home
- Testimonies
- Activities
- Media & Content
- About
Checks should be made out to “Breaking the Silence” and sent to:
POB 51027
6713206 Tel Aviv
“Breaking the Silence”
Account number 340211, Branch 567 at Hapoalim Bank
SWIFT: POALILIT
IBAN:
IL310125670000000340211
US tax deductible donations can be made through the website of the New Israel Fund.
For tax deductible donations from Europe please contact info@breakingthesilence.org.il
Checks should be made out to “Breaking the Silence” and sent to:
POB 51027
6713206 Tel Aviv
“Breaking the Silence”
Account number 340211, Branch 567 at Hapoalim Bank
SWIFT: POALILIT
IBAN:
IL310125670000000340211
US tax deductible donations can be made through the website of the New Israel Fund.
For tax deductible donations from Europe please contact info@breakingthesilence.org.il
may![]() | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
01 | 02 | 03 | ||||
04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08 | 09 | 10 |
11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 |
18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 |
25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 |
![]() ![]() | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 |
08 | 09 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 |
15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 |
22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 |
29 | 30 |
![]() | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | ||
06 | 07 | 08 | 09 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 |
20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 |
27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 |
In what is being called the “mosquito procedure,” Israeli soldiers are “ordered by senior officers to grab Palestinians next to them and to use them as human shields,” explains Breaking the Silence’s executive director, Nadav Weiman. “Dehumanization of Palestinians in Israel [has] become something so common that it also leads to these kind[s] of practices inside the IDF.”
“These are not isolated accounts; they point to a systemic failure and a horrifying moral collapse,” said Nadav Weiman, executive director of Breaking the Silence — a whistleblower group of former Israeli soldiers that has collected testimonies about the practice from within the military. “Israel rightly condemns Hamas for using civilians as human shields, but our own soldiers describe doing the very same.”
“The official mission was to open a logistical route for maneuvering, but in practice, the bulldozers were simply destroying homes. The southeastern part of Rafah is completely destroyed. The horizon is flat. There is no city.”
Commanders and soldiers – some of whom also gave testimony to the organization Breaking the Silence – attempt to describe how, in practice, the balance is struck between "not waking up in the morning and destroying neighborhoods," as the senior officer claimed, and "not risking the troops."
The testimonies are some of the first accounts by Israeli soldiers to be published since the latest war started in October 2023 after Hamas’s attack on Israel. They were collected by Breaking the Silence, a group founded in 2004 by Israeli veterans who aim to expose the reality of the military’s grip over Palestinians. The Guardian interviewed four of the soldiers who corroborated the accounts.
A report documenting the accounts of soldiers who were in the buffer zone was released Monday by Breaking The Silence, an anti-occupation veterans group. A handful of soldiers -- including some who also spoke to AP -- described watching the army turn the zone into a vast wasteland.
In testimony provided to Breaking the Silence, an Israeli watchdog group which vets and publishes military testimonials, multiple soldiers said they were told the mission was to dramatically expand the buffer zone, in order to prevent another border attack.
Over a decade ago, I recounted this to the organization Breaking the Silence: "Zhabo is taking measurements, looking, taking pictures … We realize that more and more people are coming. We're three jeeps. We were maybe 10 soldiers there, and all of a sudden, from outside the mosque, there are some 150 Palestinians … within a second, starting to stone our jeeps … battering the jeeps ... and we had to flee."
In 2014, the IDF’s acceptable civilian casualty ratio was one civilian for a high-level terrorist, said Tal Mimran, a former legal adviser to the IDF. In the Gaza war, the number has grown to about 15 civilians for one low-level Hamas member and “exponentially higher” for mid- and high-level members,” according to the Israeli human rights organization Breaking the Silence, citing numerous testimonies from IDF soldiers. The New York Times reported the number as 20 earlier this week.
"At each stop on the tour, repeated themes and patterns came up; settler violence as a systemic issue, eviction and demolition orders based on...
Number: 56076
Unit: Engineering Corps
Rank: First Sergeant
Place: Ramallah
Period: 2005
They called them Nukhbas sometimes; even though some of them hadn’t been...
Rank: First Sergeant
Area: Israel
The IDF has declared a buffer zone as far as it's concerned, 1.5 kilometers...
Rank: Warrant Officer
Unit:
Area: Northern Gaza strip
There's a map that the Gaza Division made of polygons along the Strip fence...
Rank: Sergeant Major
Unit: 5th reserve brigade
Area: Khan Yunis area
. Most of the time, the people who breach the perimeter are adult men....
Rank: Sergeant First Class
Unit:
Area: Northern Gaza strip