The Most Moral Army In The World?

It was a single word scrawled on a wall at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem that unlocked something deep inside Inbar Michelzon, two years after she had completed compulsory military service in the Israeli Defence Force.

The word was "occupation"....She cited a routine example of a Palestinian woman waiting at the crossing. Michelzon called her officer, asking permission to allow the woman through. She was told to make such a request once the woman had been kept waiting for hours. "I felt very alone in the army. I couldn't talk about the things I felt were misplaced," she said. "I didn't have strong views but I felt uncomfortable about the talk, about soldiers hitting Arabs and laughing. I thought everyone else was normal and I was the one who wasn't. I felt an outsider to the group experience."


...She said that she also saw elderly Palestinians being humiliated on the streets, "and I thought these could be my parents or grandparents".