A soldier's story

Breaking The Silence is a group of men and women who served in the Israeli Defence Forces. They have served in the West Bank and Gaza. After coming back from service, they have began to speak out about the activities they were involved in.

Eran served in the Israeli army from 2004 to 2008. He served in Hebron, the West Bank. Hebron is a city that is home to 180,000 Palestinians and 800 Israeli settlers. The settlers are guarded by a force of 3,000 soldiers.

The job of the army is to keep the settlers safe, and to make the lives of the Palestinians hell. Eran talked about how he and his men would enforce curfew on Palestinians for days and weeks at a time, arresting anyone who dared to break it and mistreating them. During his first day in Hebron he made the error of trying to enforce it on the settlers. He was stoned by a group of settler children and then punished by his superiors.

The soldiers would 'practice' arresting 'terrorists' by routinely raiding people's homes at 4 in the morning, breaking down people's doors, dragging men outside and blidfolding them in front of horrified relatives, then taking them to military bases and beating them. Then they would be released a few hours later with no charge and warned "not to do it again"- leaving their victims even more confused and scared since they did nothing. As Eran explained, arrests of actual militants would be carried out by special forces, not soldiers. Their job was to terrorize the civilian population.

He shared other stories, stories of settlers rampaging through Palestinian neighbourhoods and breaking windows and beating up bystanders, while the army watched. They moved in after a crowd of Palestinians gathered and arrested those who began yelling at the settlers. Of soldiers beating up international activists who arrived to help the Palestinians and of their platoon commander telling them that CPT supports terrorists and that they are worse than the Palestinians. Of a boy being arrested for being out during curfew and made to sit blidfolded and handcuffed for 16 hours.

After his time in Hebron, Eran joined Breaking The Silence and began speaking out about what he saw. The group has gathered over 800 testimonies from soldiers and ex-soldiers about human rights abuses perpetrated against Palestinians. His parents disowned him and most of his friends do not speak to him anymore. His girlfriend went to prison for 4 months after refusing to serve. She is not able to get a job, a permit to study, and is also ostracized by a lot of the society including her family.

Eran is a hero in my opinion. He has given up a lot to expose the injustices he was made to take part in. That is what courage looks like.