this is democracy Now democracynow.org The War and Peace report I'm Amy Goodman in New York with Juan Gonzalez in Chicago the official death toll in Gaza has topped 33,400 including over 14,000 children with over 76,000 people wounded over 1.7 million Palestinians have been displaced around 70% of gaza's population while famine is setting in the international court of justice has ruled their's plausible case Israel's committing genocide in Gaza meanwhile Violence by Israeli soldiers and settlers against Palestinians and the occupied West Bank has also exploded with over 450 Palestinians killed in the last 6 months and at least 14 Villages and towns forcibly depopulated among those speaking out against the violence are Israeli soldiers themselves breaking the silence as an anti-occupation group led by Veterans of the Israeli Army the group was founded in 2004 20 years ago in the aftermath of the second anata we're joined right now by two members of breaking the silence nadav bman is the group's deputy director he served in the West Bank and Gaza from 2005 to 2008 and tal Sagi is the group's education director she served as a soldier in heon one of the largest cities in the West Bank we welcome you both to democracy Now um nadav let's begin with you why are you in the United States and then headed to Canada and your reaction as you listen to these numbers mounting in Gaza where you were an Israeli soldier though albe it many years ago uh over 33,000 Palestinians dead yeah so we're over here to speak about what is happening in Gaza and in the West Bank because we believe that what is happening in the West Bank it's not a secret that belonged to us as soldiers it's something that the international Community should know because the International Community is a part of it and we saw the discourse happening over here in the states about what is happening in Israel and Palestine and and that's why we did a campus tour in the last two weeks T that was here with me spoken a lot of campuses all around met a lot of students because the conversation about the occupation happens everywhere right and we as former soldiers we want to be a part of it and saying supporting Israel is not supporting the occupation supporting Israel is supporting peace for Israelis and Palestinians and to talk about your experience in the military and why you choose chose to be a part of breaking the silence and how many um former Israeli soldiers or even current ones uh do you feel share your point of view occupation I have to say in the US media is actually rarely talked about right now so it's not only here we're not talking about it either and um actually I grew up in a settlement in the West Bank and I served in KRON in the West Bank and while serving I was a tour guide I used to take groups of soldiers for tours in the T Patriarchs in KRON and I didn't know what occupation is while taking these tours in this huge Palestinian City surrounded by soldiers and uh there are settlements in in the middle of the city and I didn't know that the city is under military control while I'm taking part of this military control while I'm a settler myself I didn't know where is the green line on what or what is the green line or anything about these things uh so it took me a lot of time to realize that but the fact that I didn't know that is not a mistake we don't know these things as Israelis we are not we never Tau this things uh because you know it's something that for years we're taking part of and we're doing and uh we don't want to um stop uh um controlling millions of lives of Palestinians for so many we're doing it for so many years and we don't want to stop because we want to uh uh to make sure that we have the control over the land and um we see now all also how we don't have any other future that's all we get H we've been told that this is security and we have to control millions of lives and we don't have other options and we're trying to say that there are other options but it's really hard to say to the Israeli Society because we don't know that there are other options and and T you said that uh you didn't know that you were participating in the occupation what were you taught uh in school in Israel about the the Arabs and the Palestinians around you so we're I knew Palestinians uh from the other side of the fence the settlement that I grew up in was surrounded by fences separating the settlement from the Palestinian Villages around us and I know I knew that they're not allowed to go into the settlement I know I knew that I can go into the Palestinian Village and we never had any interaction even though we lived so close to one another and I could see everything that is happening in the other side of the fence and hear everything that is happening there and I knew that they're my enemies I knew that they all want to kill us that was the only thing I knew about Palestinians and we also we call them Arabs like they're all one big Arabs and uh and like one big enemy so that's that was the the only thing I I knew about them and the vman I wanted to ask you what's been the reception that you've received on the especially on the college campuses given the fact that uh that any discussions about uh the Israel and Palestine have been so charged uh in recent uh in recent months how not only the reception from the students but from the administrations at these various colleges you know nadav couldn't hear you one but Juan's question to you was uh what is the reception of the students and the administrators in all the college campuses you've organized this with J Street um um talk about what kind of reception you've gotten yeah so it was quite interesting because our lecture managed to bring together Israeli students that came to study here in in the US Jewish American students and also Palestinian Americans and I think that when you speak about the reality firsthand right we did it we stood in checkpoints we raid at home we attacked Gaza from the air we fought from the ground so when you bring reality you bring a real conversation about the occupation and you bring a real conversation about Gaza so the the responses were quite amazing there was really in-depth question and and very interesting conversation around uh what is happening now but what the future holds for us and also very important what the US can do to stop the war at the moment and to release our hostages and to to enter as much humanitarian Aid as possible to stop the humanitarian crisis and the starvation in Gaza at the moment so the responses was very very good I got to say so let me ask you about what has been the response since October 7th to Breaking the silence your group of former uh soldiers in Israel um speaking out uh on behalf of uh both of Palestinians and those who are anti-occupation within Israel so from the very beginning of after October 7th I forgot to say October 7th was a for an Israeli activist against the occupation was very hard you know yes I ran I ran with my children and my wife to the to the shelter in Tel Aviv but immediately we start call to all of our testifiers activists donors in the Gaza envelope and eventually some of them didn't answer and one and two of them were mured on October 7th and one of them was a very good friend of mine and and that this is how we started right you know the blood was boiling everybody was angry but then in October 8th we became um a Revenge Army and we start to do and we start the air strikes in Gaza and of course that we breaking the silence we know how it works right we know how air strike looks like we know how fighting in Gaza looks like so after a couple of weeks we and other NOS in Israel we called for ceasefire to release our hostages to enter humanitarian Aid into Gaza and obviously obviously the right wi in Israel is against it because the rightwing in Israel believes that we need to continue fighting and I don't even understand the goals of the fighting now in Gaza I think the number one goal is to release our hostages so yes there was some aggression against breaking the silence but in couple of months we will publish our report with the hundreds of testifiers that would come to us then we expect another wave of violence I wanted to go to Tom mnik um in January the 18-year-old who refused is military service was sentenced to 30 days in a military prison democracy Now spoke with tall after he was released about what he witnessed while incarcerated he then went right back into prison actually inside prison the only source of uh news that we got was one newspaper called Isom um and every day on the newspaper there will be pictures of uh the soldiers that died and I remember feeling like I there it's I feel sad very sad for the soldiers and the families that have to um take this great burden of um of losing someone close of them but I know that while seeing soldiers dying I know that this means that there are much more um Palestinian civilians dying which we don't see in the newspaper who else are you serving time with in that prison who else is there sadly a lot of the other people there uh don't um they they are deserters which means that they serve time in the military and then at some point for some reason um they went back home and did not did not come back most of these people desert because of socioeconomic reasons if it's having to take care of their siblings or um or go work uh for their family and when they come back and turn themselves in we're now seeing a very heavy sentencing of those deserters as a part of the fascist persecution um and the fog of War people that are that went to work for 3 months to feed their family are now being sentenced to half a year in military prison so that was T mnik 18 years old um has been sentenced and sentenced again to uh military prison how common is it for a soldier to say no or fusick as you call them not common at all I served in the Israeli Special Forces we were 12 in my team I served in a snipers team and standing in front of your friends in mid operation or before operation and say hey no we have to stop because it's against the for Geneva Convention or it's against international human law it really doesn't happen because a unit doesn't matter if it's a platoon a company or a team it's a family and standing in front of your family members your brother saying no it is very hard this young men that did it before his army service it's I think it's uh it's it's quite unique in the Israeli in the Israeli Society we have a couple of those each year but the general the general soldiers and general public they go to the Army as they were requested by the state of Israel and N vman you served in the IDF in both Gaza and the West Bank could you talk about your experiences there and how you how that shaped your views of the occupation yeah so I served between 2005 to 2008 In a Special Forces Unit and and me and my team served just after the second in but when the IDF really pressured the Palestinian population like we are in the second in so we arrested a lot of people we searched for all kinds of things but mainly we did sniping operations now when you do SN want to do sniping operation inside Palestinian cities or Villages you don't have a hill or a forest to take cover in so what we used to do is something that is called Str Widow it's a Coden name in the IDF of taking a private Palestinian family's house and turn it into a military post you choose a house that looks best for you maybe it's tall maybe it says big windows then you call the Shin Bet you make sure that every one of the family members are innocent are not connected to Terror and then in the middle of the night you come you sneak into the neighborhood you break the door down you grab everybody from their beds because then they cannot really resist you put them in one room and then use one of the rooms uh the parents' bedroom for example as our sniping post we put our sniping rifles and after that if one of the family members wants to eat they want to drink they want to take medicine they want to pray they need authorization from us because it's our house it's not their house anymore and then you shoot from their houses the minute you do that the armed Convoy come and you go back to the base but that's the West Bank in Gaza when I did the same thing stos in Gaz in 2008 you don't infiltrate you don't do it quietly in the middle of the night when we approach the houses the first of houses of Gaza after cutting the fence and walking over there a tank came and Ram one of the wall of the house and knock it down because they told us that every house in Gaza is booby trapped and then when we got inside the house we took all of the men from 16 year old until 80 years old and we put them on a truck drove them back to Israel for interrogation and then when we put our sniping rifles on the rooftop we saw there was lots of new green houses that we didn't saw in the aial photograph so we called the D9 bulldozer that smashed everything down so we will have a clean line of fire and I think that's the difference between the ongoing occupation with settlements and checkpoints in West Bank and the occupation by siege that we have in Gaza since 2007 and the level of brutality or fire power that we use over there President Biden's leveled some of his harshest criticism against Israel um as the death toll in Gaza tops 33,300 in an interview with the uh Network Univision Biden directly criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel's killing of the seven Aid workers from the world Central Kitchen last week I think what he's doing is a mistake I don't agree with his I think it's outrageous that those four three vehicles were hit by drones and taken out on a highway where it wasn't like if it was along the shore it wasn't like there was a convoy moving there Etc so I'm what I'm calling for is for the Israelis to just call for a ceasefire allow for the next 6 8 weeks Total Access to all food and Medicine going into the country Biden's comments were made a week ago but only aired on Univision on Tuesday Palestinians and Gaza are marking the end of Ramadan as Israel continues its assault officials in Gaza say at least 14 Palestinians including four children have died in Israeli strikes on the nadat refugee camp on Monday Israel assassinated the mayor of the amagazi refugee camp Hamas accused Israel of committing a war crime the Israeli occupations Army committed a crime yesterday with the assassination of ADI Municipal Chief hatam Salah he's known as a civilian a municipal head who provides Municipal Services since the first day of this war this genocide against civilians and civil sectors the Israeli occupation Army purposefully targeted even though they are fully aware that he's a civil servant and only works within that framework at almi refugee camp meanwhile on Capitol Hill in the United States about 50 protesters were arrested Tuesday when they blocked access to the Senate cafeteria calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza today we continue with part two of our conversation with two former Israeli soldiers members of the group breaking the silence and anti-occupation group led by Veterans of the Israeli Army the group founded 20 years ago in the aftermath of the second Ana fata um we're joined by two members nadav vman is the group's deputy director he served in the West Bank in Gaza from 2005 to 2008 and tal Sagi is the group's education director she served as a soldier in Hein one of the largest cities in the West Bank we welcome you both to democracy now I wanted to ask you T about heon um and about what it was like for you to go there Hein in Hebrew Al in Arabic um has a few hundred Jewish settlers um and 33,000 Palestinians living there um the streets that Palestinians uh can walk down and there are streets that they can't walk down checkpoints everywhere can you describe um your Revelation when you got there um what you thought about the city and what you experienced and led you to Breaking the silence so I grew up in a settlement I was really used to see separation around me from a young age I used to see the soldiers patrolling my neighborhood 24/7 with military vehicles I used to see the fences separating the settlement from the Palestinian Villages around us separation wasn't something that I asked questions about it was normal it was my day today when I got to Kon to heon as a soldier in 2012 things there looked normal to me I never asked any questions about the situation there and my job there was to be a tour guide as part of the job I used to also work together with the settlers of Kon so we had that connection and I learned from them a lot about the situation around me and it took me years to realize that this city is under military control and I realized that only when I came back after my service after a few years with breaking the silence and suddenly I saw the city as it is as a huge po Indian City the second largest binan city in the West Bank and the levels of separation and control that we have as military over that City but it's something that was totally invisible to me during my service I I was I thought it's normal so what was your turning point I think this tour was for me lifechanging because I realized that there are so many things that my parents my teacher that the Israeli society never talked to me about and that there is this gap between reality and what I see around me and and like how I thought all of these things are normal and I never thought about the separation as something that is oppressive and it took me years to manage to see the Palestinian population and the cost that we and Palestinians are paying for this military control for so many years so how have uh your family and Community responded in the settlement where you live uh to your activism so most of them are still nice to me uh but uh it was pretty tough with my family at the beginning we had a lot of arguments around it and um and some of them are not agreeing to what I do uh but today most of them are pretty supportive and we have also like really respectful conversation about the situation but it's not easy definitely after 7th of October when I hear some voices around me in my family and my friends and I want to say that the situation is not promoting security for us what we're doing in Gaza is not for a better future it's just taking us to a worse place and uh and when I hear what people what other people are saying around me it's uh it's really sad um nadav you have been with uh breaking the silence for how long 12 years now and can you talk about how it's grown yeah so when I joined the organization we were seven employees and now we're about 30 employees we to this day in a normal year we do 700 education events a year we bring about 18,000 people to the ground to the West Bank to the city of heon or to the South abon Hills area we meet Prem military cies and youth movement and kibutz and high schools and open public and Jewish congregations but we work also with diplomats and politician and Israeli journalist and international journalist we do a lot a lot of things and and the steady flow of testifiers continues all of the time and during times like this when we have war in Gaza we've even have more testifiers in the last few weeks we have two or three new testifiers each week and the flow is going to get bigger and bigger as you have more and more IDE of reservice being released from active duty in the in the Gaza Strip so when we engage with Israelis or with International we do basically the same thing political education we want to educate people how the occupation really works how many members do you have in Breaking the S we have a little bit over, 1400 testifiers from all of the different units that serve in the bank and Gaza we don't collect testimonies from the shin shinb or the intelligence core because that's Military Intelligence exactly because we don't want to harm Israel's security right we believe that the IDF should be with us and defend Israel but to defend Israel not to occupy the Palestinian people that's not defending Israel that's control so in the first part of our discussion you gave a very chilling description of what you would do in the West Bank and also um when you were serving as a soldier in Gaza I wanted to ask you about the 972 local call expose by the Israeli journalist jual Abraham uh who exposed how the Israeli military used an artificial intelligence program known as lavender to develop a kill list in Gaza that includes as many as 37,000 Palestinians targeted for assassination with little human oversight a second AI program known as where's Daddy track Palestinian on the kill list and was purposely designed to help Israel Target individuals when they were at home at night with their families um this targeting system is combined with an extremely permissive so to speak bombing policy in the Israeli military led to quote entire Palestinian families being wiped out inside their houses um I probably don't have to tell you this uh so I'm wondering if you can did this surprise you did you use anything like this when you were in the military or talk to testifiers or people within the military now who are doing this yeah so first of all I've got to say that it's one of the most Expo important exposures by an isra journalist from the beginning of this war the Israeli media most of it are not really being uh critical about what we do over there and youal did an amazing work now our testifies that came from Gaza didn't talk about this yet and when we will have testimonies in next couple weeks or months we can talk extensively about that but I can tell you that our former testifiers from former operations told us about uh the target bank right and those targets were supposed to get inside the target bank now the target bank that the IDF has about Gaza it is huge it is huge one of our testifiers from just now said to me that when you open the computer with the grid of all of The Targets in Gaza it takes the computer some minutes to upload everything because basically every house in Gaza it could be a Target now we know from our testif fires that for example a house could be a Target if there was an operation room of Kamas or they had ammunition over there or there's a tunnel but also we know that Kamas is moving ammunition from house to house every time but the house that was designated as a target of am Ammunition Depot it would stay like that forever even if the ammunition was moved and if there's 50 grenades or 50 missiles it is the same Target and I think there's a difference between 50 grenades and 50 missiles another Target that you have over there it's houses of Kamas operatives their personal house now you know when I was a soldier I don't think my family was to blame of what I did it's what I did right and we don't think civilians living close to Kamas operatives supposed to be hit in the middle of the night by by an air strike another thing that we have over there it's government offices it's water facilities it's Bridges bridges and towns and and and and tunnels and and everything that you and I consider the civilian infrastructure that we see legitimate the IDF sees as legitimate military targets now if you combine all of this with what youval just published you can understand why you have this amount of death though right over TW 12,000 Palestinian kids died right 33,000 Palestinians died the IDF is talking about something like between 12 and 15,000 Kamas militants that we killed and I'm not sure about those numbers we have a very important testimonies from 2014 war on Gaza that the solders told us that they saw two females walking in an orchard 400 m from IDF forces and they were talking on the phone and that that's why they were designated as spotters the only option to shoot from the air or from the ground at unarmed Palestinians a drone was directed to them shot and killed them both and then the idea of sent two tanks the tanks came and they saw they were unarmed but because we shot at them they were listed as terrorists and so the amount of casualties that the IDE of is talking about I'm not sure about that number but for sure we are harming civilians knowingly I don't know if intentionally but knowingly we're killing a lot of civilians what's the difference between knowingly and intentionally intentionally is when you fire a missile and you want to kill 100 civilians to I don't know make make a point or something like that but for example we have something that is called collateral damage right we have a certain commander in in Kamas so you know that if you will shoot him there would be I don't know five or 10 members of his family is collateral damage and then the IDF sits down and think if it's okay or not now what we know from our testifiers is that the equation that that sees how many Palestinians are inside a certain house is not being changed when operation starts we know in jabal Refuge Camp there are I don't know this amount of people and the apartment is 40 square meters so there's five people or I don't know six people inside but as you said we have millions of refugees now inside the Gaza Strip so we don't know how many people would be affected and in this operation we saw collateral damage jumped to numbers that we didn't know when we killed the jabalia regiment Commander at the first couple of weeks of this war according to International media we killed 126 civilians with him and that's something that we never saw in foral operation and it's a considered to be a low ranking Target than the Target that you used to attack with a lot of coral damage and you Abraham exposed that um they didn't want to take out Hamas um operatives in their military buildings or in their offices that they waited for them to go home at night where there would be families that were killed yeah we have a testifier from the former operation that that told us that the IDF doesn't want them to have houses to come back to and that's why we're firing into civilian population or into their houses but what you Val describe it's a different case right and and and I forgot to say that the IDF also has all kinds of tools to make sure that we want have civilian inside the house first of all it's what the idea of called roof knocking when you throw a small bomb a missile but a small bomb on the roof and then Palestinians should understand that they should leave the house before the big bomb would come now during an war in Gaza you have bombings all around another method is is sending sms is sending messages or calling the families telling them to leave but that is only when the house is a target right when the house is um an OS Depot or something like that but when there's a human being being inside the target so you shoot like youa described so there was a group in World War II called The White Rose collective in Germany they were Christians they weren't Jewish um uh Hans and Sophie scha famous um he was a medical student uh her sister Sophie was a undergraduate and they thought what can we do in the face of the Nazi atrocity um and they decided just to get out information so that Germans would never be able to say they didn't know how much do you think T Israeli Society understands about what's going on I me even in the United States even with Netanyahu preventing International journalists getting from Gaza we see all sorts of images even if it's not on the networks of casualties what about Israel we're talking about 15 minutes away 30 minutes away I think there are a few levels of not knowing and of course there is the media and in Israeli media we don't see the stories of the Palestinians we don't meet these stories we don't see the amount of uh casualties and the bodies we don't see these images but there is also years of not knowing and ignoring and indifference to the situation of the Palestinians and the dehumanization that we have in in our society because of the occupation and it's uh the fact that we're being told that they only this enemy and then you know October October 7th 7th happening and we lost so many people and people are hostages and and in the society it's like a shock because like we used to ignore this situation and suddenly these things happened and we we just want to be with ourselves and that's a human reaction you know it's we we want to deal with our suffering with our mourning and and and make sure that you know we're together and we support each other and we're safe and and the reaction is like we don't care about the reaction and we don't see what what is the reaction we we don't want see like would any number change Israeli Society we're talking about what we know 30 more than 33,000 people killed 14,000 children overwhelmingly civilian 40,000 50,000 I mean that may be the number considering how many people are under the rubble what would break through I don't I don't think people understand necessarily numbers I think I hear from people around me that they don't have capacity to look to the suffering of Palestinians right now because people are occupied with their suffering and also what we hear from the government all the time is winning we want to win we want this total win and and people want to feel that you know we we won that we are safe if even though we know that we're not changing anything um well let me ask nadav what do you think Netanyahu wants to accomplish here just simply staying out of jail for corruption charges and if he remains prime minister he will and uh if he goes against um Ben gavier the settlers Ben gavier and smotri um they'll leave him and he won't be protected by his prime ministership anymore yeah so when we started this War it was a very Justified War but very quickly it became a war without goals or a war to keeping Benjamin nany in his seat because now I'm sure you saw in the last couple of months there wasn't really a war right there wasn't really operations over there and soldiers coming out said the same thing I was in a protest in t Aviv I saw a soldier holding a sign why did I fight in Gaza for Benjamin nany that was the sign he held and and yes it looks like our government is trying to stop any deal to release our hostages the most important thing that we can do at the moment and it's because the extremists in the government that it's it's the government are against it I'm driving in the West Bank all of the time and since the beginning of this war in Tel Aviv in Kaa in Jerusalem everywhere we see signs the faces of the hostage Israelis in every Cafe in t Aviv you have a yellow chair right yellow color to remember our abducted Israelis in the West Bank you hardly see it because they don't believe in a deal they think it's collateral damage our hostages and Benjamin netan is bound to the extrem in his government right because he knows that if would be a deal and we will release our citizen they would get out of the government and he wants to sit over there because he has the trials so he thinks about himself more than the citizens of Israel and that's why from a lot a lot of reasons we need the US government with us right we need the US government to pressure Israel to do so and what would it mean how would they do it how do you think it's most effective to do that now when I was a soldier I had an M4 and it was in grave on my weapon property of US Government the US government has a lot of responsibility about the occupation West Bank and Gaza and about this war and in the last few weeks we saw very important steps of Biden Joe Biden's Administration first of all imposing sanctions on violent settlers and then putting very clear red lines to our government about entering humanitarian Aid inside or even attacks from the air after the killing of the seven World Center kitchen uh employees and but we need to see something a lot more immediate and a lot more powerful in front of the Israeli government because ceasefire it's something that should happen months ago not tomorrow not two hours from now months ago and we want the government you know the most important country for Israel in the world it's the US government because we really have shared values and because of that we want the Biden Administration to help us to stop the war and release our hostages and immediately enter humanitarian Aid into Gaza because the starvation in Gaza it could not be used as a weapon against Palestinians you both have been going to college campuses you see the number of people who are speaking up for Palestinian rights Muslim Jewish um Christian uh but there's also a real Crackdown on campus groups like Jewish voice for peace like students for justice in Palestine are being banned across the country what is your reaction to this and have any of your events been cancelled on campuses here you are former Israeli soldiers so I believe that Pro Palestine or pro Israel is the same thing because For Me pro Israel is anti-occupation and pro peace right and of course everybody has a right to speak and I think the conversation should be uh a diverse conversation so uh so silencing voices that are against our war in Gaza that's not Democratic at all I I heard from now we met quite a few um Jewish congregations over here in the states and yes there is a new wave of anti-Semitism I don't want criticism against Israel would be actually anti-Semitism right anti-Semitism it's something that we have to fight against our government by the way is not helping by labeling any criticism against Israel as anti-Semitism that's not right and and I think tal can elaborate more about what happened in campuses but again we were very surprised but they very good reactions T what about what's happened so none of our events got cancelled not that I know of like every everything happened as planned and and as nadav said the reactions were really good A lot of people came we met a few hundreds of students people were really curious wanted to know asked questions H asked about what the Israeli Society er um are now where where the isy are now and it was really nice to see Jewish students sitting together with the prop Palestinian students and having this conversation and people thank thanks us at the end of the events and and I hope that we manage to you know bring this complex message H that it's not that you're Pro like nadav said it's not that you're pro Israel or Pro Palestine is when you want to help really Palestinians you have to stand together in solidarity with his with Israelis who see the the situation and who wants to change the situation and in that sense the help that we need from uh students and from people all around the world is to see that there are voices who wants to change these things inside the Israeli Society inside the Palestinian society and voices we need to support the voices of solidarity you were both soldiers um nadav you're talking about defending the IDF the Israeli Defense Forces defending Israelis um but knowing what you know are you at all sympathetic to pales Palestinian resistance Fighters feeling they are doing exactly the same thing for Palestinians yeah when when I was a soldier so I I finished training in 2006 and the first thing that we did we were sent to Janine to the refugee camp in Janine for an operation as a member of the Special Forces you were waiting for things like that but when we break down the door in the middle of the night I found a family found kids I found a grandmother and a grandfather and two parents inside the house and very quickly you start to understand that what you are doing over there is yes you fight Terror in a very small portion of the time but the majority of the time you're a police officer you are maintaining military law over Palestinians and we arrested a lot of people that their crime was that uh they were cousins of somebody that we wanted it's called pressure arrests or we did mass arrest mass arrest is to take the the logic of arrest and put it on its head because you come to a village and you arrest everybody from 16 years old to 60 years old and then you question all of them and when you do that all of the Palestinians they look at you with a mixture of fear and hate and I told myself ah yeah they hate me because I'm Jewish right and then when I finish Miami service and start thinking as a civilian you understand I understand that they hated me because I was an occupying Soldier and when I join breaking the silence one of the first things that I did was to drive into heon and meet our Palestinian partner drinking tea with them and I was sitting with Isa Amro is's a very prominent uh human right activist from heon in his house we were drinking tea and I was looking you know where's the door where's the window like I was trained to do and Isa told meav come we're friends we're drinking tea together we were talking we talked about uh football it was very nice and and when you understand Palestinians are human beings just like me and you and they have desires and hopes and dreams and families and all of that you understand that they want freedom just like me and you and you know I think about my grandfather and grandmother that fought the British H for our independence and I think yes there is a legitimate fight between armed men or women right with uniform or not but armed civilians are are out of the way right we are not supposed to harm civilians my unit commander in the Special Forces told us listen stabbing an Israeli soldier is a terror attack it's a it's an attack stepping an Israeli citizen the settler that's a terror attack doesn't matter what happened we have to protect Israelis and fight them right you have a weapon on you you have to fight and and and he was an extreme rightwing settler by the way and he explained to be what it's Terror and what it's not Terror and I think that's what we need to put um when we look at now this war on Gaza Maybe not maybe it's very clear that we can attack Hamas that are kidnapping and and firing at us yes but civilians are out of the questions period nadav there have been over 8,000 arrests of Palestinians on the West Bank only since October 7th is that to get this massive number so when there's a prisoner exchange they have many people that they're willing to exchange could be but usually when we have operation in Gaza or in the West Bank and all of the eyes of the world is on Gaza on the West Bank the IDF uses the other territory to do a lot of things like mass arrest or shooting and and all of that but you have something very different in the IDF since October 7th after October 7th all of the on duty soldiers 19 20y old Soldier were sent down to the South to fight Kamas up to the north to fight kisala and the regular reserve unit the same so the IDF use a special reserve unit it's called hagmar in Hebrew original defense in English which means that settlers are doing their reserve duty in their s Ms okay so we have very ideological settlers some of them believe in Jewish Supremacy that now have IDF uniform and a weapon and they me the checkpoint they enter Palestinian homes and all of that and we saw an increased violence from IDF soldiers towards Palestinians since October 7th and it settlers with IDF uniform and that's why the Israeli government said listen since October 7th we have a decrease in settler violence and it's true because now they have uniform and I drive around with diplomats or with journalists in the West Bank in the last couple of months and you get stopped in the middle of a street by soldiers but some of them have half uniform only a shirt only pants only vest and you don't know if it's settlers or if it's settlers in the army or it's everything is very unclear and that lead to a lot of violence we have a lot of videos in recent months you see IDE of soldiers entering Palestinian Villages or even cave dwellers villages in the South abon area saying that they came to find lost sheeps of um settler settler her or something like that and a lots of violence and also we see settlers taking bulldozers blocking Palestinian villages with stones and and and rubber because they can right so the because all the attention is on the in Gaza exactly exactly and then what happened one of those one of those settlers that has a bulldozer is in non Levy and he was the first settler that the US government imposed sanctions on him right and why why he got sanction on his head because there wasn't any investigation against him by Judean suaria police or by the Israeli Army right because we didn't do anything in front of those settlers and what is the feeling toward smotri and um and benav uh these extremist Jewish settlers from the West Bank I think it's mixed because there are a lot of uh criticism now against the government because they're not doing enough in order to bring back the hostages and the protests are growing and growing every week H so people are not very happy with them dealing um saying all these things like resettle Gaza dealing with uh uh take more money from the budget uh from the government to the settlements ER and not uh helping the families of the hostages and uh taking care of people who uh who have no homes 7th of October um but but there are some sectors in the society that are supporting uh these ideologies and supporting the idea of going back uh to settle in Gaza and um er people also are talking about transferring all Palestinians out of Gaza and things that I hear from people around me U that these ideas are popular in some sectors of isra society and the effect on Settlers like your from a settlement uh when they hear about sanctioning of uh settlers by governments like the United States so I think some of them are worried that they it will get to them and um and we see the reaction also in the government immediately after the sanctions they did this committee talking about um activists who are documenting this violence and uh talking about them as anarchists trying to prevent them from documen from documenting the violence these are Israeli Jewish uh what they call anarchists activists who are going into the West Bank to document what the settlers are doing together with the Palestinian activists on ground yeah and uh and we also see that they are trying to hide the violence H I was few weeks ago in KRON and the police and the soldiers didn't allow us to go into the City and then I realized that settlers were protesting outside of the mosque trying to prevent prayers to go to pray inside the mosque in the first Friday of Ramadan and the fact that they didn't allow us to go in was like after that I realized it was really clear they didn't want us to document their Pro the protest and actually most of like we didn't we didn't we almost don't have any documentation of that and they managed to prevent prayers to go into the mosque and pray in the first uh uh Friday of Ramadan and there is no documentation they they block every um every activist who are trying to to to go there and document this violence um would you say um nadav that uh what we're seeing on the West Bank and G is a parate as yval Abraham said in his speech when he won best documentary um uh uh as part of an Israeli Palestinian uh Collective for the film no other land talked about uh the system of apartate that um Palestinians live under in Israel and the occupied territories so as a soldier they taught me that I'm not allowed to touch settlers if I see a violent settler cutting down olive trees burning a M beating Palestinians are not allowed the only one who can do so are police judan suar police it's not even the Israeli police because does have jurisdiction over there but there is the military law that I have to enforce on Palestinians all of the time that I can arrest I can shoot I can detain I can do whatever I want very quickly you understand that there are two separate law systems in the West Bank the Israeli law system for Israelis and the military law system for Palestinians in the same piece of land with human beings with two nostrils two eyes two heart one heart and and all of that but it matters only your nationality based on your nationality this would be the law enfor law enforcements on you and yes there's a name for that right and and that's why by the way the right-wing and the settler movement they want to Annex the West Bank into Israel or because if they will do that then Israel would be an aparted State now maybe we committing the crime of apartheid in the West Bank but if they will Annex we will be an apartheid state and that has International repercussions for that but would you say it's a part date right now what is happening with two separate law system yes MH I want to thank you both for being with us you're headed to the Canadian Parliament to Canada are you going to address the Canadian Parliament um no we're going to meet Jewish congregations in in Canada and we'll have some meetings in the parliament because we want to convey our messages about how the idea fights in Gaza to every uh important actor around the world I want to thank you both nadav vman is the deputy director of breaking the silence uh and I want to thank as well uh tal Sagi education director of breaking the silence an Israeli anti-occupation uh group um of former soldiers they're here in the United States to see part one of our discussion go to democracynow.org I'm Amy Goodman thanks for joining us for
