Fwd: Israel furiosa contra soldado que rompio el silencio (ing)
William Tipán
06 January 2016 
Israeli soldiers face nationalist fury for "breaking their silence"
Former soldier speaks out against abuses of power by Israeli army - © Stefanie Järkel, dpa
By Ofira Koopmans and Stefanie Jaerkel, dpa
Tel Aviv (dpa) - Avihai Stollar enlisted in the Israeli army in 2001 at the age of 18, after news flashes about Palestinian suicide bombings across Israel convinced him he should "protect my country, my family."
But Stollar's feelings of national duty at the height of the second Palestinian uprising slowly morphed into confusion and distrust once he saw and participated in unsavory military behavior while stationed in the southern West Bank.
"It's morally corrupting," he says, when 19-year-olds are placed "in this impossible situation of controlling civilians through the barrel of a gun."
Stollar recalls how he and his comrades confiscated the car keys of Palestinian drivers, who were at the time banned from sections of some roads to prevent attacks against Israeli motorists.
Without any official way to enforce the ban, Stollar and his peers improvised: They left Palestinian motorists stranded on the road for hours before giving the keys back - just to teach them a lesson and make them think twice before bypassing a dirt roadblock again.
That incident prompted Stollar to join Breaking the Silence, an Israeli NGO that publishes soldiers' testimonies of Israeli military abuses of power in the Palestinian areas.
Now, more than a decade after his military service, the former infantry soldier and platoon sergeant finds himself targeted as Breaking the Silence and its staff face an "unprecedented" campaign against them.
In mid-December, Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon barred the NGO from giving lectures at army bases. Then, Israeli Education Minister Naftali Bennet announced he would not allow any activity by the group in Israeli schools.
Even opposition lawmaker Yair Lapid of the centrist Yesh Atid party accused Breaking the Silence of "besmearing" the Israeli army when he appeared at a news conference with 600 officers and soldiers.
"There is a difference between criticism and misrepresenting the IDF (Israel Defence Forces)," charged Lapid.
A right-wing Jewish organization, Im Tirtzu, published a video accusing Breaking the Silence and other "left-wing" Israeli NGOs of aiding terrorists and working against Israel by using funds provided by pro-Palestinian foreign governments and groups.
The video mentions activists in the NGOs by name and calls them "moles" or foreign sleeper agents.
Just last week, Israeli ministers voted in favour of a bill that would oblige any NGO which receives more than half its budget from a "foreign entity" to note this in all its publications.
The campaign seems to have had an effect on public opinion: A surveyed published by Channel 10 broadcaster showed that 53 per cent of Jewish Israelis believe Breaking the Silence should be outlawed.
The recent developments worry Moshe Zimmermann, a history professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He says they could bring about an "erosion" of Israeli democracy, where right-wing nationalism is on the rise and any criticism is increasingly seen as "treason" and as unpatriotic.
Many Israelis get outraged by any criticism against their army, saying they or their enlisted loved ones should not be "demonized" as they risk their lives to provide safety for the rest of the public.
By publishing only critical soldiers' testimonies, Breaking the Silence creates a distorted image of the Israeli army and fuels hatred of Israel across the globe, they say.
But Stollar, now 32, says his goal as a member of the organisation is not to reach audiences abroad, but to stir a critical debate about the consequences of the occupation in Israeli society. And that democratic debate is being stifled.
"Delegitimizing our voice, rather than answering our criticism, is the easiest thing to do," he says.
"To issue a video to call us collaborators and traitors obviously this would lead to physical threats against us," Stollar says.
He and his colleagues receive hundreds of threats each day, but Stollar says he is "more concerned about our society and democracy than I am about my personal safety."
The last three months of renewed violence, he says, are "living proof, that unlike what our current administration is saying, the occupation [of the Palestinian territories] is not manageable."