alternate focus interviews a k sharon and noam k you both veterans of the israeli defense forces all young israelis male and female with few exceptions are required to serve two to three years of active military duty in the israeli defense forces sharon and served during the second intifada a four year long bloodbath that claimed the lives of over three thousand palestinians and nine hundred fifty israelis after thorough introspection these young men have chosen to speak out about their experiences as self described brutal occupiers of a disputed land and sharon and are not alone they are members of a new forum for young israeli defense forces veterans called breaking  at a certain point you just lose track of where you are who you are and what you're doing because you go and you disrupt people's lives on a daily basis and for me that was the most i think when i look at it today when i reflect on it to someone who could do that during your service because you can't really live in the you know denial way of life where you can't look at what you're doing you can really reflect on it but when i reflect on it today from  perspective i can see that that was probably for means and that this example of corruption not the extreme cases where there was shooting or stuff like that but just thinking that there were hundreds of thousands of families that couldn't have one peaceful night of sleep in their homes i mean who in today in the usa in israel and anywhere else would be willing to live like that not knowing if at your clock in the morning twenty soldiers will take over your house for a week now knowing sitting in your in your living room and suddenly hearing of smashing on the wall and  west bank boxes full of car keys in id is that were taken and were supposed to be returned but and then i know my father read the newspaper for me and i know what and i understand that it's you know it's just a game of keeping information inside and not letting anybody know and how can you criticize helping us questions and those maybe one of the first time lot of shooting mostly by the i d f into the city and when we got out of there the first the first thing that happened when we left the city got back to the army barracks was a very a review which happens every hour in israel and it was going what are your forces left now because after researching the rest operation sound this and that and that's it and i think that even then i suddenly realized my parents are now sitting at the truth they don't know that ninety nine percent of what we did there was destroyed people's property destroyed their lives but they now i'm talking to them and i think like no one he just realized what you know where the truth it's going and today i can say that that was one time that i really started to think how the reality is being kept under the surface hidden from the public you hear the to launch a revenge raid against palestinian officers some of them just traffic officers all around the west bank against the next day fifteen house two in officers were killed what were then reported  and we spoke with four five different five different soldiers and officers in two different periods that were part of these raids and part of the attacks to four different checkpoints in different areas geographically have no connection whatsoever to the place that was attacked by in the night around the idea of checking no connection one was enough because one was near a mother and they just attack and the orders were just go there sure to kill and in the briefing by the commanders by the high ranking commanders commanders of units brigade commanders they were told that this is revenge we're going to avenge the blood of our control for a second and slap someone this was policy people sat down in offices convenient comfortable offices and decided to kill people as revenge and the next day fifteen people reported that they had no connection whatsoever to the attack on the idea so when we have to and we expose this and then you know we weren't expecting something dramatic to change because when people ask me don't you think something should happen for course i think something should happen but do you really think that the israeli public or someone will be brave enough to say that the minister of defense has to be investigated that the chief of staff  investigating this is not a nine hundred twenty year old man even a lieutenant that should be investigated this is the system this is the government this is the p that he can look into something and guy's name was he would want to show he's the founder of breaking the silence and he started to talk with his friends with people that were his soldiers his commanders especially about you know eighteen nineteen year olds took for memories and we took that out of four albums presenting over sixty of them over sixty soldiers giving video testimonies about there hav fundamental thing that we all felt was the amazing distance in the care of information between what is really going on and occupied territories what we're really doing over there and what is known back home to our parents to our neighbors to our public figures and leaders what is told by the press what is told by the i d f and we felt a moral obligation as much as a social obligation as people who work in israel  their military service who love their country and are very very concerned about how we will look tomorrow how we will raise our children tomorrow because we don't want to see ourselves anywhere else and platform press partitions everywhere you can think of about the real corruption the moral corruption that is happening is that humanitarian to raise the price of sending more and more generations to be occupiers regular says trying to fight code of silence which has many asking for us all and and the most important one as we see it is the personal when your stand in a that someone tells you about two years or three years out of his life it's important to understand there are two different aspects to different types of testability and we've collected in the first few months most of the looting are things that for israelis most people i think for any person that wants to devalue can say rotten apples extreme cases of people that broke the law broken english and should be convicted or prosecuted and it doesn't it sometimes doesn't even matter that you tell them all these are stories about units about hundreds or thousands of soldiers and that was something that we were exposing for a long time and the last campaign that we did was a collection of massive collection of testimonies policies procedures orders you know that especially because the most dominant thing or dramatic thing that has happened in the second intifada is the casualties is that people are being killed and children regular people that the procedure is you know i'm going to run for a foot because it was right after the p c s do a lot of you know remember that was in the summer of two thousand and four and it was very hectic and you couldn't walk by front so you come with a p c s tanks and meter deep ditch surrounding three hundred sixty degrees surrounding the house then he punches i hope you don't say anything to the family you just punch a hole into one of the walls and then the a p c comes right up to the to t area that bothers at their absolute vision that might be threatening everything and i ask him who is given who decides what to destroy and he says well the officers in the field and you have to understand these could be twenty to twenty one year old trying to decide what to destroy not to destroy and then when i ask him and no one told you creative use of what you can when you can't i mean if the officer decides that he doesn't like i'm not a yellow house and the house you know and exactly the ones that i used and he says well he doesn't like yellow he keeps right and it's that easy and i think for me that was an amazing just something that i carry every day because it's exactly how the procedures how the policy are so corrupt from the start that when they are carried out in the field the amazing power that you have trying to force them to use this truth the stories onto the israeli public so they'll be aware of them is exactly what we came here to do is to bring this to