[Opinion. Want the real story? Tour Hebron with the IDF.] Tour Hebron in the West Bank with ex-IDF Breaking the Silence: 11 July 2026 A park named after a fascist, the gravesite of a mass murderer, and an Israeli settlement in the heart of the second-largest Palestinian city in the West Bank. Many of us served there as soldiers. On our tours, we bring Israelis and internationals to Hebron to see these places firsthand and meet Palestinian activists resisting the occupation. Hebron is both typical and unique. It is typical because, like elsewhere in the West Bank, the lives of more than 235,000 Palestinians are shaped by a repressive military system that deprives them of basic rights. It is unique because nowhere else is that system so concentrated and visible. As former IDF soldiers, we carried out the occupation ourselves. Drawing on our own experiences, we explain how this system works, what it looks like in everyday life, and why we believe it is deeply immoral and makes no one living between the river and the sea safer. Most Israelis and internationals have never visited Hebron. Seeing these places with your own eyes offers a perspective that is difficult to gain from news reports or social media alone. ########### Wiki: Among the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) units serving during the Second Intifada in the early 2000s, there was one in particular, battalion 50 of the Nahal, that in that period consisted of many youths from moshavim and kibbutzim,who had often known each other before their service. Erella Grassiani believed their background was one in which there was more open talk about a two-state solution and perhaps more sympathy for the civilians they encountered. Members of battalion 50 were assigned to serve in the city of Hebron, which is important to all the Abrahamic religions. This second-largest city in the Occupied Territories had 160,000 Palestinians; it also had 500 Jewish settlers who occupied houses in the city center. Some 500 soldiers were stationed there to protect the settlers, resulting in frequent and close encounters with Palestinian civilians. Some of the soldiers were disturbed by what took place. Following their service, three reservists collected photographs and made a videotape of testimonies by other IDF soldiers who had also served in Hebron, to show what occurred in encounters between Palestinian civilians and the military. In June 2004 in Tel Aviv, Yehuda Shaul, and two other former soldiers, Jonathan Boimfeld and Micha Kurtz, organized an exhibit called Breaking the Silence, which featured photos and videotapes that "documented their compulsory service in Hebron." They wanted to educate the general Israeli population about what went on in military efforts to control Arab populations of the Occupied Territories. The exhibition was attended by thousands of people and received some international coverage. Afterward, the organizers were questioned by IDF personnel seeking to substantiate apparent abuses by those veterans.
