By YVETTE DEANE
In the West Bank, Benzion Sanders is outfitted in an IDF uniform as part Nahal Brigade. Source: Benzion Sanders
Staring through the slit of his ski mask at the enemy – a 17-year-old Palestinian, handcuffed, blindfolded, and clad in pajamas – Benzion Sanders wondered who he, as an Israeli Defense Force solider, was defending.
Sanders served as a soldier in the Nahal Brigade Special Forces Battalion. Now he is the Jewish diaspora education coordinator for Breaking the Silence. The anti-occupation organization collects testimonies from Israeli military veterans to expose the realities of life in Gaza and the West Bank as well as to inspire public debate within Israeli society about sending young soldiers to control a civilian population. Sanders is one of more than 1,200 soldiers who have given testimony in an effort to change the conversation about Israeli military control over Palestinians. Sanders served in the IDF from 2012-2015. He originally joined because of his love of the land, but during his service doubts emerged. He transformed from an ardent supporter of the IDF, ready to sacrifice his life for its mission, to someone deeply committed to creating public dialogue that questions Israeli control over the West Bank and the siege in Gaza. Sander’s experience of upholding a military occupation and later seeing the Israeli media’s refusal to fully acknowledge the toll of war on Palestinian civilian casualties in Gaza triggered his ideological change.
Now 29, Sanders looks older than the last time I saw him two years ago. With his rounded glasses, combed back hair, and partial goatee, he still maintains a bookish demeanor. But he has gained a new air of confidence, perhaps from his years defending his organization from public defamation.
Sanders and I met in 2016, when I was going through a similar process of questioning my own beliefs about Israel’s occupation and the role of my religion in my life. Both of us come from more conservative and religious communities. We became friendly at an egalitarian Shabbat service outside Tel Aviv. Sanders had not yet begun his work with Breaking the Silence at this point, but he had started getting involved with left-wing political parties like Meretz.
Defending What?
Sanders was stationed in the West Bank from 2013 to 2014, near the Israeli settlement of Kdumim. Every Friday, the neigboring Palestinian villagers of Qaddum would protest against the Israeli government for restricting Palestinian use of a road that connects their village to the nearby city of Nablus. The protestors would throw rocks at the soldiers. In return, Sanders’ unit, outfitted in riot gear, would disperse the protest by firing tear gas and rubber bullets.
One Thursday night before one of these weekly clashes, Sanders’ commander ordered a mass arrest of the protestors. Sanders was covered head-to-toe in black as he navigated his way through Qaddum to arrest young Palestinian protestors. Banging on one door, Sanders and his unit woke up a family and separated screaming parents from their son. Sanders and his unit then used zip ties to cuff the twenty-year-old and blindfold him with a piece of cloth. In response to the arrest, a younger brother of the arrested protester punched Sanders’ friend. The IDF soldiers quickly overpowered the boy and left the house. As Sanders’ unit was leaving the village, their commander ordered them to return to the house and arrest the younger brother as well. Because of the delay, Sanders missed the Jeep that transported the Palestinian detainees and was forced to walk the 17-year-old through the village. Waiting to be picked up by his unit, Sanders stared at the boy and wondered if this is what defending Israel meant.
For Sanders, that moment marked the beginning of a transformation. He started to doubt his purpose in the IDF. He had envisioned protecting Israel from foreign armies and terrorists, not arresting 17-year-olds in their slippers.
Sanders traces his earlier beliefs, which he now deems as Islamaphobic, to his childhood in the U.S. Specifically, he remembers the post-9/11 atmosphere epitomized by the war against terror. As a fifth grader in 2001, Sanders did not have a grasp of the magnitude of the situation. Instead, he was preoccupied by the cancellation of his gym class.
“Man, another assembly,” Sanders grinned as he recalled this reaction, acknowledging the absurdity of his misplaced and childish distress.
At the assembly, some students started to cry as words like ‘hijacked planes’ and ‘terrorists’ were tossed around. Sanders didn’t know what those words meant and reenacted his confusion at the time, widening his eyes and shaking his head.
While he did not understand some words, he understood the destruction. The Twin Towers were tangible monuments he could wrap his head around. Growing up in the Lower East Side, Sanders was used to seeing the World Trade Center from his block. He remembered scanning the sky for the fighter jets and walking towards his apartment with his father as plumes of smoke overshadowed the neighborhood. Swept up in the shock of the nation, Sanders saw the war on terror as an “us vs. them” binary. He believes that these prevailing views on Islam and terroism pushed him on his path towards the IDF.
Sanders devoted the next eight years of his life to a series of team sports and outdoor activities—wrestling, baseball, and Boy Scouts. These activities demonstrated his athleticism and natural inclination to join an elite unit in the IDF. At 18, like many Modern Orthodox Jews, Sanders went to Israel to study at a Yeshivah, a Jewish educational institution. Delving into the historical and religious significance of the land, Sanders felt obligated to stay in Israel and contribute to the greater Jewish community.
Defending the Land
He officially moved to Israel and was drafted into an elite special forces battalion in the IDF. On draft day, Sanders stood in the Bakum, the reception and sorting base in Tel Hashomer, and stared up at a quote on the wall, which roughly translates to: if this cursed work is forced upon us, then we have no choice but to win.
“I remember that quote and related to it…Israel has only been able to exist for so long because of its strong military,” said Sanders. “I felt very privileged … to take part in and contribute to its defense.”
But Sanders’ hopes for the military did not meet his expectations. Shortly after basic training, Sanders remembers when a guard stationed in front of Kdumim summoned him to the border between the Israeli settlement and the neighboring Palestinian Qaddum. As part of a rapid response team, Sanders drove a Wolf Armoured Vehicle as quickly as possible to the edge of the Jewish settlement to respond to a report of two Palestinians crossing the Kav Adom, a line that if crossed required a military response. When Sanders approached the area, he got out of the Jeep and started to run toward the coordinates. Sanders was dressed in full combat gear when facing his opponents, who were only armed with leaves. Sanders was surprised to find an unarmed middle-aged couple busy picking herbs from an olive grove outside their own village. The couple asked him if they could continue for another five minutes, but the settlement guard told Sanders that either he could force the couple to leave or arrest them. Harrasing a middle-aged couple, made Sanders question his role as a defender of the Israeli people.
“This is an absurd reality, what I am doing in the IDF… preventing Palestinians from moving freely, and enforcing these… checkposts that were designed to make our presence felt,” said Sanders.
Sanders had not expected so much of his service to be enforcing policies with the intended goal of intimidating local villagers. But at this time, Sanders was still not yet thinking of Breaking the Silence. While he knew the organization existed. It was not until he reflected on his service did he consider giving a testimony and joining the orgnization. Sanders later cites his time in Gaza and the Israeli media response to the conflict as his impetus to share his experiences in the IDF and join Breaking the Silence.
Defending the People
Before Sanders’ military service came to a close, the Gaza conflict of 2014 broke out. Israel deployed many of its troops to the border, including Sanders and his unit. After a few false alarms, Sanders’ unit was sent into Gaza. Carrying heavy equipment, Sanders and his unit marched over fine sand throughout the night. As they crossed through the fence into Gaza, they were greeted by drones, planes, and explosions lighting up the sky.
“I remember people calling it the light and sound show,” said Sanders.
Fire and smoke above buildings in Gaza City in 2014. Source: Mahmud Hams/AFP/Getty Images
The firepower gave him confidence, knowing it mostly came from his side. As the IDF located a tunnel leading into Israel from Schunat HaBedouim, a Bedouin shanty town at the edge of the northern Gaza border, Sanders’ unit was charged with protecting the IDF engineers as they demolished the tunnel.
To secure the area, the soldiers would open fire every time they entered a building. Their commanders had told them that all the villagers had left and anyone remaining was a combatant. While Sanders and his friend guarded the area during the day, his friend thought he saw someone moving and he shot.
“You don’t even feel fear, you are just doing your mission and focused on staying alive,” said Sanders.
Going deeper into the neighborhood, Sanders and his friend went from shack to shack to find the source of the movement. In one of the houses, Sanders thought he saw a sack of laundry. As he stepped over it and realized it was the body of a 77-year-old dead woman whose blood had dried into the makeshift sand floor. Sanders’ voice wavers for the first time in our conversation and his eyes shift up uncomfortably as if even eye contact through our computer screens was too much to bear.
After a pause, Sanders describes the moment of silence he and his friend took for this woman. Seeing she had been dead for some time, they continued to search for what made the noise. Finding only sheep and goats, Sanders and his friend made a choice, perhaps wishful thinking, to attribute the noise to the farm animals.
While the death clearly moved Sanders, his breaking point was discovering that the Israeli Broadcasting Authority censored a human rights advertisement that tried to broadcast names of innocent Palestinians killed in Gaza. This was the moment that propelled Sanders to become an anti-occupation activist.
“So I can see innocent Palestinians that were killed, but the Israeli public can’t hear about it,” said Sanders, beginning to raise his voice slightly. “They literally will censor it… obviously it’s not true all the time, but I was sent to uphold this military Occupation of another people and all that entailed and all these missions that I was sent to carry out, arrests, patrols, dispersing protests, fighting in combat in the Gaza strip, and people in Israel aren’t aware of it, people abroad aren’t aware of it, what it looks like, what that entails.”
As Sanders talks, he shakes his head and raises his eyebrows — expressive signs for his usually calm demeanor.
“It really motivated me, as I processed that years after my service, to be involved with anti-occupation work,” Sanders said. “It was a natural progression.”
Fighting a New War – the Occupation
While Sanders may describe his journey as clear cut, it is not without its tensions. Often there are slanderous campaigns against Breaking the Silence. Even Sanders’ mom was initially upset when he took on his new role at the organization. But now, the two just avoid the topic altogether.
Still a member of the religious community in Israel, Sanders frequently finds his relatively new political beliefs alienating as the religious movement in Israel is often intertwined with support for the settlement movement. But there are communities where he has begun to find his home, both among the elgaterian spaces, where we met, and with Jews from Middle Eastern countries whose beliefs are not as enmeshed with the settlement movement as is the case for many Jews from Eastern Europe. However the jewish communities are not a monolith and Sanders has been surprised to find that some of his Rabbis from Yeshiva respected him and his decision to testify.
Today, there is no more doubt in Sanders’ voice, he knows what he is fighting for and who is defending. Sanders has now dedicated his career to fighting the occupation and spreading that message to his community.
“I want my community, I want the place that I grew up in… to know what’s going on and to take action accordingly,” Sanders said.