On January 25, 2002 a remarkable group of 52 soldiers and officers of the Israeli army reserves published a quarter-page letter which appeared in the Israeli daily newspaper Ha’aretz. In this letter, they called on their comrades-in-arms to join their act of refusal to serve in the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza. In a manifesto published in a book in 2003 entitled “Breaking Ranks: Refusing to Serve in the West Bank and Gaza Strip,” they further declared: “we shall not continue to fight beyond the 1967 borders in order to dominate, expel, starve, and humiliate an entire people.”

Sherif Fam speaks to Oded Na’aman, a 26 year-old former crew commander in the artillery corps of the Israeli Defense Forces, who spent a year as a soldier and commander in checkpoints all over the West Bank, then became a member of “Breaking the Silence.”

This program was produced by This Week In Palestine for WZBC radio on March 3, 2008.

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