Naza + "I can no longer remain silent"

 

Extract from Independent Catholic news

Israel has been committing a genocide in Gaza for three years - and those with the power to stop it have not done so, rather they have armed and abetted the genocide.

So much we know.

NAZA takes us to the executioners - 24 members of the IDF's elite intelligence corps. From the rooftops of Tel Aviv they impart their engagement in this carnage.

The film's single word title is a euphemistic military acronym ( the Hebrew Nezek Agavi) for collateral damage - a vague, impersonal, casual and lazy way of identifying all those innocent lives cruelly cut short, murdered, in fact.

This inspired title foregrounds the hateful dehumanisation of Palestinians which is at the heart of this tragedy. Like the Man of Sorrows, they are 'a thing thrown away.'

NAZA's co-director Yuval Abraham elicits the facts from his 24 military interviewees - who are speaking under the cloak of anonymity - with forensic aplomb. (And up to 100 sources were used in the corroboration of these.)

Yuval and many other dogged journalists have been reporting as much over the last couple of years but here the perpetrators baldly lay out the destructive details in their own words.

We learn that in the quest to eradicate members of Hamas, the IDF sanctioned the killing of first 15 and then 20 non-combatants, (and, staggeringly, up to 500 in one particular operation).

With a blanket surveillance of Palestinian telecommunications already in place, these intelligence officers deployed an AI-generated system (Code Lavender) in order to crunch the data and find their enemies.

If a Hamas fighter lived on the eighth floor of a block of flats, along with all his family, that block would be razed. Bombardments most frequently took place at night - when the foe was weakest, sleeping in the family home - compounding the destruction.

Unguided 'dumb bombs' would not spare surrounding buildings. In fact, these too were considered fair game, and in due course directives came to flatten entire neighbourhoods.

Some of the interviewees were troubled by their acts - troubled enough to testify in this film - but several displayed pride in their elite status, wriggled to extricate themselves from moral responsibility ('just a small cog' obeying orders) and displayed a sickening detachment from the mass human suffering they were inflicting with a blinkered focus on the job.

One spoke of a general hatred of Palestinians in the Israeli military but said that his cohort were not like that and had a reputation as 'leftists'.

The overwhelming impression was of weak individuals surrendering their consciences and critical judgements in bureaucratic compliance with a governing system. Hannah Arendt's phrase 'the banality of evil' came to mind - for here too was an industrialised slaughter.

One nervy interviewee was a compulsive sketcher of childlike images: the grids of buildings and neighbours identified by the AI system, and then destroyed. In a further image, he sketched 'stick men' (who were indeed starving) and described their implacable gunning down from afar as they ran to food distribution centres - apparently for erring from some arbitrary path.

Murderous drone attacks resembled a 'video game', and when Gazans were forced south, anyone left in the north, the sick and disabled among them, was considered 'fair game.'

At the heart of all the surveillance lay the smart phone. One interviewee confessed to listening in to the intimate daily lives of Gazans and hearing prayers, pillow talk and family moments. There was a clear recognition here of a common humanity - a life of the spirit and a life of love.

In a devastating pay-off, this man recounted how certain phones were meant to lead to Hamas fighters. Only his target had gone out without his, and he was left (to quote from the Massacre of the Innocents) hearing a mother 'weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted because they were no more.'

The high-rise interviews allowed the cameras to film surrounding apartment blocks. In an interesting development of the sinister surveillance theme, we saw individuals - it always seemed to be lone bodies - in their homes, most often in front of very large TV screens, watching the news. We heard nothing, just witnessed Edward Hopper-like scenes of anonymity with shades of film noir alienation and Orwellian dystopia.

Just a few kilometres away from the neon city, other blocks in Gaza, full of human lives, were pulverised to rubble.

The film mentioned the so-called miracle of Tel Aviv rising out of the desert then cut to footage of an earlier destruction of Palestinian buildings almost a century earlier. A lone Palestinian ruin was left standing in the hyper-modern metropolis.

In the final scene, all the previous bland comment and prevarication was confronted by a terrible scene of human agony and pain: bereaved family members confronted by the limbs of their loved ones, crushed under the rubble.

In his first encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo denounced the use of AI in war and urged its 'disarmament'. Insisting on the dignity of every human person, he asserted the right of peoples to exist, saying 'any attempt or plan to eliminate or subjugate a nation is gravely immoral and therefore unacceptable.' The incarceration, humiliation, ecocide and genocide of Gazans has also been identified as a remorseless example of necropolitics where despised Others are condemned as 'less than human' (as 'things despised and rejected' to evoke Isaiah again).

Consider these figures: 21,000 child deaths and 44,000 children maimed; 38,000 women and girls killed; the overall death-toll of known bodies is approaching 75,000. Ten percent of Gaza's population has been killed or injured.

Co-directors Rachel Szor and Yuval Abraham received a 25-minute ovation at the Venice Film Festival and received the special jury prize for this crucial film. Benjamin Netanyahu has demanded that they be stripped of their Israeli citizenship. Their crime? Documenting monstrous crimes against humanity.

Everyone needs to see this film and everyone needs to do everything possible so that, for Palestine, Justice and Peace might come.

Editor's Note: One chilling scene that has stuck with me since I saw this film on Tuesday, was one anonymous member of Israel's Intelligence Corps explicitly describing the intense psychological high and detachment experienced while working within the military machine: "It's like your hormones are going crazy. You aren't sleeping and you're having fun. It's so insanely fun. You complete a mission and you're sharp and there's a sense of meaning. It's really enjoyable. We were fully in it."

Israeli Reserve Major Avdar Shailovski wrote an article—published on his Facebook page—in which he recounts his flight from the Israeli military and his emigration from Israel to Poland, the land of his ancestors.

The article is titled: "I Can No Longer Remain Silent."

Here is the full text of the article:

I am Avdar Shailovski, a major who deserted the Israeli military. I declare, while of sound mind, that I left the Israeli military because I could no longer bear to remain a silent witness—betraying my own humanity—to all the crimes I witnessed during my five years of service.

The events I witnessed will suffocate me if I do not share them with you.

I could die at any moment from the sheer weight of my grief; therefore, I must contribute to revealing the truth—perhaps it will alleviate my sense of guilt, and perhaps God will lighten the torment that awaits me for the horrific acts I committed simply by virtue of being a member of the Israel Defence Forces.

Then, I received a sign: "Leave everything behind and go your own way."

Thank You, God, for guiding me.

As soon as the El Al flight landed at Warsaw Airport, I felt safe—far away from the land of Israel, which no longer holds any meaning for me.

We were taught about the land that God promised us, but it is the greatest lie ever used to deceive the Jewish people. It is a persistent, ongoing lie—one that has, for eighty years, displaced the defenceless Palestinian people from their own land. Moreover, to this very day, these people continue to endure unimaginable suffering. Who invented this lie? And what kind of "foolish" people believed it?

What I witnessed during my five-year service in the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) is difficult to put into words.

What words could possibly describe the cruelty, the heinousness, and the atrocity that the IDF inflicts upon the Palestinians?

Do not believe what Netanyahu says. He is a despicable liar—especially when he describes the Israeli army as "the most moral army in the world." Far from it! The truth is that it is the most depraved, cruel, and brutal army in the world.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I can no longer bear to witness the ruin and destruction in Gaza.

I was a witness to what took place on the night of October 7, 2023. Israeli intelligence, Netanyahu, and his gang knew about it; they waited for it to happen so they could justify the destruction of Gaza and attempt to displace its population.

I served in Gaza, and I saw with my own eyes how a tank commander would toy with his tank’s cannon, firing shells at Palestinians huddled inside their tents, or at groups of people standing in lines—whether in front of bakeries, or by vehicles distributing food and aid. With my own eyes, I witnessed aircraft firing projectiles at inhabited residential buildings, reducing them to rubble atop the people living inside.

With my own eyes, I saw snipers from the occupation army amusing themselves by picking off children, adults, and women as they stood in line to receive aid.

This is madness.

Crimes such as these—which I witnessed—could not happen anywhere else in the world; they occur only on the land of Palestine.

With my own eyes, I saw a child clutching a piece of stale, blood-soaked bread, weeping over his mother’s body—while the soldiers laughed, as if they were watching a comedy video.

They claim that these people are not human beings, not equals to us—to us Jews.

I would summon my courage and say to my colleagues, "Brother, even if they were a group of monkeys, could we possibly kill them in this manner?"

They would reply, "You are a coward; you are weak—you are not fit to be a Jew."

I saw settlers in the West Bank uprooting olive trees and assaulting farmers in their own fields.

I saw them destroy homes—issuing an immediate evacuation order to the owners, only to demolish the structures while the residents were still inside.

With my own eyes, I saw a soldier send a text message to a Palestinian, telling him: "Go up to the roof, or we will destroy the house—with your family inside—because of you." When the man climbed to the roof and began waving a white rag, the soldier shot him dead on the spot.

Can anyone believe this? I can find no explanation for all this Israeli cruelty other than the upbringing we, as Jews, were subjected to. We were told that Arabs are filthy, savage, and extremist Muslim killers—and that if we were kind to them, they would cast us into the sea. Just imagine the kind of indoctrination we were fed.

They taught us that the land of Palestine belongs to us, the Jews.

They claimed that the Golan and the entire Levant belong to the children of Zion.

They taught us that "Greater Israel" stretches from the Euphrates to the Nile.

How wicked we Jews must be to believe all these lies! If we were not wicked, foolish, and devoid of morality, we would never have carried out these orders.

I can no longer bear to witness these atrocities.

At night, I would weep, while my comrades mocked me, calling me a coward. They insisted that a Jew should be obsessed with killing Arabs and ridding the Promised Land of them.

I pray for a day when the Arabs wake up and realize that Israel is an illusion—a lie—that will eventually cease to exist. Were it not for their own leaders, who collude with the criminal Netanyahu and his gang, we would never have been able to commit the crimes and atrocities we have perpetrated.

Forgive me, O Lord, for everything we have done to the innocent Palestinians.

Forgive me, O God, for the atrocities we have committed.

As the Muslims say, You are "Most Forgiving, Most Merciful." I am confident, therefore, that You will forgive me, now that I have found my way after having been lost.

Thank You, O God, for guiding me to the straight path—

the path of truth, love, and peace—far removed from the path of the criminal state of Israel.