#oppression theyve done than believe actual palestinians talking about the oppression theyve faced from the hands of the colonizers

[martyrbat]

[Breaking The Silence website, where's theres text and video testimonies]

[ID: A video of a man sitting at a table and talking into a microphone. Subtitles on the video translates what he says. It follows:

“We grew up with the idea that next to the state of Israel, a state of Palestine would be established. That's a part of the democratic values I was raised with at home. But then at age 18, I was drafted to the IDF. I served for three years in the Nachal Brigade's elite unit, a sniper's unit. And I served in a military dictatorship, that today is 57 years old.

As a solider I would break into Palestinian homes in the middle of the night, as a part of a mission called [quote] ‘mapping’ [unquote]. Which means in a pretty reflexive manner we would be sent into a neighborhood, in Nablus for example. Pounding on the door in the middle of the night, waking up the entire family. I, as the team's photographer, would make the Palestinian family stand against the wall and take their photos, walk around the house and take some photos of other things as well.

During this time my officer would be sitting in front of the head of the household, writing on a piece of paper all the information about the family. Who works, where do they work. Who studies, where do they study. And at the end we would draw a map on the paper, hence ‘mapping’. And then we would go to the next house, and then the next house and so on. And in one night, the elite unit goes through an entire neighborhood.

When we arrived afterwards at the base, we would throw away that piece of paper. I would delete the photos from the memory card of my camera. Why? Because we weren't actually searching for someone. The order we got before going on these missions was [quote] ‘to create a feeling of being [quote] ‘chased’ [unquote] among the Palestinian population’ [unquote]. Because a Palestinian who feels ‘chased’, is a Palestinian that's easier to control. And that at the end of the day, was our mission in the occupied territories.” END ID]

Breaking the Silence is an organization of soldiers who share their stories about how Israel's military violence works. What I know from different testimonies is that they often check to make sure the families they're disturbing have no suspects and no investigations against them, because doing this when an investigation is ongoing can disrupt it. So they're intentionally doing this to people who did nothing wrong.

I find testimonies like this to be genuinely important, and still I can't stop thinking about the active members of Breaking the Silence who jumped right back into their uniforms to participate in the attacks on Gaza.