Soldiers leave Gaza. Facing tough allegations
Photo: AP
Soldiers speak out against immorality allegations
New website encourages Israeli soldiers to share their war stories with world to contest barrage of negative imagery associated with IDF
SoldiersSpeakOut.com is
a brand new website that has recently emerged to combat the allegations of immorality in the IDF. The site, which launched this week, is run and maintained by Stand With Us,
an international organization that formed in California in 2001 during the second Palestinian intifada.
The organization aims to repudiate misinformation that surrounds the Middle East conflict in the media and change inappropriate language as it relates to Israel and Jewish people worldwide. The website includes video testimonials from Israeli soldiers who share their personal stories of humanism at its best in the IDF.
The weeks of anti-Israel media frenzy from publications around the world that included allegations of severe violation of ethics in the IDF prompted these soldiers to tell their stories to the public and remind the international community that much of what the media reported was hearsay and that the IDF had not yet concluded its investigation.
'More soldiers are coming forward to tell their story' (Photo: Reuters)
Stand With Us Israel Director Michael Dickinson said that "since the site began there has been no shortage of volunteers to tell their stories. The soldiers recognize that serving in the IDF is vital to the survival of Israel as it is surrounded by terror organizations and hostile nations and that the continual pounding of criticism of the 700,000 soldiers and reservists in the IDF is unjust and demoralizing for both current and future generations of soldiers who will serve their country."
Personal experiences
One account detailed on the website is by Pinchas, who served in an elite infantry unit in the recent operation in Gaza against Hamas. He tells of how a former terrorist showed him where to dig up bombs that had been planted by Hamas members underneath schools and medical clinics as wells as explosives that were placed in an ambulance that was serving a children’s hospital.Another story is Ran’s, who tells of an operation where he was sent into a house to capture a highly wanted terrorist. Instead of the terrorist he oddly discovered a young girl that Palestinian terrorists on the other side of the house were shooting at in order to coerce him, as an Israeli soldier to kill, so it would appear that Israel would inhumanly kill a child in order to get to them. Instead, Ran protected the girl and brought her back to his unit where they fed her and kept her safe during the shooting.
According to Dickinson, "We have a great response to the site. People are saying ‘wow, thank God this is being done.' It’s all over the world, not just Israelis and Jews that are anxious to hear more stories about soldiers who actually risk their lives to help Palestinians in a conflict zone. In turn, more and more soldiers are coming forward to make a video and tell their story."
The website gives these young men and women a place to voice their experiences and communicate directly with the Israeli people as well as with a world that tends to judge harshly before it has all the facts.
Stand With Us is an international, non-profit, Israel organization that is not affiliated with the IDF or the Israeli government.
