A former Israeli Defense Forces soldier spoke out against the Israeli government’s policies at a lecture in the SUB on Tuesday.
Micah Kurz, who grew up in Jerusalem, served in the Israeli army from 2001 to 2004. All Israeli citizens are required to join the country’s defense forces when they turn 18, he said.
Kurz said his organization, Breaking the Silence, was founded to let people know what Israeli soldiers experience on a day-to-day basis.
“We watched ourselves and our buddies kind of lose a few screws,” he said. “At some point you just get either extremely bored, or you actually learn that you can do whatever you want.”
Mae Eye, vice president of the UNM Israel Alliance, said the IDF does what’s necessary to secure peace in Israel.
“I told (Kurz) that I’m sorry he presented only one side,” she said. “The other side is the Israeli side, in view of history, in view of what the Hamas Charter says, which is to kill Israel, wipe it off the map.”
Guida Leicester of the Coalition for Peace and Justice in the Middle East, who helped to bring Kurz to UNM,said the Israel Alliance portrays Hamas as more violent than it really is.
“They have said, ‘We don’t want to push Israel into the sea’” she said. “Both sides have a right to live and exist together peacefully.”
Leicester said it’s important to hear the story of Israeli soldiers because their stories are central to the region’s problems.
“For me, the Israel-Palestine conflict is at the core, the root of the problems in the Middle East,” she said.
Kurz said people living in Jerusalem have no idea what happens in the Palestinian occupied territories that are only a few miles away from where they live.
“We wanted people to know what’s going on 40 minutes away, and what it means to them that they’re sending 18-year-olds into this situation regularly.”
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Kurz said the psychological effects of being placed in a position of power over people are detrimental to the young people who work as soldiers for the Israeli army. He said that the soldiers are required to watch checkpoints and decide which Palestinians can go through.
“That’s a whole lot of power to be able to control hundreds of people that go through the streets every day,” he said.
Kurz said he also belongs to Grassroots Jerusalem, an organization creating an online database of the needs of Palestinians in East Jerusalem.
Eye said that by helping grassroots organizations in Palestine, the groups are helping Hamas fight the state of Israel.
“Hamas and the Palestinians are the same,” she said. “That’s the same thing. They’re together.”
Israel Alliance Treasurer Lynn Provencio said if the organizations remain apolitical, they are not working against the state of Israel. But she doesn’t believe that all the grassroots organizations Kurz works with are independent of Hamas.
“I think when it’s strictly a humanitarian issue like that, I see no problem with it,” she said. “The organizations that he works with, a lot of them, they do get into politics.”
Kurz said the conflict between the IDF and Hamas is irrelevant to the work of the grassroots groups helping civilians on both sides.
He said that Palestinian neighborhoods in and around Jerusalem are regularly subject to curfews from the Israeli government, and sometimes suffer from water restrictions as well.
“Villages have the water turned off for 40 days at a time,” he said. “I tell my buddies, ‘40 days without water,’ and people don’t believe me. But believe me.”
Kurz said Grassroots Jerusalem is also working to connect the organizations trying to fulfill the needs of Palestinians in the area.
“Five years down the line, I’d like to have an accessible map online, where I can log into any community in Jerusalem and find out what their most urgent needs may be — and a way to find out who’s already active in that neighborhood, what are the organizations, what are they doing,” he said.
Kurz said Grassroots Jerusalem is looking for students to help build their online directory of grassroots groups. Students can get in contact with the group through their Web site, GrassrootsJerusalem.com.
“If anyone would like to come and work with us, we’re very happy to help them find their niche,” Kurz said.
