“The overarching goal [of home invasions] was to instill a sense of persecution among the Palestinians.” “It’s a rolling trauma.” So say Israeli soldiers, as they look back with regret on the acts they carried out, night after night, at the behest of their state.
Their testimonies are compiled in a new human rights report from Breaking the Silence, Yesh Din and Physicians for Human Rights, “A Life Exposed: military invasions of Palestinian homes in the West Bank.”
The Israel Defense Forces said their army doesn’t launch stun grenades or tear gas into Palestinian schools, but after a video surfaced it altered its response, blaming “the wind.”
Jonathan Cook reports on Israeli soldiers breaking the silence on what they’ve done. “Whatever a soldier believes when they begin their military service, there is no way to behave ethically in the occupied territories,” Ido Even-Paz, a former Israeli soldier says. “It’s a system in which Palestinians are always treated as inferior… Every day the job is to inflict collective punishment…”