Breaking the Silence Exhibit: The Combatant’s Story

by Mikhael Manekin of Breaking the Silence

Yesterday was the last day of our exhibition at Harvard. Over the past couple of weeks, we have heard many different responses to the exhibition. There is one particular response which was voiced frequently (even on this blog) that we feel we have to respond to. It seems that there are some who see us, Israeli soldiers, as victims of the Occupation. The saying goes as follows: “Occupation is bad: everyone suffers from it - Israelis and Palestinians alike”. This is a dangerous path which we at Breaking the Silence wish not to walk on. While we do put a focus on the institutional problems of the Occupation, and while it is important for us to make clear that abuse is inherent to the Occupation, we must, as adults who served in the military, accept full responsibility for the actions we committed. While we do not see ourselves as rotten apples, but as representatives of a morally corrupt system – we have to be clear: we were not victims, but the victimizers.

The purpose of the Breaking the Silence exhibition is to tell the story of the Occupation through our eyes, as soldiers who served in the Occupied Territories. The Occupation is first and foremost the story of the subjugation of the Palestinian people under military control. It is collective, regardless of weather or not the specific Palestinian was involved in an act against Israel. This is manifested in a daily humiliation through checkpoints, and of 18 year olds with minimal training in charge of many aspects of Palestinians’ lives. It is the suffering played out by countless house arrests, and of lack of basic human rights and dignity. And we as soldiers made sure that this system worked day in and day out.

When we got off from our service for weekends, we came home and lived regular lives. We had running water and electricity, and the freedom to go wherever we pleased. We were never under curfew, and never had the real fear of a foreign army entering our houses in the middle of the night.

While there is definitely a moral price Israel is paying, Israel is the one deciding to pay that moral price. We were not the victims. We were, and our society still is, a victimizing society.

Breaking the Silence is calling the system and ourselves what we really are. We believe the system of Occupation is a morally corrupting and dehumanizing system.

It is important to look at everyone in the Israeli Palestinian conflict as human beings. But there are not to equal sides here. Israel is the stronger side

Breaking the Silence will continue to spread this message, inside Israel and around the world, until the price of the Occupation is understood. Even when terrorist attack us, we must think and rethink our moral boundaries as a society.