43 Israeli soldiers protest ‘abuses’ of Palestinians

Forty-three reservists and former members of an elite Israeli army intelligence unit condemned alleged “abuses” of Palestinians in the occupied territories. In an open letter, they said information gathered by Unit 8200 was used by civilian intelligence agencies to coerce Palestinians uninvolved in militant activity. They said they would refuse to be party to such acts in the future. The letter did not specifically mention the July-August war which took the lives of more than 2,100 Palestinians and 73 people on the Israeli side. In response, the army questioned the accuracy and motivation of the protesters’ accusations, asserting that it had “no record that the… violations in the letter ever took place.”

We call for all soldiers serving in the Intelligence Corps, present and future, along with all the citizens of Israel, to speak out against these injustices and to take action to bring them to an end.

The open letter by Israeli reservists

A former commander of Unit 8200, reserve Brigadier General Hanan Gefen, accused the letter’s authors of a grave breach of trust. He said: “They are using information that reached them in the course of their duties to promote their political position.” Members of Unit 8200, considered among Israel’s best and brightest, carry out electronic communications monitoring and surveillance, similar to work performed by the US National Security Agency and Britain’s GCHQ.

If this is true and if I were the current unit commander, I would put them all on trial and would demand prison sentences for them, and I would remove them from the unit.

Former Unit 8200 commander, Brigadier Hanan Gefen

Middle East Israeli soldiers