Meron Rapoport writes:

After every war in recent decades that Israelis have fought in, there have been public displays of remorse. This has often been criticized as a mentality of “shooting and crying” — but at least the soldiers were crying.

Following the 1967 Six-Day War, the hugely successful book “The Seventh Day: Soldiers’ Talk about the Six-Day War” was published, containing testimonies from soldiers trying to grapple with the moral dilemmas they faced during the fighting. After the Sabra and Shatila massacres in 1982, hundreds of thousands of Israelis — including many who served in the Lebanon war — took to the streets to protest the army’s crimes.

During the First Intifada, many soldiers spoke out about the abuse of Palestinians. The Second Intifada gave rise to the NGO Breaking the Silence. The moral discourse about the occupation may have been narrow and hypocritical, but it existed.

Not this time. The Israeli military has killed at least 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza — about two percent of the Strip’s population. It has wreaked total havoc, systematically destroying residential neighborhoods, schools, hospitals, and universities. Hundreds of thousands of Israeli soldiers have fought in Gaza over the past 10 months, and yet the moral debate is almost non-existent. The number of soldiers who have spoken out about their crimes or moral difficulties with serious reflection or regret, even anonymously, can be counted on the fingers of one hand. [Continue reading…]