JOEL Carmel arrived in Israel when he was 18. Having grown up at the heart of the Jewish community in London, it had always been clear to him that going there was part of his destiny.
While in England, he saw his role as a diaspora Jew as being about defending Israel. If there was a protest at the embassy, he would be there with his big Israeli flag "to defend Israel’s right to exist”.
He wanted to get to Israel as soon as he could after leaving secondary school. After a couple of years of living there, he began serving in the Israel Defence Forces where he remained for three years in the COGAT unit – the Co-ordination of Government Activities in the Territories – that deals with the bureaucracy of the occupation.
He was uncomfortable with serving in the occupied territories, but he knew he was a good solider, and he felt perhaps he could help Palestinians more than his fellow soldiers could.
But over the course of his time working on the border of Gaza and Israel, and in the West Bank, he quickly lost hope in that approach as he came to realise he was a tiny cog in a huge system of oppression.
Now 32, Carmel has been part of an organisation called Breaking the Silence for the past six years – a group of veteran soldiers who have served in the Israeli military since the Second Intifada who are now working to expose the reality of the occupation to the public.
When he spoke to the Sunday National about how he felt about Israel’s bombardment of Gaza since October 7, 2023, he said: “I don’t have the words to describe the shame I feel as an Israeli, as a Jew. To see as a policy that we’re starving people, we didn’t let food in for so long, it’s really difficult to try and put this into words.
“I think there was something about October 7 that was kind of an unmasking moment. A lot of the feelings that people had here about what needs to happen in Gaza, people felt […] anything now can be justified as a way of preventing the next October 7 and that’s the way it is framed in Israeli society.
“I want to put it on the record that not all Israelis believe this is a way to do that. The way to create more security for Israelis is by going into negotiations with Palestinians and ending the occupation.”
Since October 7, when Hamas attacked Israel, killed around 1200 people and took 250 hostages, more than 50,000 Palestinians have been killed by the subsequent Israeli military offensive.
Israel has been credibly accused of committing genocide in Gaza with the International Court of Justice saying Palestinians' right to be protected from the crime faces "plausible" risk.
The Israeli government shattered a ceasefire agreement in March and prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has since announced plans to take control of all of Gaza, which Israel illegally occupies.
A near-three-month blockage on aid going into the enclave ended last week but minimal supplies have since been allowed in. Experts have warned that many of Gaza’s two million residents are now at high risk of famine.
“We’re using Palestinians as human shields, we’re not allowing aid in, we’re bombing almost indiscriminately. I would hope people are held to account for that,” Carmel told the Sunday National.
But there were a few key experiences that he had in the IDF that got him to a place where he eventually decided to stand against the occupation.
The first, he said, was when he worked as a civil co-ordination officer for the Jenin area in the occupied West Bank.
Any Palestinians who wanted access to Israel had to come through his office for a permit. These are crucial for families who are separated by the Green Line – the border separating pre-1967 Israel from the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Carmel said people could often be waiting days or weeks for an application to be signed off, but he added there were ways for certain people they wanted to “find favour with” to jump the queue.
“We would have people who are in the Palestinian Authority, or in the Palestinian police, or business people, or religious leaders, and it was important for us to have them on our side, and for them to give us information about what’s going on in their towns and villages. Those people didn’t have to wait in line at all.
“I realised what we were doing was creating a two-tier society among Palestinians, people who are willing to cooperate with Israel and the rest. It breaks down the intra-Palestinian solidarity.”
The second was an even more chilling experience. When he was working in Jenin, Carmel ended up on a mapping mission, which is where soldiers are sent to a Palestinian town or village to collect as much information as they can about that particular place.
In a small village near Jenin, Carmel arrived with combat soldiers in the middle of the night at a house where the commander banged on a family's door and ordered the terrified man who answered to wake everyone up and bring them downstairs, including his children.
“It was probably terrifying for him,” said Carmel.
“It was the middle of the night and suddenly eight or nine heavily armed soldiers come to his door. I just remember the commander started asking a list of basic questions, asking for names and ID numbers.
“That’s the point of the mission. They’re not suspected of anything.”
But the family were not to know that. Feeling uncomfortable with what was unfolding, Carmel recalled looking towards the children and trying to smile at them in a desperate attempt to provide reassurance. They stared back at him in fear.
“ I think there was something about that moment when I saw that terrified look in the eyes of these kids that I thought to myself, what is security related about what we just did?
“We’ve woken these kids up, we’ve scared the hell out of them, and I thought maybe this is actually more of a security risk to us than a security asset.
“I thought back to it many times, not only to the incident itself but also to the briefing we got beforehand from the company commander who said there’s a reason we do these missions in the middle of the night. He said, ‘we go in the middle of the night to show them who’s boss’.
“He said by going in the night we’re not just waking up that family, we’re waking up the whole village, and so everyone knows who is in charge.”
Carmel ended up not wanting to serve any longer than he had to and six years ago, he gave a testimony to Breaking the Silence, which has now collected more than 1500 stories from veteran soldiers recounting their experiences. A few – including Carmel’s – have been gathered in a freely available booklet entitled Military Rule, which also features testimonies from residents of the Gaza Strip.
“I felt motivated to do something that could help change the situation,” he told the Sunday National.
Carmel now only hopes more soldiers and the Israeli public will feel inclined to speak out.
“Even though the Israeli government is doing everything it can to prevent Israelis from knowing how bad the situation is in Gaza, I’m hoping that as time goes by, more and more Israelis will wake up,” he said.
“More Israelis are starting to see how unjust what we’re doing is and I would really hope we will reach some kind of critical mass when the government will feel like they can’t go on.
“The government is deeply unpopular at the moment and it represents a minority of Israel. The vast majority of Israelis want the war to end, or to put it another way, they want there to be a hostage deal that brings everyone home and are willing for the war to end in order for that to happen.
“I just think if there is more public pressure within Israel on the government, then that will break through and the international community has a role to play in that. It can send a message to the Israeli public that there is international support for people who want to end the war.”
