A chilling confession of an Israeli officer
I served and worked in the Shin Bet [AKA Shabak and Israeli Security Agency (ISA)] for 4 years. Like the army, the Shin Bet also takes an active part in oppression, torture and murder. You need to be far more concerned that this body still exists and that it is part of a murderous security system than worry about who heads it. Just refuse.
By Nina Sodin* • Translated by Sol Salbe
I think it’s a good time to “break the silence” about my service in the Shin Bet [AKA Shabak and Israeli Security Agency (ISA)].
At the age of 18, I enlisted and reached the position of secretary to the head of a department in the Technology Division of the Shin Bet. After a short time, I pretty much experienced all that one could do in the job and insisted on doing something with more meaning. I managed to switch to being an electronics technician, that is, someone working with a soldering iron, cables, electronics systems, etc.
The Shin Bet is not part of the army, and the headquarters was not a military base. I haven’t served on a military base so I can’t compare it, but the place I served there was a kind of seemingly mundane place of work, with coffee corners and gossip and friendships and fights and people who had more energy for work and those who had less.
As an electronics technician, I worked with people from different departments, our own and others, who brought us small and large tasks. Because of the need-to-know practice, they would only tell us certain details about the requirements. I’d know, let’s say, that the system was connected to the “source” — to a Palestinian whom Israel had coerced into becoming a spy, as it is now trying to do in Gaza by scattering flyers with threats and promises. Or that it connected to some kind of “operation”.
I was so dedicated to the job and loved it so much that I gave up half of my days off because I preferred to come to the office and work. Besides the fact that I really liked working with my hands, the “clients” always sat and talked to us while they waited for us to finish, so it wasn’t boring.
I was the leftist of the team, the one who votes more to the left than anyone (Labour or something like that), the one who gets angry when they say “Death to the Arabs.” I remember one time there was a conversation about the consequences of what we were doing. And I said that I trust the person who makes the decisions. My decisions were only about cables, not how they would be used. I had no influence on what would happen in the field, only on whether the electronic system would be ready on time and function well.
Yes, I just followed instructions.
I remember working on an operation that didn’t take place in the end, in which they were supposed to plant a bomb somewhere in the field (I believe in the Gaza Strip, maybe in the West Bank) and “eliminate” someone. Working on this kind of operation was a kind of status symbol, such a special responsibility. The client came to see my work, and as a compliment, threw something like, “You’re good at genocide.”
For Nina of the time, that was not a red flag.
And I remember Cast Lead [2014 war of Gaza] best. I felt very proud that I was taking part in it. I worked on a system that helped the intelligence side with another “elimination.” The army killed a senior person in Gaza along with other people, there was an article in the newspaper about it, and I kept it as a reminder of something significant that I took part in.
I served until my discharge time but stayed to work as a civilian employee. Then, for logistical reasons, I moved on to another job — working shifts in a control room where we monitored a variety of systems and servers. In this role, I felt less satisfied, even when I was given additional responsibility. After about two years, I decided to leave for good, with mixed feelings. It was a place I loved, that I was proud of my part of it, where I made friends.
It took me a few more years to start asking myself if serving in the military was the right thing to do. And a few more years to go to the joint Palestinian-Israeli memorial ceremony. And a few more years to start following Palestinians on Instagram and realise that I actually don’t know anything.
It took a while for my brain to really learn to dismantle the dehumanisation of the Palestinians I have been brought up with. And until I realised that with my own hands, I had wired a system that helped kill Palestinians. And by the time I realised that the moment we start dividing the Palestinians into people who deserve to die and people who don’t, we’ve already lost our humanity.
The Shin Bet is no better or worse than the army, it deals with extortion, torture and murder. And it does it all in a way that looks so clean even from the inside. Those who work on the systems don’t talk to Palestinians and aren’t in the field and don’t see the blood. There is a sense of importance and mission. The wheels are moving. And as a soldier or a worker, you don’t get to see what happens in the interrogation rooms, or in the conversation between the source and the operator, or in the explosion in Gaza.
It’s crazy to think now that I took part in such a system, that I took pride in helping to kill. It was a different time, without social media like today, without hourly reports from the field in Gaza. But I was a child who grew up during the second intifada fearing exploding buses and still knew that the real reason for the suicide bombings was the Occupation. I was a kid who supported the disengagement, and the truth is that a part of me knew that what I was doing wasn’t good. It was just a hidden, repressed part. It was much easier to feel that I was part of something good and important, and to keep doing it, and enjoy doing it — than to ask hard questions.
I will not pretend to have hopes in regard to Israeli society’s ability to change on its own. But it is gratifying (in as much one could ever be pleased when one waked up every morning to dozens or hundreds of fatalities) to hear more and more calls for refusal. There’s a lot of talk (and rightly so) about the combatants who have to refuse, about the pilots who have to refuse, and I hope that there will also be people behind the scenes, in intelligence, in the air force, maybe electronics technicians like me, who will say enough. Let them imagine for a moment all the blood on their hands and say — no more. If there is no one to provide intelligence, someone to organise ammunition, someone to weld the systems, the combatants and pilots will not be able to continue.
I’ve never served time in prison and I understand why it’s scary, and at the same time I think that it would be a very small price to pay when the alternative is to take part in genocide. Employees of the Shin Bet, the Mossad, the military industries should not even serve time in prison. Just resign. You will find another job that does not take a human life.
People right to life should be unconditional. No one needs to be smart, generous, creative, or big-hearted to earn the right not to be bombed. Still, if one day you meet someone from Gaza, there is a good chance that you will meet a smart, generous, creative and generous person, from whom Israel took away their home, their family, and the life they had. Do what it takes so that at that moment you will at least be able to look them in the eye.
In the photo (above)— I’m in South America, after I left this system, when I was still nowhere close to starting to understand what I have been a part of.
