A former Israeli soldier calls for international intervention to stop settler violence

[snappingturtleSP2]

https://www.npr.org/2023/11/14/1212836719/ex-idf-soldier-calls-for-international-intervention-to-stop-settler-violence

Thanks for sharing OP. I do think there must be many traumatised IDF soldiers, they all look so young and remind me of the young during the Cultural Revolution - easier to persuade the young to fight for an unjust cause. Or I might be completely wrong, just something I think of when I see young IDF soldiers harassing and shooting Palestinians of all ages. What a terrible burden to bear.

Roste I think you are probably correct. Quite a few former IDF soldiers have spoken about their time in the Israeli military, their testimonies are presented on this website.

www.breakingthesilence.org.il/

Local Israeli citizens are very quickly arrested for speaking out about the genocide and West Bank illegal occupation

One I met said that his friends were like him - alcoholic with MH problems and desperate to stay away. He was very sad and I wondered then just how on earth you heal all the trauma. And now… god knows.

They are brave for sharing their experiences and I hope more will follow. It must be difficult having been effectively brainwashed from a young age to believe your country desperately needs protection, to then realise you are the not the victims but the aggressors.

Ori did this documentary as well with a Palestinian expat in Hebron

That’s a brave article.

It’s scary how little the people in power in Israel thought (or cared) about the consequences of violently harassing a group of people for decades. I am not saying that Israel deserved what happened, not at all. I’m saying that after the way Israel treated the Palestinians, nothing else could have happened. It’s like watching someone demolish each of their walls and then be surprised and angry when the ceiling lands on their head.

"It’s like watching someone demolish each of their walls and then be surprised and angry when the ceiling lands on their head."

Wow, has anyone expressed it better than this?

I'm at a loss what to believe the whole situation seems so irresolvable. But that quote deserves to spread far and wide.

Even after this big war, IDF is not at all tired and continue doing what they were doing before war in the west bank, because they were not allowed to even think.

That’s a brave person. A lot of them are speaking out and showing the world the things they are forced to do by the government.

did you see that article on bbc?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-67463162

these poor poor people. Israel and the people who condone this have a lot to answer for.

these are the same people who had ancestors who were treated in the most disgusting inhumane manner during WW2 and now they are doing the same to another group of people. How is that even possible?

I hope those soldiers find peace soon and I hope for Palestine to be free of the tyranny it currently sits under

I see this as Israeli governments total failure . They are being dishonest when inviting settlers from all over world, they bring them in and abondon by placing them their actual citizens, also cheating IDF by putting them in non-productive job which is impossible to acheive completely.

There is a thing said Newtons Third Law. The IDF, Israel went into never ending loop of opressing someone. It is also neverending loop of Anti-semitism claim loop. If you question an Israeli supporter about it they have no logical justification and so fall into claiming Anti-Semitism.

I watched a documentary a few years back about a man who served in the IDF and then went on to be an interrogator - ie torturer and became medically retired in his 40s as he had a breakdown. He was disguised for his own safety, but he said the trauma of committing/condoning acts of violence against people who you know are innocent really messes with your brain. At the time you keep telling yourself they are evil terrorists but really you know this isn't true. He said all of the interrogators were divorced and impotence was a common theme, their brain associated sexual thrill with torture after a while. They brought an expert on and they said that this was also seen in interrogators in South Africa and Northern Ireland.

Franz Fanon talks about that stuff during the Algerian War of Independence. As a psychiatrist torturers would seek his help because they kept on attacking their wives and children.

This was also an issue at Abu Ghraib and is still one at Guantanamo Bay. It’s such public knowledge that US and Coalition soldiers would sexually abuse, humiliate and torture prisoners that Hollywood literally joked about it in films using crude dehumanising sexual language.

This was also an issue at Abu Ghraib and is still one at Guantanamo Bay. It’s such public knowledge that US and Coalition soldiers would sexually abuse, humiliate and torture prisoners that Hollywood literally joked about it in films using crude dehumanising sexual language

Maybe that is one of the reasons that people are so thoroughly unmoved by the genocide in Gaza

I remember watching a documentary years ago where the Serbian Paramilitary jackals were hunting village by village in Kosovo committing all sorts of atrocities such as mass murders, rapes and robbery to spread fear to the Kosovans and one of the ex paramilitary said he knew it was wrong but he was pressured and no chance of standing up against armed military so you just go with it blocking everything but he explained in horrific detail what they deliberately did do knowing full well the victims were civilians and he said he has never been the same since and actively worked naming those responsible to be put on trial.

The paramilitary jackals were basically the joker player to do all the unimaginable dirty work. This was experienced in the late 90s and although the genocide resembles similarities but overall it was day light genocide back then and is now repeated in Gaza. This is actually an interesting part of our modern history that people should look at and compare with today and how guerrillas were armed back then and fought for independence and were never labled the things even infants in gaza are labled today.

This side of the globe a similar conflict was when the USA created and funded the contra insurgency to overthrow the Sandinistas because they didn’t want a socialist government with ties to Cuba in Central America. Part of this interference included an information war where they portrayed the Sandinistas as terrorist dictatorship and the contras as freedom fighters. It was under President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. The contras went village by village committing horrific atrocities such as attacking schools and health clinics which the CIA trained them to do while the US fabricated propaganda against the Sandinista government even once accusing them of genocide with fake photos.

The USA funded the contras by skimming the money from drug trafficking which then brought heavily armed and CIA backed drug cartels to Nicaragua. They enslaved people to make the drugs. They killed anyone who tried to stop the drugs trade.

So you look at the countries that have cut ties with Israel, a lot of them are Central American who have experienced USA funded military actions in their countries.