Israeli Veterans Break the Silence
Their testimonies tell the truth that exposes Israel’s lies and propaganda
‘Breaking the Silence’ was founded twenty years ago. It is a group of Israeli veteran soldiers and officers who have committed crimes against human beings in the course of their military service, and are speaking out about it.
The video below is a compilation of testimonies. Much of what these veteran soldiers say echoes what I have been saying about the way Israel indoctrinates its citizens.
These veterans are speaking out because they find it difficult to live with the crimes that they have colluded with, or committed. Their purpose is to counter Israel’s propaganda, and let the world know what Israel is really like.
By speaking out they are probably seeking some kind of redemption. If you cannot undo what you did, you try to do something to stop it from happening again. When you have a conscience and you feel guilt over what you did, staying silent is much harder than speaking out.
Criminal countries like Israel turn all their citizens into criminals. Some of the veterans say that ‘ordinary’ Israelis do not know about what Israel has been doing to the Palestinians. But this is not entirely accurate. The Israeli media lie and present a sanitised narrative that perpetuates the same brainwashing everyone receives in Israel. The British and US media have always done this, so Israel is hardly original. But despite what the media say there, the people do know. The role of the media is to help them rationalise, deny, minimise, or avoid. But they all know the truth.
The veterans who speak out have the capacity for empathy. Despite the brainwashing, and the heightened, intense, hyper-vigilant atmosphere that the military deliberately creates, these soldiers could see they were dealing with human beings just like them. When they finished their duties, they could no longer live with themselves.
Unfortunately, the majority of soldiers are taught to switch off their empathy, and they do. They do it willingly because to do otherwise would be unbearable. But I have no doubt this destroys them. Only psychopaths remain unaffected by the abuse they perpetrate. Most people are not psychopaths, and when they do something wrong it catches up with them at some point or another. When it does, their psychology pays a heavy price. It happens in all contexts where abuse is committed by people who are not psychopathic. Most Israeli Jews are psychologically unwell. The live with chronic anxiety and fear. Living like this has far-reaching implications to every aspect of life and human relationships.
Israel is already imploding. It is a society with no cohesiveness. The only thing that binds it together is hatred and fear of the Palestinians, and much of the rest of the world. A decisive international campaign of boycotts and sanctions will provide the necessary push to bring down Israel’s settler-colonial project once and for all. Ireland and Spain are leading the way, so maybe there is some hope on the horizon. But the longer the world waits, the more Palestinians are murdered, traumatised, and displaced. Human beings do not have time to wait when they are abused and need to be rescued and protected.
Be aware that some of the testimonies are not easy to hear, and some footage can trigger difficult feelings.
These testimonies tell you what Israel has been doing to the Palestinians for decades. What you see in Gaza now is an escalation of existing behaviours, tactics, and policies. There is much more material on Breaking the Silence website, and I encourage you to visit their website.
Israel has no leg to stand on, morally or legally, and there is no coming back from what Israel is doing.
Please share widely. People need to see this. This is the truth.
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As I’ve said before your understanding of psychopathy is outstanding and also your understanding of the overall human condition and how it relates in specifics to (Israhell) or what could have become “Isratine” but remains Zionist Occupied Palestine.
There are few who qualify as you, I believe, to have such profound insight into all these factors shaping the human condition and its relationship with the current events of the ongoing genocide in Occupied Palestine.
Moreover, now living in the West and in the belly of the Mother of Settler Colonialism you’re moreover able to relate all this to westerners of all types and the global picture and context. This is why despite the horribly traumatic subject matter, the unfolding of the genocide which took place also in other settler colonial Occupied First Nations such as North America before mass media existed, reading your articles is reassuring that we’re not alone and there are people out there that totally “get it” and not least that anyone with a functioning heart and brain, a conscience, can get out of the engineered and crafted consensus reality back into the full reality of actually what is, discard the false indoctrination and unlike what so many fear, that the truth is something they won’t be able to handle and survive and thus that the path of least resistance and ongoing denial will lead to peace of mind and survival rather than the reality which is that the truth sets you free and you and all others like you are testimony of that.
This is also why your writing needs to reach more people and even helps survivors of psychopathic abuse as it is both validating and encouraging. Your Substack needs a lot more readers have you looked into how it works with promotion and recommendation by and of other good Substack? I’m not up on it at all, I know that Substack have done a lot of work in this area though over the past year and probably have documentation which I guess you’ve read.
Here’s an article that you may find as interesting as I did from someone who has visited Occupied Palestine and been involved in the freedom struggle most of his life and just started a Substack which also needs promoting: https://flyingimam.substack.com/p/palestine-after-gaza-reality-check you can see more about him at his website flyingimam.com