A recent academic study of Israeli soldiers’ testimonies suggested their operational
routines quickly numbed them into treating harassment and aggression towards
Palestinians as normal.
The young soldiers came to enjoy a sense of power and their ability to impose
“corrective punishment”. -
Avner Gvarayahu of Breaking the Silence, a group of former soldiers who compile
testimonies of soldiers’ abuses, agreed.
He said the real rules of engagement issued by commanders were “flexible” and
allowed soldiers to open fire on civilians.
"Soldiers are educated by the army to see the conflict as a zero-sum game:
It’s either us or them.
Then every Palestinian comes to be seen as a threat, as a potential terrorist,
whether they are young or old, man or woman, able-bodied or disabled.
They are all the enemy"
Gvarayahu, who once commanded a special operations unit, said the army command
also approved of what he called “revenge attacks”,
raids on random Palestinian communities in retaliation for the deaths of Israelis.
“There is no way these kinds of attacks can be carried out by ordinary soldiers
without authorisation from the very top.
I think the decision even comes from the political level.”
He said political and military leaders established the norms of behaviour within the army.
“Remember that the current defence minister, Moshe Yaalon, when he was the chief
of staff [in 2002], said the army’s job was to
‘burn into the consciousness’ of the Palestinians their defeat.
The only aim one can infer from that is that the army’s role is to use force to
make the Palestinians weak and compliant.”
Yes. IDF is just as much a way to keep Palestinians in check as to keep Israeli
citizens brainwashed.
New conscripts are bullied by peer pressure or plain ordered to humiliate,
torture and kill Palestinians.
When they leave you'd think a lot of them would be disgusted with themselves,
but in fact, in order to do that, they'd have to face up to a sobering cognitive dissonance
"I used to do all these horrible things, therefore I am a horrible person"
that is not bearable so they reach out for common rationalizations
"It keeps us safe" or
"Palestinians are inhuman anyway",
"They want us dead so we are just defending ourselves" and so on.
An ever larger share of the officer corps of the Israel Defense Forces comes from Orthodox or settler families.