Joe: Has been to Hebron with Breaking the Silence
Joe is a Masters student in Jewish History at Brandeis and a long-time follower of Middle East events. In 2005, he took a Breaking the Silence tour to Hebron where he saw first-hand many of the locations and images depicted in the exhibit.
He describes what many American Jews feel when they witness the graffiti, the settlements, the impact of security measures upon Palestinian life, and the impact of that on young Israeli soldiers: “While I had read about what was happening, seeing it was really hard.”
And this is key, because while knowledge of abuses is (perhaps) commonplace in (some) corners of American Jewry, addressing it as a pressing issue — be it a deeper cause and effect of violence, or the existential threat to Israel’s values — is most often not. Just because we know about it doesn’t mean we are any more inspired to deal with the ugliness of it.
And if nothing else, the Breaking the Silence exhibit has forced American Jews who see this exhibit to really answer important questions: How do we answer settler extremism and violence? How do we see Israeli society now that we’ve seen an existential threat also? How far are we willing to go in order to protect both the existential and security interests of the Jewish state?
Joe’s full testimony here:
