Female soldiers break their silenceYnet News: Six years after first collection of Breaking the Silence testimonials, organization releases booklet of testimonies from female soldiers who served in territories. Stories include systematic humiliation of Palestinians, reckless and cruel violence, theft, killing of innocent people and cover-up. Here are only some of their testimonies...
'We caught a five-year-old... can't remember what he did... The officers just picked him up, slapped him around and put him in the jeep. The kid was crying and the officer next to me said 'don't cry' and started laughing at him. Finally the kid cracked a smile -- and suddenly the officer gave him a punch in the stomach. Why? 'Don't laugh in my face,' he said."...
"It's boring, so we'd create some action. We'd get on the radio, and say they threw stones at us. then someone would be arrested... There was a policewoman, she was bored, so okay, she said they threw stones at her. They asked her who threw them. 'I don't know, two in grey shirts, I didn't manage to see them.' They catch two guys with grey shirts... beat them. Is it them? 'No, I don't think so.' Okay, a whole incident, people get beaten up. Nothing happened that day."...
"Crossing the checkpoint, it's like another world... Palestinians walk with trolleys on the side of the road, with wagons, donkeys... so the Border Guards take a truck with the remains of food and start throwing it at them... cottage cheese, rotten vegetables... Many times the soldiers would open the Palestinians' food... They take things all the time at checkpoints in the territories.... No one was punished. Really, it was an atmosphere in which we were allowed to hit and humiliate."...
Some of the female soldiers were shocked with the level of violence the settlers' children used against the Palestinians... "You also don't really know which side you are on... I have to make a switch in my head and keep hating the Arabs and justify the Jews.'... The same female soldier told of how she once spit on a Palestinian in the street: "I don't think he even did anything. But again, it was cool and it was the only thing I could do to... you know, I couldn't take brag that I caught a terrorist... But I could spit on them and degrade them and laugh at them."...
A female Border Guard officer in Jenin spoke of an incident in which a nine-year-old Palestinian, who tried to climb the fence, failed, and fled -- was shot to death: "They fired... when he was already in the territories and posed no danger. The hit was in the abdomen area, they claimed he was on a bicycle and so they were unable to hit him in the legs."... An investigation was carried out, at first they said it was an unjustified killing... In the end they claimed that he was checking out escape routes for terrorists or something... and they closed the case."
