfolded until he is
taken away.
"But the other kind, what we call in Hebrew "Dry outs" or more
professionally, detainees; these are the Palestinians who broke curfew
... During 2002 through 2003 there were more than 500 days of curfew in
Hebron. And we would lift it every few days so people could get food for
maybe two or three hours. But if someone were to leave after these hours
to get food for his family, then he would be detained for five, six, or
seven hours. You must educate them.
"Or if you ask the Palestinians to stand in one nice line and one guy at
the end starts to scream, that could be seven hours, ten hours.
"If you call on a Palestinian to show his ID and he smiles too much,
then that could be two hours or it could be eight hours. It just depends
on which side of the bed you woke up on that morning."
Over time, Shaul says that the Palestinians stop being people and simply
become objects.
The Wrecking Crew
Shaul explains that at the beginning of the second Intifada, when the
Israeli army would occupy a Palestinian home, commanders would given
explicit instructions. The only things allowed to be used from private
property were things for military purposes.
If they would occupy the house for more than a few days they might throw
out the family, or remand them to the first floor or a basement. If a
chair or a table was needed to build a post, a soldier was allowed to
use them. "Believe it or not, the first houses we entered, before we
left, we washed the floors," Shaul recalls. "This is what we called an
enlightened occupation."
Eventually, the units would get more and more comfortable in the houses,
and over a period of time the soldiers would become bored and they would
start to break things.
Once, when Shaul's battalion was doing an operation in city of Ramallah,
a World Cup match was underway. "We looked around and found a house,
entered it, kicked the family out, watched the game, and when it was
over we left and went back to our mission," he says.
During Operation Defensive Shield in 2002 in the town of Jenin, Israeli
bulldozers, made by Caterpillar, rumbled through the narrow streets,
taking the walls of houses and shops along the with them.
"After a week the soldiers in Jenin ran out of water," Shaul explains,
"So the commander gets on the radio and tells his men to go to a shop to
get more water. We need water, this is a military need, right? So the
soldiers go to the store in an armored personnel carrier (APC) and get
water. Well, a week with out water is also a week without cigarettes, so
they take cigarettes, and a week without cigarettes is probably a week
without chocolate, so they take the chocolate as well."
The Blender
Yehuda Shaul's professional infantry training was as a grenade
machinegun operator. During the second intifada, his first assignment in
Hebron was to stand post at a school over looking a Palestinian
neighborhood called Abu Seniehi.
Every night at approximately 6pm, Shaul says, Palestinian militants
would shoot at the settlements in Hebron, and the IDF would return the
fire.
Shaul's platoon sergeant informed him that every night they would hear
gunfire and that he had to react and return the fire. It is important to
note that a grenade machinegun is not an accurate weapon and that the
targets that are firing at from within a dense urban area are almost
impossible to spot.
When Shaul realized what he was going to have to do he became very
nervous. He worried for hours about what would happen when 6pm rolled
around. "At 6pm the shooting starts and you get your orders over the
radio. You approach the machinegun. You still know that something is
wrong, that something is not right. You don't believe that you're going
to shoot the neighborhood ... for what are we here?
"So you pull the trigger you spray the area you pray that the less
amount has been fired and then there is four or five seconds of tense
quiet. You pray you haven't hit innocent people. But the next day you're
less tense, the third day, and then after a week it becomes the most
exciting moment of the day.
"After awhile you see that the Palestinians are not getting the message.
They are continuing to shoot. So, maybe we shoot at 5:30pm to deter
them. Then over a little bit more time we go out on patrols and we see a
car and we decided to explode it to send out a message. Now when I talk
about this I am talking about how the mission starts and where it goes.
How it just becomes a part of you. The blending."
Where do we go from here?
BTS identifies two levels of silence. The first level is the silence of
the combat soldier who doesn't understand what's going on. The second
level of silence is that which is conveyed to the Israeli public
regarding what is really happening in the occupied territories -- what
is happening to their sons and daughters, husbands and wives.
Yehuda Shaul stares on intensely and leans forward. "No one wants to
hear what's really going on in the occupied territories. No one wants
the dirt from the backyard to get to the front. It's time to put the
dirt so that everyone can see and that we can all begin to address it"
*this article was reprinted from electronicintifada.net
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