Breaking the Silence: Embodiment, Militarisation and Military Dissent in the Israel/Palestine Conflict

This chapter studies the testimonies of violence published by the Israeli veteran organisation Breaking the Silence (Shovrim Shtika) and explores the role of embodiment as a means of military dissent within the Israel/Palestine conflict. These testimonies represent aesthetic practices that describe the violent behaviour of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (oPt) and illustrate soldiers’ embodied experiences of fear, shame, remorse, or empathy for Palestinians during their military service under the occupation. Interested in the political power of emotions within military dissent, this chapter shows that the activism of Breaking the Silence (BtS) is in fact interweaved with the same ideas of power, hierarchy, and violence that it seeks to challenge. It argues that dissenting military practices are fraught with contradictions, ambivalences, and ambiguities that may actually reinforce, rather than destabilise, the militarised discourses that sustain the Israel/Palestine conflict. Despite the best efforts of this organisation in intervening in the dynamics of Israeli militarisation, the aesthetics of BtS activism show that military dissent draws on and discloses embodied experiences which reproduce military masculinity, validate militarism, and may legitimise the further enactment of violence within the Israel/Palestine conflict.