The Zionist War Machine - Testimony from inside.
Two former Israeli military servicemen recount their journey from childhood indoctrination to adult horror.
As some of you may know I am a Quaker. What that means, among other things, is that I am not big on war as a way to resolve differences and have huge respect for those who ‘fight the peace’. Fighting the Peace is not nearly as glamorous as fighting the war. In fact those who do it are often criticised as being trouble makers, people who stir things up that should be left alone, people who seem intent on making something into a crisis when it isn’t. And that last criticism, is in many ways the key. If you wait until the moment of crisis before taking notice of a wrong, if you wait until someone does something revolting before you take notice, then it is easy to start your analysis at that moment of rupture and simply be revolted. How morally simple it is to point to a revolting act and say isn’t that revolting and aren’t those who did it revolting people.
But the world isn’t that simple. Revolting act’s rarely spring from nowhere. Most of them boil over from some simmering injustice that has been ignored precisely because it had not yet boiled over. Fighting the Peace means trying to right some simmering wrong before the moment of crisis. But it is an unglamorous and unpopular pastime.
Yonatan Shapira and Jonathan Sugarman both served in the Israeli armed forces. Both of them have done things they have spent a lifetime wishing they had not done. Both of them have spoken out and taken actions to try to right what they regard as the simmering wrong of the Israeli government’s treatment of the Palestinian people.
It is a very hard thing, that few of us have to do, to look at part of your life and say, not just to yourself but to others as well, “What I did was wrong.” It takes courage. Particularly when what you did was not something trivial and when those who grew up with you and did what you did, disown you and call you traitor.
We are all born into families and cultures that teach us right from wrong. That smile upon us when we are ‘good’. That give us our inner sense of what it is to be a good person. Part of growing up is stepping out of those childhood certainties in which we were wrapped and warmed. Some things our parent told us, which we never thought to question, we do begin to question. And we feel good about it.
Few of us however come to a moment of painful clarity, when we suddenly look at deeds we were taught were good and righteous, and see in them horror and revulsion.
Yonatan and Jonathan have both had such a moment. In this podcast they talk, Jonathan for the first time in public, about that moment. About their lives that led to it, the childhood assurances in which they had been wrapped, and what they have done since.
Recording this podcast was a very emotional experience. There are moments of silence when one or both of them struggled to remain composed. Ian and I were and are very grateful to Yonatan and Jonathan for speaking to us.