Israeli author A.B. Yehoshua on the  "moral twilight zone" in Gaza:

Lend an Ear to Breaking the Silence

Yedioth Ahronoth

by A. B. Yehoshua (op-ed)

Following Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, the dismantlement of all the settlements and military bases, including a withdrawal from the Rafah area where the border crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt lies, there was no justification to permit the Hamas government, which rejects the existence of the State of Israel and calls for its destruction, to continue for more than three years with the massive fire of rockets and mortar shells on the communities of the south.

It was essential to try to stop Hamas’s fire, and to that end only did Israel launch a military operation.

It was not in the name of extirpating the Hamas regime and it was not in the name of changing the regime there.

The evidence to this is that after weeks of destruction and death in the Gaza Strip, the Hamas leaders, who had hidden out in hospital cellars, returned to their offices and they remain the sole governors of the Gaza Strip.

The war was prosecuted powerfully and deliberately, with enormous firepower in built-up areas in which there were numerous civilians as well. The reasons for that were complex: the fear of fierce Hamas resistance of the type that caused the army to fail in the Second Lebanon War, and a desire to conclude the operation swiftly and with minimal IDF casualties.

Distinguishing between the Hamas fighters, most of whom did not wear uniforms, and civilians was difficult and complicated as well. Indeed, the operation was mainly a success.

The fire out of the Gaza Strip has stopped and the rocket smuggling has apparently also stopped or has been reduced at Egypt’s initiative. But there were also incidents in which the warfare that was prosecuted by IDF troops was excessively and unjustifiably brutal, both in terms of its lethality and the destruction it sowed.

It was from this that the testimonies of Breaking the Silence emerged: soldiers who took part in the battles and were concerned for their own wellbeing no less than their comrades in arms were, and thought it to be the right thing to do to report about unjustifiable irregularities insofar as concerns the rules of warfare.

Those accounts were geared both for the military authorities and for civilian society.

The accounts given by the soldiers to Breaking the Silence ought to be listened to attentively and seriously, and they ought to be examined individually in order to learn lessons for the future.

Even if some of the accounts prove to be exaggerated, we still need to honor the motivation that prompted those soldiers to air them. After all, none of them thought they stood to gain anything personally by doing so. On the contrary, their civic courage is liable to tax them in the form of possible hostility from their comrades in arms and the public.

Some time ago a video clip was publicized in Israel showing a battalion commander holding the shoulder of a cuffed Palestinian detainee and instructing a soldier who was standing half a meter away to shoot the detainee in the leg with a rubber bullet. Had that clip not been publicized and had only an oral account been aired by someone who witnessed the incident, one might have thought that this was the wicked delusion of an “Israel-hater.”

After all, who could believe that so scandalous an incident could possibly occur in our army? But the clip provided a clear fact that could not be denied and, indeed, the military authorities responded with gravity to the battalion commander’s conduct.

The accounts given to Breaking the Silence by soldiers who came from the heart of the frontlines must be met by us responsibly and seriously with an attentive ear, even if they do not have a video clip to back them up.

If we generally trust the stable moral compass of many of the IDF’s commanders and soldiers, we have nothing to fear from those accounts. It behooves us to keep a fundamental truth in mind: the methods of warfare with the enemy do not remain outside the borders of Israel, but seep into Israel. Ethical norms that become distorted with respect to the Palestinian population that is under our control disturbs the norms and the rules in Israel itself.

A light finger on the trigger in Hebron or Gaza also leads to a light finger on the trigger for the crime organizations in Israel as they chase one another through the streets and indiscriminately injure innocent bystanders. Brutal violence by settlers against the army and the police then legitimizes brute violence by Haredim in the streets of Jerusalem against police officers and municipality workers.

The rules of the struggle with the Palestinians must be carefully adhered to since they have been and are going to be our neighbors forever. Even once the Palestinian state is established, the two peoples are still going to be intermeshed with one another in many places and in numerous ways.

Therefore, for the sake of our joint future, it is direly incumbent upon us at the present time to adhere to reasonable rules and conduct during war and occupation, and not to distort them with needless acts of meanness and unfairness that will then nag as a bloody memory that encumbers the future mending and rehabilitation process.

An attentive ear needs to be turned to Breaking the Silence. We need to respect their courage and carefully examine their accounts in order to draw the correct conclusions one way or the other.