On display at this small art gallery in Haifa is a rare glimpse of what it means to come of age in Israel - an exhibition of photographs and video taken by soldiers serving in the occupied territories. They say their experiences have left them angry and traumatised.
YEHUDA SHAUL, EXHIBITION ORGANISER (TRANSLATION): There is a total chasm between here and there. Here there is life, and there, there is no life. We want Israeli society to wake up and know whats happening there. Were saying it for the publics awareness. So nobody can say "We didnt know."
21-year-old Yehuda Shaul is the main organiser of this exhibition and an unlikely dissident. A religious Jew, he served as a commander in the West Bank town of Hebron.
YEHUDA SHAUL (TRANSLATION): Wed get off bus number 160 to a new reality. Once we put on our uniforms, we were monsters again.
Yehuda has done what nearly every young Israeli is expected to do after leaving school - become a soldier. He knows that by exposing what soldiers do and feel, the exhibition breaks one of Israels greatest taboos.
YEHUDA SHAUL (TRANSLATION): We call it Breaking the Silence for a reason. Heres a story. Two religious soldiers, my age, came to the Tel Aviv exhibition and looked around. Suddenly they said, "Yehuda, youre a liar." One guy was prepared to swear that they are doing nothing wrong, that they were doing nothing immoral or illegal. So I asked him, "Dont you run over cars with your tanks when in action?" "Oh, yes," he said, "we do that as a deterrent." "Do you fire through windows? "Yes, but as a deterrent." "And do you shoot at houses? "We do that too, every day. As a deterrent. We must show were strong."
The moral blindness Yehuda saw in himself and his comrades in the army is what made him speak out in the first place.
WOMAN: I think most of the people here, they cannot face the reality. They cannot see their face in the mirror and say, "We are like this." So they say, "We are not." It is like alcoholics, they say "I am not an alcoholic."
YONATHON BOUMFELD, EXHIBITION ORGANISER: Some of the pictures I took were only as souvenirs. But some of them were taken because I knew that Im seeing something that I cant deal with.
Yonathon Boumfeld recently finished an 11-month stint in Hebron. He never thought his snapshots would end up in an exhibition.
YONATHON BOUMFELD: This picture is a bit difficult to understand at first. There are six Palestinian kids standing next to a soldier. And the kids are actually playing soldiers, like cowboys and Indians, they are playing Palestinian citizens and Israeli soldiers. And the Israeli soldier just stands there with his hand in his pockets, looks like he feels nothing. This is one of the problems in Hebron.
All the photos here were taken in Hebron where around 500 right-wing Jewish settlers live in the midst of 120,000 Palestinians. Its one of the most demanding places for a soldier to be posted. Young Israelis, some still teenagers, are on the front line of the conflict, having to defend a cause many dont agree with. Now some are saying enough.
YONATHON BOUMFELD: This is the first time soldiers who just got out of the army are speaking for themselves, telling their point of view of this war. This is what is unique about it. And this is what hurts the ones who... the Israeli society who doesnt want to accept us. They are saying we are just weeds in the society.
When patriotic Israelis like Yehuda and Yonathon question the occupation it touches a raw nerve.
MAN (TRANSLATION): Tell me, do you want my son to be a war criminal?
WOMAN (TRANSLATION): No, he isnt, a soldier is not a war criminal. He defends himself.
MAN (TRANSLATION): If he shoots at solar heaters...
WOMAN (TRANSLATION): They dont understand any other language. Youre looking for a second Holocaust. You want to turn the other cheek.
The exhibition has been controversial and this woman, like many others, is offended by its political agenda.
WOMAN (TRANSLATION): I dont like it when they ask "Why are you shouting?" Listen to what Im saying not to my shouting. Im a citizen who loves my country.
MAN (TRANSLATION): So am I.
WOMAN (TRANSLATION): And its a pity youre strengthening terrorists and suicide bombers. Thats what youre doing.
MAN (Reading from graffiti in photograph): "Arabs to the gas chambers" - she hasnt any - she hasnt any opinion about that!
WOMAN: Dont you dare! Dont you dare!
MAN: She hasnt.
WOMAN: I am against it! Dont you dare!
MAN: Say it. Say it!
WOMAN: Im telling you, I am against it, so dont you dare tell me that I..
MAN: There is a good reason to exhibit these photos. A very good reason!
YONATHON BOUMFELD: Because this exhibition is not talking about the Palestinians, it is talking about the Israeli soldiers and what happens to them and how they are coming home after they are serving in Hebron. And they are - they are like, they have a scratch in the brain. I mean they are fucked up. These are the parents of tomorrow and the teachers and these are the citizens of the society.
The most contentious part of the exhibition are these video testimonies in which dozens of soldiers talk about their time in Hebron. In order to convince them to speak, they were promised their faces would be disguised and their voices distorted.
SOLDIERS TESTIMONY: There is a place in the world where simply...where a Jew can go, where a Jew can take out all his rage on Arab people.
These soldiers could go to prison for speaking to the public about the army while still serving.
SOLDIERS TESTIMONY: You know people do what you tell them, because youre carrying a weapon, and if you were unarmed and on your own they would attack you and stab you to death. So you start enjoying it. You really do.
Some of the testimonies include descriptions of war crimes, such as the story of a civilian used as a human shield to move a suspected bomb.
SOLDIERS TESTIMONY: We discovered a metallic object or something like that. We took some Arab guy with us. Our commander stopped him and told him go down. When this man approached that place to move this object he was really, really scared. After it was all over, when we brought him back and after we let him go, only then did I fully realise what we had just done.
The army confiscated the video three weeks after the exhibition opened. The Israeli Defence Force spokesperson Sharon Feingold says the army was investigating possible human rights violations.
SHARON FEINGOLD, ISRAELI DEFENCE FORCE SPOKESPERSON: The fact is that when we encounter and when we hear about misconduct of soldiers, we investigate. That is exactly what was done. When these soldiers came out and told their stories we felt it was our moral obligation to check these things that they were saying and to investigate. And that is exactly what was done. And this is the message we are sending to our soldiers - speak up. When you see something wrong, speak up, tell your commanders and you should not be ashamed to voice your opinion. But keeping it bottled up for two or three years while you are serving and then coming out is not going to help these Palestinians who were abused at checkpoints.
According to the organisers, the army demanded the names of the anonymous soldiers, but they refused.
YONATHON BOUMFELD: They confiscated a couple of video tapes and brought us in for interrogation, each of us, for six hours interrogation. I felt all the time that what they were really trying to do is...to scare us. Imagine what can happen if every soldier who gets out of the army will do another exhibition about Gaza or about Nablus or about Bethlehem. I mean it will be nuts, so they have to stop this wave at the beginning.
But these soldiers cant be scared off. Theyre continuing to collect testimonies from all over the West Bank and Gaza to prove that soldiers everywhere are being traumatised. Avihai Sharon, another of the exhibition organisers, says they have the wellbeing of the army at heart.
AVIHAI SHARON, EXHIBITION ORGANISER: Because of where we were and what we did, we would very much like to embrace the army, embrace the military and tell them, "Here we are. We are not against you, we are part of you." Were not trying to ruin the army, we are trying to build the army back to what it is supposed to be.
YEHUDA SHAUL, EXHIBITION ORGANISER (TRANSLATION): There is a total chasm between here and there. Here there is life, and there, there is no life. We want Israeli society to wake up and know whats happening there. Were saying it for the publics awareness. So nobody can say "We didnt know."
21-year-old Yehuda Shaul is the main organiser of this exhibition and an unlikely dissident. A religious Jew, he served as a commander in the West Bank town of Hebron.
YEHUDA SHAUL (TRANSLATION): Wed get off bus number 160 to a new reality. Once we put on our uniforms, we were monsters again.
Yehuda has done what nearly every young Israeli is expected to do after leaving school - become a soldier. He knows that by exposing what soldiers do and feel, the exhibition breaks one of Israels greatest taboos.
YEHUDA SHAUL (TRANSLATION): We call it Breaking the Silence for a reason. Heres a story. Two religious soldiers, my age, came to the Tel Aviv exhibition and looked around. Suddenly they said, "Yehuda, youre a liar." One guy was prepared to swear that they are doing nothing wrong, that they were doing nothing immoral or illegal. So I asked him, "Dont you run over cars with your tanks when in action?" "Oh, yes," he said, "we do that as a deterrent." "Do you fire through windows? "Yes, but as a deterrent." "And do you shoot at houses? "We do that too, every day. As a deterrent. We must show were strong."
The moral blindness Yehuda saw in himself and his comrades in the army is what made him speak out in the first place.
WOMAN: I think most of the people here, they cannot face the reality. They cannot see their face in the mirror and say, "We are like this." So they say, "We are not." It is like alcoholics, they say "I am not an alcoholic."
YONATHON BOUMFELD, EXHIBITION ORGANISER: Some of the pictures I took were only as souvenirs. But some of them were taken because I knew that Im seeing something that I cant deal with.
Yonathon Boumfeld recently finished an 11-month stint in Hebron. He never thought his snapshots would end up in an exhibition.
YONATHON BOUMFELD: This picture is a bit difficult to understand at first. There are six Palestinian kids standing next to a soldier. And the kids are actually playing soldiers, like cowboys and Indians, they are playing Palestinian citizens and Israeli soldiers. And the Israeli soldier just stands there with his hand in his pockets, looks like he feels nothing. This is one of the problems in Hebron.
All the photos here were taken in Hebron where around 500 right-wing Jewish settlers live in the midst of 120,000 Palestinians. Its one of the most demanding places for a soldier to be posted. Young Israelis, some still teenagers, are on the front line of the conflict, having to defend a cause many dont agree with. Now some are saying enough.
YONATHON BOUMFELD: This is the first time soldiers who just got out of the army are speaking for themselves, telling their point of view of this war. This is what is unique about it. And this is what hurts the ones who... the Israeli society who doesnt want to accept us. They are saying we are just weeds in the society.
When patriotic Israelis like Yehuda and Yonathon question the occupation it touches a raw nerve.
MAN (TRANSLATION): Tell me, do you want my son to be a war criminal?
WOMAN (TRANSLATION): No, he isnt, a soldier is not a war criminal. He defends himself.
MAN (TRANSLATION): If he shoots at solar heaters...
WOMAN (TRANSLATION): They dont understand any other language. Youre looking for a second Holocaust. You want to turn the other cheek.
The exhibition has been controversial and this woman, like many others, is offended by its political agenda.
WOMAN (TRANSLATION): I dont like it when they ask "Why are you shouting?" Listen to what Im saying not to my shouting. Im a citizen who loves my country.
MAN (TRANSLATION): So am I.
WOMAN (TRANSLATION): And its a pity youre strengthening terrorists and suicide bombers. Thats what youre doing.
MAN (Reading from graffiti in photograph): "Arabs to the gas chambers" - she hasnt any - she hasnt any opinion about that!
WOMAN: Dont you dare! Dont you dare!
MAN: She hasnt.
WOMAN: I am against it! Dont you dare!
MAN: Say it. Say it!
WOMAN: Im telling you, I am against it, so dont you dare tell me that I..
MAN: There is a good reason to exhibit these photos. A very good reason!
YONATHON BOUMFELD: Because this exhibition is not talking about the Palestinians, it is talking about the Israeli soldiers and what happens to them and how they are coming home after they are serving in Hebron. And they are - they are like, they have a scratch in the brain. I mean they are fucked up. These are the parents of tomorrow and the teachers and these are the citizens of the society.
The most contentious part of the exhibition are these video testimonies in which dozens of soldiers talk about their time in Hebron. In order to convince them to speak, they were promised their faces would be disguised and their voices distorted.
SOLDIERS TESTIMONY: There is a place in the world where simply...where a Jew can go, where a Jew can take out all his rage on Arab people.
These soldiers could go to prison for speaking to the public about the army while still serving.
SOLDIERS TESTIMONY: You know people do what you tell them, because youre carrying a weapon, and if you were unarmed and on your own they would attack you and stab you to death. So you start enjoying it. You really do.
Some of the testimonies include descriptions of war crimes, such as the story of a civilian used as a human shield to move a suspected bomb.
SOLDIERS TESTIMONY: We discovered a metallic object or something like that. We took some Arab guy with us. Our commander stopped him and told him go down. When this man approached that place to move this object he was really, really scared. After it was all over, when we brought him back and after we let him go, only then did I fully realise what we had just done.
The army confiscated the video three weeks after the exhibition opened. The Israeli Defence Force spokesperson Sharon Feingold says the army was investigating possible human rights violations.
SHARON FEINGOLD, ISRAELI DEFENCE FORCE SPOKESPERSON: The fact is that when we encounter and when we hear about misconduct of soldiers, we investigate. That is exactly what was done. When these soldiers came out and told their stories we felt it was our moral obligation to check these things that they were saying and to investigate. And that is exactly what was done. And this is the message we are sending to our soldiers - speak up. When you see something wrong, speak up, tell your commanders and you should not be ashamed to voice your opinion. But keeping it bottled up for two or three years while you are serving and then coming out is not going to help these Palestinians who were abused at checkpoints.
According to the organisers, the army demanded the names of the anonymous soldiers, but they refused.
YONATHON BOUMFELD: They confiscated a couple of video tapes and brought us in for interrogation, each of us, for six hours interrogation. I felt all the time that what they were really trying to do is...to scare us. Imagine what can happen if every soldier who gets out of the army will do another exhibition about Gaza or about Nablus or about Bethlehem. I mean it will be nuts, so they have to stop this wave at the beginning.
But these soldiers cant be scared off. Theyre continuing to collect testimonies from all over the West Bank and Gaza to prove that soldiers everywhere are being traumatised. Avihai Sharon, another of the exhibition organisers, says they have the wellbeing of the army at heart.
AVIHAI SHARON, EXHIBITION ORGANISER: Because of where we were and what we did, we would very much like to embrace the army, embrace the military and tell them, "Here we are. We are not against you, we are part of you." Were not trying to ruin the army, we are trying to build the army back to what it is supposed to be.