Breaking the Silence Exhibit: The Combatant’s Story

Disclaimer: The opinions shown here do not represent the views of Shovrim Shtika/Breaking the Silence or that of its speakers. The opinions here belong to the individuals who voluntarily contributed these video clips.

Disclaimer: The opinions shown here do not represent the views of Shovrim Shtika/Breaking the Silence or that of its speakers. The opinions here belong to the individuals who voluntarily contributed these video clips.

Polly is involved in the Quaker community and came to see the exhibit in Boston. What she took away from the exhibit is an incredibly personal belief that were she to also be stationed in the occupied territories, she would also do things she would later regret. I feel this is a very humble and important statement to make. Some people want to believe that they would not succumb to the numbness described by Oded and Dotan, which I suppose they are welcome to hope. Except that there is no way of telling for sure and that we can only rely on the advice of people who have served to tell us.

Listen to Polly’s moving testimonial here:

Disclaimer: The opinions shown here do not represent the views of Shovrim Shtika/Breaking the Silence or that of its speakers. The opinions here belong to the individuals who voluntarily contributed these video clips.

This Jewish participant from Philadelphia caught the complexity of the conflict and particularly the view from inside the Israeli Defense Forces. Listen to his whole testimony here:

Disclaimer: The opinions shown here do not represent the views of Shovrim Shtika/Breaking the Silence or that of its speakers. The opinions here belong to the individuals who voluntarily contributed these video clips.

Erika is a member of the Progressive Jewish Alliance, our undergraduate hosts at Harvard. She shares with us here why she is personally thankful for the soldiers’ work and presence in Israel and the States:
“As someone who went to the West Bank this summer and lived in Israel, I was really glad because for it actually re-humanized Israeli soldiers in a way that I had lost, having to go in and out of the West Bank every day, after being very bitter about the way I was treated as well as Palestinianss. After going through this exhibit, it was really interesting to see what institutionalized occupation does to normal human beings in that their not in and of themselves bad people…it definitely allowed me to humanize the people involved in it.”

Disclaimer: The opinions shown here do not represent the views of Shovrim Shtika/Breaking the Silence or that of its speakers. The opinions here belong to the individuals who voluntarily contributed these video clips.

This participant from Philadelphia made some powerful connections between Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and America’s occupation of Iraq, at least as far as the effects upon soldiers and civilians.

Breaking the Silence makes no statement about any political connections between Israel and Iraq, but certainly the lessons about what happens in the relationships between occupier and occupied are instructive for all Americans to hear.

Disclaimer: The opinions shown here do not represent the views of Shovrim Shtika/Breaking the Silence or that of its speakers. The opinions here belong to the individuals who voluntarily contributed these video clips.