These are exceptionally dangerous days in the seemingly interminable Israeli - Palestinian conflict. As the worst unrest in years stokes talk of another Palestinian intifada - uprising – yesterday it was three Israelis who were the latest victims in a string of attacks in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. As the bloodletting increases so too does the need for reasoned and reasonable voices. Such is the strength of feeling that this conflict and the issues surrounding it engender that it’s easy to forget that such voices exist on both sides of the divide. This week one of those voices will be making itself heard at a number of venues including the SNP conference in Aberdeen. Yehuda Shaul is a former Israeli soldier and now co-founder and co-director of Breaking the Silence (BtS) in Israel. Comprising of veteran soldiers of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF), who have served in the Palestinian Occupied Territories (OPT) most have taken part in military actions. That role has made them pause and think again. In some cases what BtS members have witnessed and experienced involving abuse towards Palestinians, has changed their entire outlook on the occupation. For some years now Israeli men and women like Yehuda Shaul have courageously taken it upon themselves to expose the reality of this to the wider public. This is no easy task in a society where the concept of military service is so deeply engrained in terms of national identity, culture and history. Talk to members of BtS, as I had the opportunity of doing during a recent visit to Israel-Palestine, and one begins to realise how these soldiers discovered the gap between the reality they encountered in the Territories, and the silence about this reality they encounter at home. During my own visit, BtS took me on a tour of the West Bank city of Hebron, a place I have been to many times but never before viewed it through the eyes of an Israeli soldier serving there. Similar tours are given to members of the Israeli public giving them the chance see for themselves the effect the occupation has on Palestinian communities that often lie just minutes from their own homes but of which they know next to nothing. As part of his speaking tour Yehuda Shaul will also be presenting testimonies collected by BtS following Operation Protective Shield, the name the Israeli military gave to their onslaught in Gaza in the summer of 2014. The conclusion of those testimonies is a troubling indictment of an Israeli military which has shifted its combat strategy in such a way that resulted in the unprecedented Palestinian civilian casualties and destruction of infrastructure that were inflicted on Gaza. Yehuda Shaul and his colleagues at BtS are voices of reason, a rare thing in a conflict that for so long now has suffered from a dearth of such people on both sides. I for one wish him more power in bringing his message to the people of Scotland and anyone who cares about the tragedy that is engulfing both Palestinians and Israelis alike.
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