The latest testimonies from the Israeli soldiers’ group Breaking the Silence are extremely powerful, but I haven’t seen these amazing women popping up yet in the American media. Soon I hope. As we all know, it seems to require Jewish voices to persuade American elites to pay any kind of attention to the issue; and here are many anguished Jewish voices.

So I’m going to break some of them out. Above is a very moving video from Yael Lotan, who served in the Gaza strip. She explains why she’s breaking the silence:

The reason I’m doing the interview with Shovrim Shtika– I think that I went from a process of being a child soldier whose brain was molded and made into whatever you do is critical for state security to understanding how it’s all false, and how we are doing the least human thing to a neighboring nation — And how shitty we are, that’s the only word I can think of. How we think that it’s OK to ruin a person’s life and abuse them because we feel like it, because we think it’s right. And the reality in the territories is– [sighing and shaking her head] It’s just crazy. People don’t understand it. People don’t understand what people go through there. We ruin people’s lives on a daily basis, and it’s like a consensus that it’s OK, and it’s not. And we should talk about it. People need to know what’s happening there. It’s not the Israel Defense Forces defending us against horrible terrorists who are out to destroy the Jewish nation– It’s people who live here and who lived here, even when we weren’t here. And they’re trying to live, and we just had the better hand, the stronger hand, and we are using it without batting an eyelash. And I think that people should know that.

Wonderful. My only question to Yael would be, Who is we? And isn’t the political answer to construct a community that is not based on ethnicity or religion?