Ahlul Bayt News Agency, Last week several photographs were published of a servicewoman posing alongside blindfolded and handcuffed Palestinians. The images were reminiscent of the Abu Ghraib scandal in Iraq. The scandal was followed by a revealing interview by an Israeli servicewoman with the Guradian who spoke out against the military action in the occupied territories.
"I left the army with a ticking bomb in my belly," Inbar Michelzon said. "I felt I saw the backyard of Israel. I saw something that people don't speak about. It's almost like I know a dirty secret of a nation and I need to speak out."
Michelzon, now 29, began her military service in September 2000, just when the second intifada was breaking out. "I joined the army with a very idealistic point of view." She was posted to Erez, the crossing between 'Israel' and the Gaza Strip, to work in the radio control room.
"Little by little you understand the rules of the game. You need to make it hard for the Arabs – that's the main rule – because they are the enemy."
She cited a routine example of a Palestinian woman waiting at the crossing. Michelzon called her officer, asking permission to allow the woman through. She was told to make such a request once the woman had been kept waiting for hours. "I felt very alone in the army. I couldn't talk about the things I felt were misplaced," she said.
At the end of her service, in June 2002, Michelzon said she felt the need to escape and took off to India. "I went through a breakdown little by little," she said.
Her experience is echoed by that of Dana Golan, who served in the West Bank city of al-Khalil in 2001-02 as one of about 25 women among 300 male soldiers. Like Michelzon, Golan only spoke out after finishing her service. Golan, now 27, said the "most shaky moment" of her military service came during a search for weapons in a Palestinian home. The family were awoken at 2am by soldiers who "turned their whole house inside out". No weapons were found. The small children of the house were terrified, she recalled. "I thought, what would I feel if I was this four-year-old kid? How would I grow up? At that moment it occurred to me that sometimes we're doing things that just create victims. To be a good occupier, we have to create conflict."
On a separate occasion she witnessed soldiers stealing from a Palestinian electronics shop. She tried to report it, only to be told "there were things I shouldn't interfere with".
She said that she also saw elderly Palestinians being humiliated on the streets, "and I thought these could be my parents or grandparents".
Both Michelzon and Golan have no regrets about speaking out. "For two years I saw people suffering and I didn't do anything – and that's really scary," said Michelzon. "At the end, it felt like the army betrayed me – they used me, I couldn't recognise myself. What we call protecting our country is destroying lives."
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