Published: 21 May 2018
Last updated: 4 March 2024
But the army exposed Gvaryahu to realities he’d never imagined. It was 2004, and Israel was recovering from three years of a devastating Palestinian Intifada. Gvaryahu was just beginning his training in the paratroopers’ elite anti-tank unit, stationed in the West Bank.
The first time he encountered the reality of occupation “not just as an abstract notion” was during one of his first operations, when he entered a Palestinian home, known as a ‘straw widow’. “I noticed the toys on the floor, the family portraits on the living room wall. That’s when I first started realising that it’s not a simple matter of stopping the bad guys and protecting the good guys, but that so much of what I’ll be doing is occupying a civilian population, occupying another people.”
During his military service, Gvaryahu says, he witnessed countless illegal acts including wanton destruction of Palestinian property, looting, and improper use of weapons. What most affected himu were not the aberrations from army protocol, however, but rather the day-to-day routine. “Later, as a sergeant in the sniper unit, I led these operations knowing that the people whose homes we entered were innocent.”
Israel’s domestic security agency, Shabak, has a name for these families: “non-involved”; a classification shared with the soldiers on the ground. But the IDF routinely enters their homes in a bid to better protect soldiers operating in hostile Palestinian cities, or to use them as lookouts.
One such “straw widow” sticks in Gvaryahu’s memory. It was the home of a doctor in Nablus.
“I’ve entered hundreds of homes and witnessed dozens of arrests, but his was the only face I can never forget,” he says. “He was an old man and he physically tried to block my team and me from entering. So we did what was expected of us: we used force. We pushed him to the wall, handcuffed him, and threw him, his wife and his daughter into the bedroom. By that point I had had so many question marks I couldn’t justify.
"So when the soldiers took position at the window, I went and spoke to him. In his home the doctor described his experiences to me, connecting me to the puzzle I was part of. That home in Nablus was one of the reasons that later led me to Breaking the Silence.”
Gvaryahu’s narrative is dry and unsentimental. BtS has collected the testimonies of more than 1,000 soldiers since its inception in 2004, and soldiers are encouraged to stick to the facts and leave commentary aside. Gvaryahu began his involvement with the organisation in 2010, shortly after a tour of duty in Hebron which he joined while on final leave from service.
He started working as a tour guide and testimony collector, then as a liaison with diaspora Jewry. Shortly after returning from New York last year, where he was studying for a master’s degree in international relations and human rights, he took on the role as leader of BtS.
“An extremely dangerous equation has been established by the Israeli government. It argues that if you want to support Israel today, you must support the occupation. Those who stress the Green Line and separate legitimate Israel from the illegitimate occupation are ostracised by the government as Israel-haters.
GVARYAHU WILL VISIT Australia early next month for a speaking tour, organised by the New Israel Fund Australia, to expose the Jewish community to the work of BtS and "launch" the book it published last year, Kingdom of Olives and Ash: Writers Confront the Occupation. The book is a collection of essays about the occupation of the West Bank written by leading novelists including Americans Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman, the Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa and Australian Geraldine Brooks (who will also speak at the launch, along with Israeli author Assaf Gavron).
The fact that just three Israeli writers are included (one Jew, two Arabs) led prominent Israeli journalist Matti Friedman to deem the book unserious in a review of the book “The visiting writers aren’t experts — most seem to have been here for only a few days, and some appear quite lost,” he wrote in the Washington Post last June.
Gvaryahu admits the book is a break from BtS’s main task of highlighting Israeli voices, but says the rationale for inviting foreign writers to write was to expose reality to a broader audience.
The book grew out of a tour that Waldman took in Hebron with BtS. “The idea for the book was born in the Tel Rumeidah neighbourhood, where she and her husband Michael Chabon volunteered to bring the other writers.
“We expose people to reality, and they then use it in various artistic ways from paintings to poetry to founding new organisations. I’m very proud of this book. It’s interesting to see how people whose job it is to describe reality describe the one we’re living in every day.”
One of the most common questions Gvaryahu is asked -- both in Israel and abroad -- is why expose the dirty laundry to unfair criticism by Israel haters across the world. He reverses the question.
“Why not? In 2018 the question is ridiculous. We live in a global world where information passes from one place to another all the time. The notion of hiding reality if we only talk about it in a certain place, in a certain language, is a thing of the past. Today you don’t even need to actively translate text, Google Translate will do it for you.”
“But on a deeper level, what led me to break my silence is meeting the Palestinian population under occupation. And although I’m an Israeli patriot who loves his country, I must be honest and admit that the homes I entered were not Israeli. The people I occupied were not Israeli. The occupation, in its essence, is not an Israeli issue. The most important population able to change this reality is indeed the Israeli population, where we invest most of our energy.
“There is no anti-occupation organisation that meets more Israelis than BtS. But when I think of my family members who live abroad, I feel it’s important for them to know all sides of our country. Even people who weren’t Bar-Mitzvahed are entitled to know there are people who love their country and hate the occupation.”
Israeli Education minister Naftali Bennett has tried to ban BtS from Israeli schools as part of a larger government campaign to discredit it. A bill dubbed the “Breaking the Silence Law” passed its first parliamentary reading in February. The bill threatens to bar organisations “acting against the IDF” from Israeli educational institutions. But Gvaryahu says that even if the bill becomes law, it will not affect Breaking the Silence.
“The wording of the law doesn’t apply to us. We aren’t calling for the prosecution of soldiers, we aren’t out to harm soldiers; we are soldiers ourselves!”
Gvaryahu says attempts from the Right to silence BtS are not new but have increased in the past three years. “They don’t originate from right-wing organisations, but from the right-wing government. These groups and the most right-wing Israeli government in history are joined at the hip.”
He’s not worried about any legal ramifications but is concerned about the growing atmosphere of delegitimisation being applied to left-wing organisations like his. A number of school headmasters have been invited to hearings at the education ministry after inviting members of BtS to speak to students. “The government has created a toxic environment where even Jewish communities outside Israel are now questioning their own worldview.”
“Why should an Australian Jew be reluctant to hear an Israeli organisation entirely comprised of ex-combatants? On the face of it there would be no problem, but the government is creating an environment that disables open discourse about one of the most critical issues for Israel’s future.”
His message to Australian audiences is simple.
“An extremely dangerous equation has been established by the Israeli government. It argues that if you want to support Israel today, you must support the occupation, and that opposing it means opposing Israel's very existence.
"Those who stress the Green Line and separate legitimate Israel from the illegitimate occupation are ostracised by the government as Israel-haters.
"We argue that the best way to support Israel and the Palestinian people is by opposing occupation, through studying the issue and asking questions.”
READ STEVEN GLASS The danger lies not in what BtS says but in seeking to silence them’
Photo: Avner Gvaryahu (BtS)
EVENT DETAILS
Avner Gvaryahu, Assaf Gavron and Geraldine Brooks will launch Kingdom of Olives and Ash in Sydney on June 6 at Paddington Town Hall, and in Melbourne on June 7 at Memo Music Hall, St Kilda.
CLICK HERE TO BOOK TICKETS
Gvaryahu and Gavron will also speak at Limmud Oz in Melbourne from June 9-11
