An Israeli soldier and Palestinian students at a checkpoint in Hebron. A new booklet of female soldiers' stories highlights the damaging effects of the ongoing conflict on both sides. REUTERS/Nayef Hashlamoun Photo: NAYEF HASHLAMOUN
On the way out of a popular Jerusalem steakhouse last Wednesday, I was introduced to an American-Israeli named Eliza.
A member of the Israel Defence Forces public relations unit, Eliza quickly explained that she was busy hosting a dinner for some foreign journalists. "Whom of course, internally, I despise," she added apologetically, not knowing who I was.
Among the "despised" journalists at her table were Charles Levinson of The Wall Street Journal, and Sheera Frenkel, who writes for The Times of London. Neither they, nor their Murdoch-owned mastheads, are what you would call typically rabid haters of Israel.
Whether or not the IDF flack actually loathed these two reporters hardly matters. What her comments do reveal is the deep resentment felt by Israel's political elite towards what is perceived to be a biased foreign press corps.
After last year's war in Gaza, and the later report for the United Nations Human Rights Council by Justice Richard Goldstone that accused Israel of war crimes, sensitivity to how Israel is perceived abroad has been more heightened than ever. Yet the most piercing insights into the Israeli-Arab conflict today have nothing to do with the foreign media. They come from within Israeli society itself.
In the past two years, internationally acclaimed films such as Waltz With Bashir, Ajami, and Lebanon, have added exceptional context to the deep divisions within Israeli society and the long-term effects of the conflict on its people. More disturbing still are the verbatim accounts of some of the soldiers who have served in the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
The damaging effects of the occupation, not just on Palestinians but on the soldiers themselves, are laid bare in a booklet published last week by the group Breaking the Silence, an organization of Israeli army veterans who have taken it upon themselves to expose life in the occupied territories to the Israeli public. Titled Women Soldiers' Testimonies, the booklet details the experiences of more than 40 female soldiers who have served in various roles in the territories since 2000.
Testimony 24 was provided by a sergeant on a night-time search for weapons near Hebron, a Palestinian city that is also sacred to Jews and whose centre has been taken over by Israeli settlers. It was about 2am when the raiding party climbed the steps to a large Palestinian house.
"So we entered these people's home, the father opens the door for us, in his robe, and the mother and grandmother and two little kids woke up too. Now they look at you with this look, like 'you're entering our home at two o'clock in the morning'.
"Everything was just so messed up . . . and the father tries to ask, the owner tries to ask questions and talk and none of us even bother to speak to him at all. The soldiers go on, opening and trashing and trashing just about everything in that house, turning the whole place inside out . . . all the drawers, the closets, everything. And we didn't find a thing. Nothing."
After an hour, the soldiers went on to a second house.
"That was the first moment I realised why we are looked at like that, and why we are so hated. You enter in the most disgusting manner, without a drop of humanity, because the disrespect in the answers the man was given — the wife and children were not even addressed — I mean, no one even looked at them.
"I can't even begin to describe to you the shame I felt, ashamed of the way we were behaving, entering their home like that, that we . . .
"I'll never forget this as long as I live, I'm telling you. I have this picture in my head, of those kids staring at me."
Other accounts detail how Israeli soldiers routinely beat Palestinians "to a pulp" for fun, or cocked loaded rifles in the faces of detainees kneeling handcuffed before them, or how Israeli army doctors would "carry out all sorts of experiments on seriously wounded people".
"Sometimes the doctors would come back from their event and say, 'yes, he was already finished, but we did practise some intubation', or this or that," said a lieutenant from the Hebron Regional Brigade/Medical Corps. "Practise. It's not that we tried to save the guy, he died on us. Practise."
Another sergeant from the Sachlav unit describes an incident involving a "stunning little blonde girl" aged about eight from one of the Jewish settlements near Hebron.
"She would pass us by near the outpost in her Shabbat (Sabbath) dress, all neat and cute, and smiling. And then she saw some Arab walk by and she grabbed this huge rock and ran towards him, leapt and boom! She banged his head with it," said the sergeant.
"Just like that, boom. She leapt up to him and banged his head with this stone. And this man was just an old man walking along the street.
"Then she started yelling: "yuck, his blood is all over me, so sickening." And he turned to her and went like this, and the soldier who was with me charged at him and punched him as though he was threatening this little girl. I stood there in absolute shock. I didn't know what to do with myself. An innocent little blonde girl in her Shabbat-best has just banged an Arab in the head with a rock, and the soldier has punched him in the face for turning around and yelling at the girl.
"I remember she had a baby brother, in a pram. She'd hand him little stones and say: 'Throw it at the Arab, throw it at the Arab'. And he was this tiny thing in the pram, and he'd go like that and throw.
"Naturally it would hit his toes because he was sitting and he was so little, but that's what she'd show him: 'Throw it at the Arab'."
There are many more shocking accounts in the booklet. All convey the daily humiliation being inflicted on Palestinians by the occupation.
A sergeant from the Nahal unit describes her shame when reflecting on her years of army service, prompted by her seeing the 2007 film To See If I'm Smiling, about women who served in the territories.
I suddenly began to take note of things and realised how screwed-up this whole system is. No one is okay. Those aren't okay, and these aren't okay, and the army is not okay."
Jason Koutsoukis is Fairfax's Middle East correspondent.
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