Breaking the silence, a group dedicated to collecting and disseminating testimonies by IDF soldiers about the terrible things they were made to do during their service, was dumbfounded to discover that there are people out there who would miss the point they try to make, namely that there’s a lot of blame to go around in the Israeli-Arab conflict — and conclude that only Israel is to blame. And point to those BTS testimonies as proof.
Here’s what they published on Facebook on Thursday, in what appears, at least on the face of it, to be a sincere expression of shock:
“We were deeply disappointed to come across this video in which our soldiers’ testimonies were not only misused, but also severely distorted.”
But then they conclude with the familiar mantra:
“In manipulating our testimonies, and thus the truth about the reality in the occupied territories, this type of rhetoric fuels the extreme right-wing’s pro-occupation narrative in Israel. Such blatant lies mask the truth of occupation, by enabling pro-occupation forces to divert the conversation from the moral price of military control over a civilian population, focusing attention on refuting falsehoods. The harsh reality on the ground is severe enough, and doesn’t require inflammatory incitement in order to resist it. As individuals who experienced this reality firsthand, we know that the occupation is the greatest threat to the future of the State of Israel, which is exactly why we’ll continue to break our silence.”
And the big finish: “Only an end to the occupation will enable justice, equality, and dignity, for both Israelis and Palestinians alike.” Which doesn’t really deal with the question of how come Gaza, which was emptied of all it Jews worse than Berlin in 1942, still harbors the same hatreds as before, and, in fact, has been on a never-ending rampage to drown all the Jews in the sea.
Maybe there’s only so much a person can learn from one experience. Perhaps when they discover more of their work being used by Jew haters everywhere they’d reflect more deeply on the realities of being an Israeli Jew.
