Breaking the Silence founder Yehuda Shaul, is there a crack in the Israeli army’s wall of silence?
By Nir Hasson Yehuda Shaul, 27, one of the founders of Breaking the Silence, which collects and publishes eyewitness accounts of soldiers from the territories, is cealebrating a minor victory over the Israel Defense Forces, the IDF spokesman and the wall of silence that Shaul says surrounds the events of Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. The cracks in that wall are decisions by Military Advocate General Brig. Gen. Avichai Mendelblit to file an indictment against a soldier from the Givati Brigade on suspicion of killing two Palestinian women during the Gaza fighting, to subject an officer to disciplinary proceedings over questionable conduct, and to investigate the bombing of the al-Samouni family home, in which 16 people were killed. But Shaul is afraid that this time, too, the IDF will try to isolate a few low-level scapegoats to continue to conceal the really important things – the orders that were given to the soldiers during the operation. Shaul, a skullcap-wearing Jerusalemite, founded
