Operation Breaking 'Breaking the Silence'

The Israeli organisation Breaking the Silence, an organisation of Israeli veterans working to end the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, which collects and publishes the testimonies of Israeli soldiers on the reign of terror inflicted by the IDF on occupied Palestinians, has done sterling work in exposing the brutal reality of Israeli military rule in the West Bank and Gaza.

Here, for example, are but three BTS testimonies among many from Israel's 2014 Operation Protective Edge in Gaza, reproduced by Norman Finkelstein in his breathtaking 2018 book Gaza: An Inquest Into Its Martyrdom (pp 258-60):

[What were you shooting at?]
At houses.
[Randomly chosen houses?]
Yes.
[How much fire were you using?]
There was constant talk about how much we fired, how much we hit, who missed. There were people who fired 20 shells per day. it's simple. Whoever feels like shooting more - shoots more. Most guys shot more. Dozens of shells [per day], throughout the operation. Multiply that by 11 tanks in the company.

***

I don't know how they pulled it off, the D9 operators didn't rest for a second. Nonstop, as if they were playing in a sandbox. Driving back and forth, back and forth, razing another house, another street. And at some point there was no trace left of that street... Day and night, 24/7, they went back and forth, gathering up mounds, making embankments, flattening house after house.

***

There was one afternoon that the company commander gathered us all together, and we were told that we were about to go on an offensive operation, to 'provoke' the neighborhood that dominated us, which was al-Bureij... Because up until then, we hadn't really had any engagement with them... [W]hen it started getting dark my tank led the way, we were in a sort of convoy, and there was this little house. And then suddenly we see an entire neighborhood opening up before us, lots of houses, it's all crowded and the moment we got to that little house, the order came to attack. Each [tank] aimed at whichever direction it chose... And that's how it was really - every tank just firing wherever it wanted to. And during the offensive, no one shot at us - not before it, not during it, not after it. I remember that when we started withdrawing with the tanks, I looked toward the neighborhood, and I could simply see an entire neighborhood up in flames, like in the movies. Columns of smoke everywhere, the neighborhood in pieces, houses on the ground, and like, people were living there, but nobody had fired at us yet. We were firing purposelessly.

However, as Finkelstein warns:

"Once Israel successfully browbeat the international human rights community into submission, the only remaining chink in its armor was domestic human rights organizations. Of these, Breaking the Silence most aroused Israel's wrath. The soldier eyewitness testimonies it had compiled after each of Israel's massacres in Gaza were us unimpeachable as they were devastating. Israel consequently set out in a very public way to destroy Breaking the Silence... Should it neutralize breaking the Silence, Israel will have cleared the last obstacle in its path to committing future massacres in Gaza. Henceforth, no one will be around to compellingly document its crimes for a Western audience. However reputable and reliable Palestinian human rights organizations might be, unfortunately and unfairly, they lack credibility among the broad public in the West. In the 'operations' to come, Israel will be able to carry on as it pleases, emboldened in the knowledge that it can do so with guaranteed impunity. It's a new sequence of catastrophes waiting to happen." (p 288)

Could this be Operation Breaking Breaking the Silence's opening salvo?

"A group of active reserve duty IDF soldiers are flying to the UK this summer to share their testimony in parliament with MPs. This event, hosted by the [former Labour] MP [turned independent in February] Ian Austin in the Palace of Westminster on June 11, is part of a campaign on the dilemmas faced by Israeli soldiers on the ground. Organised by the Israel Britain Alliance and the organisation 'My Truth', the event will include opportunities for parliamentarians to put questions to soldiers." (IDF reserve soldiers hosted by MP Ian Austin in parliament to share testimony, Mathilde Frot, jewishnews.timesofisrael.com, 16/5/19)