Reports reached the media this morning about a gathering of IDF soldiers at the Oranim pre-military academy in Tivon. Soldiers’ testimonies from this meeting, publicized by the academy’s director, Danny Zamir, and reported on in Ha’aretz (http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1072040.html), expose instances from Operation Cast Lead of killing civilians and a culture of blatant disregard for the lives of Palestinians.
Breaking the Silence is working on a collection of soldiers’ testimonies from the Gaza operation that will be published in the coming months. From what we have heard so far in our investigations, the stories published this morning in Ha’aretz are not unique, but represent a trend in the behavior of soldiers in Gaza. From the soldiers we have spoken with, and from the testimonies of the gathering in Oranim, it is clear that the moral failures described are not simply the behavior of individual soldiers, but the workings of military policy and decision-making about the operation in Gaza.
In the press around the Oranim gathering and other stories about soldiers’ behavior in Gaza, we are beginning to see the IDF attempt to pin blame for soldiers’ actions – from disparaging graffiti to killing civilians – on the moral flaws of individual soldiers themselves. From the testimonies emerging now, it is becoming clear that the soldiers on the ground were actually a force of restraint in this operation; the open-fire orders and communications about the value of Palestinian civilians’ lives that descended through the chain of military command are responsible for the moral degradation of the Israeli armed forces in this operation. Breaking the Silence calls upon the Israeli military to take full responsibility for the policies that it put in place for Operation Cast Lead, rather than using the soldiers on the ground as a scapegoat for much broader moral failures.
