The Breaking the Silence report of Israeli soldier testimonies about the attack on Gaza earlier this year continues to reverberate around the world. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, it has yet to be mentioned in the New York Times. Any reason for this Mr. Bronner? Instead of covering this essential followup to the biggest story in the region in the last year, Bronner instead has focused on the threat to Israel from Hezbollah and the Nablus success story. Disappointing.
If he were to check out the report, here is some of what he would find:
TESTIMONY 35 – VANDALISM
… He (one of the soldiers) was in the room, I was in the position, and looked through the window, sitting. He opened a child’s bag. The family was not there, they had run away. He took out notebooks and text books and ripped them. One guy smashed cupboards for kicks, out of boredom. There were guys arguing with the platoon commander before we left the house a week later, over why he wouldn’t let them smash the picture hanging there. They think he was being petty with them. It should be noted that the deputy company commander at the debriefing yelled at them that they’re dealing with non essential issues and we’ve got a humanitarian issue here.
Do you recall anything else related to vandalism?
The deputy company commander’s staff wrote “Death to Arabs” on their wall. You said earlier they wondered why they weren’t being allowed to smash another picture, too. This “too” is due to an atmosphere of… After getting out of there, I heard about the letter that reservists wrote (to the Palestinian family that lived in the house they occupied), saying they were sorry. I thought it was a different world, because of the atmosphere on the ground. I didn’t regard this house either as a house that I should respect and leave neat behind me. For example, once I shat on the roof because I had nowhere else to do it. Leaving this house clean was just not the first thing on my mind. There was simply this atmosphere. But about stealing: the company commander, apparently under orders of the battalion commander, held a shame parade to check if stuff was stolen. How did he do it? He didn’t tell the commanders to check each individual soldier. He said: “You (soldiers) pair up, everyone checks his mate for stuff taken. Then you don’t have to yell out if you find anything, just come to me discretely, or to the platoon commander and sort it out.” Obviously either this company commander is a total idiot or he just didn’t want such stuff to be found out.
So there was a shame parade where everyone checked his buddy?
It was bullshit. And I’m sure there was looting. I can’t tell you anything more specific.
Needless to say this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Here is the full Breaking the Silence report – read it for yourself. Because it might be a while until the mainstream media here in the US gets around to covering it, please help get it out there:
It will get read. It wouldn't be published in Iran or even Palestine likely. Ethan Bronner's report on successes in the West Bank deserve to be heard. I'm surprised that you have SUCH a negative view of the removal of roadblocks and reintegration of Palestine's two large cities.
Witty—do you actually imagine there's a human being out there somewhere who doesn't see through your vile apologetics for Israel's wholesale destruction of life in the Occupied Territories? You're not interested in the slightest about the status of Palestinian economy, culture, daily life, infant mortality, health standards, water or anything else unless it supports your Nazi-inspired agenda. If you WERE interested, you'd read the work of someone like Sara Roy who has devoted her entire career at Harvard to an in-depth study of these matters. You don't want to read the results though, because of how horrifying they are. You'd rather read a lying creep like Bronner, because it makes you feel better and convinces you that even after Israel's massacre in gaza and refusal to allow rebuilding materials to a starved and traumatized population, things are actually going along swimmingly in this "cosmopolitan" moonscape of ruins.
"a lying creep like Bronner"? You imagine my thoughts oddly. "makes you feel better and convinces you that… things are going along swimmingly". Phil AND Bronner both described that there is more economic and other activity than they expected in Gaza. Bronner stated that the Gazans were NOT as portrayed in the western media, as fanatics. I took his verification of that as a confirmation of truth that I what expected was occurring in Gaza, in fact wasn't. If Phil and Adam had said it, I wouldn't have believed it as clearly.
Richard Witty, have you actually drunk that Kool Aid yourself, or do you just dispense it.
Yeah. We need Bronner to humanize the Palestinian victims of Gaza for us. That is, after his IDF son has a chance to murder them as a participant in Cast Lead. Phil is liable to distort things. Jesus. As to Bronner's oeuvre, it's rather telling you don't cite his report on the hebraic charles manson cult within the ranks of the IDF: http://www.chabad.org/news/article_cdo/aid/808925... Of course, I'm having this discussion with someone whose son is a Lubavicher. While we're on the subject, how's this for the latest in Nazi hypocrisy? http://www.chabad.org/news/article_cdo/aid/808925... Israel is defending "victims" in their "war torn" country. Eichmann would blush.
Has anyone noticed the fallback positon of people like Richard who are tying to claim that the fact that soldiers are speaking out, which is commendable on the part of the individuals, is somehow a positive reflection on Israel itself? Remember that the IDF are doing their level best to discredit or ignore what these people have had to say. The fact that people are speaking tells us there are good people with a conscience in Israel. It does not exonerate Israel or comprise evidence is a healthy and moral society.
Once more I reach forward to decry in ascii y'all's obsession with the paradoxically named "Witty". Let it go.
Oh Noes! Vandals!
Yeah, this is a standard apologist reaction. See? The fact that a few soldiers are speaking out publicly about the crimes they and their comrades commit on a regular basis proves what an exemplary country Israel really is. And that some soldiers feel kinda bad after the fact about some of the stuff they did proves that Israel really DOES have the most moral army in the world. After all, they not only shoot, they cry afterward. And then they shoot again, and cry again, and shoot yet again, and cry once more. They are, after all, the true victims here, and we should all feel enormous sympathy for them.
"You're not interested in the slightest about the status of Palestinian economy, culture, daily life, infant mortality, health standards, water or anything else…" Come on! All that is the fault of the Palestinians. I mean, if they didn't spend all their time and resources terrorizing the poor Israelis they would have a booming economy, an exemplary culture, a magically wonderful daily life, zero infant mortality, a health system equal to none, and the best and most abundant water in the world. Israel isn't stopping them from having any of those things, it's their own unwillingness to build a good life for themselves. Geez, don't you get it AT ALL?!
Not only that, but when they do speak out, their country turns on them like a viper eating it's young and they are dismissed as attention seekers and anarchists. Those like Jake and Thom will insist that these are lying conspirators, hell bent on bringing down their country, though they never bother to explain what their motivation mibht be.
lovelyisraelis is an antisemite of the worst order. I call on any reader of this website to check out the provided Chabad link and make your own decision what is Nazi. I urge you all to purge this user lovelyisraelis from your midst so an honest debate can happen without this really offensive type of posting!
What you have is anonymous reports from an ultra left wing group. The last such reports turned out to be third hand hearsay.
Witty sang the songs of the Vietnam Veterans Against The War back in the day. Now he seeks to diminish the courageous IDF soldiers who speak truth to the Israeli establishment. Such a humanitarian role model Witty is, a regular light to the World, a high priest in the nation of priests!
Rabbi Rontzki channels Heinreich Himmler, or did Himmler channel Torah-Talmud? The SS-man & the IDF soldier were and are taught that it takes real patriotic courage to overcome specious humanitarian Western values, subjective feelings. And always remember to keep the demanding moral job under wraps as much as possible for PR purposes.
I checked out the Chabad link. It clearly reveals that Chabad worked hard so Israeli children wouldn't miss their afternoon nap while the IDF was massacring Palestinian children in Gaza. Lovelyisraelis is no anti-semite. He allows the Chabad article to speak for itself.
That's what the supporters of Lt. Calley use to say.
Yes indeed. But for the graphic photos and Hersh's dogged persistence, we'd never know about My Lai. It was anything but an isolated incident.
Hersh's reporting was important, but the real credit for exposing it goes to Ronald Ridenhour, a GI who collected information about the massacre from his fellow soldiers and sent the information on in a letter to the State Department, Defense Department, Joint Chiefs, President Nixon and numerous Congresspeople over a year after it happened. All his information was secondhand, BTW, as he had not been present at the incident. Calley was charged by the Army with premeditated murder in September '69, largely as the result of Ridenhour's efforts. Hersh's report on the massacre didn't come out until two months later, in November of that year.
thanks for clarification, tree. I knew a little about Ridenhour. Apparently Colin Powell was instrumental in trying to cover up the massacre. Undoubtedly, you've seen the more recent revelations concerning Tiger Force, exposed in the Todelo Blade.
Mercy to the wicked leads one to be wicked to the merciful. The Chabad are doing good deeds but since they are geared towards Jewish children the antisemite lovelyisraelis goes balistic, think twice before you blanket support every statement against Jews.
The Nazi government went overboard to insure all good Aryan children went to sleep blissfully in their beds; they gave pedants to good Aryan mothers. So how is Chabad different other than than they do the same not for Gentiles, but for Jews? The gored ox is a first principle of the Talmud. The talmudic assumption of responsibility increasing with knowledge of course is limited to an ox owned by a jew. Otherwise, the talmud assumes a jew can do what he wants when it comes to the goy, or to any ox owned by a goy.
Anytime people compare Jews to Nazis it's not a convincing argument. I urge you to make your arguments without that inflammatory comparison. Should hold true for Jews AND Arabs. Concerning the work of Chabad, they are doing a great job working with those children and simply because you see the world though an anti-Jewish prism doesn't lessen the riteousness of their deeds.
Yeah, the lowly white goy Ridenhours never get the kudos they deserve. And Powell never gets the daggers he deserves. Is Obama just another Colin Powell? It increasingly look so, with the caveat, at least he's not quite as bad as Shrub==what a standard!
"a lie will go round the world while truth is pulling its boots on". Old proverb. I have looked over the report. So far, the worst thing I found that was actually stated as something that someone saw was that vandalism reported above. It was wrong, but hardly the stuff of war-crimes trials. There is a quote from somewhere "The book is both good and original, but what is good is not original, and what is original is not good". In this case, the report has both eye-witness statements and claims of serious wrongdoing, but what is eye-witnessed is not serious claims of wrongdoing and the serious claims of wrongdoing are not eye-witnessed. Anyone care to take the time to prune down the report to just the incidents that were reported as being personally witnessed by the person making the statement? Would the report end up much longer than the excerpt above? Of course, you also have the problem of people putting themselves closer to the story (telling it as though they saw it when they really just heard it). Like Barbara Lubin did when she heard a fifth hand account of an atrocity that never actually occurred and when she reported it, lied about hearing it first hand from the woman it supposedly happened to.