Our Harsh Logic describes itself as a book of testimonies by Israeli soldiers who served on the West Bank and Gaza strip between 2000 and 2010. For obvious reasons, its 374 pages make for depressing reading. How could it be otherwise? Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967 and withdrew from Gaza only in 2005, to invade it again in 2009. Israel’s external control over Gaza remains so complete that many international lawyers argue that it is still in occupation of it. With a similar history, soldiers of an occupying army of any nation in the world would have similar stories to tell. No one therefore should be surprised by the contents of Our Harsh Logic.

One of the most important lessons of the Holocaust, we have repeatedly and justifiably been told, is that ordinary people can do morally terrible things – things so terrible, indeed, that they can add up to the greatest evil in our recorded history. Why then should anyone be surprised that ordinary young Israelis should commit deeds such as are described in this book? They range from deeds that are obviously criminal according to international law– unjustified killings and the use of human shields for example – to deeds that are not criminal according to law, but which express disdain for the humanity of the Palestinians, disdain of the kind to be expected from an occupying army and compounded in many cases by racist hostility to the Palestinians as Arabs.

Our Harsh Logic is a depressing book, but it is also an inspiring one. It testifies to dehumanization and worse, but it testifies also to courage: firstly to the courage of the soldiers who faced what they had done and witnessed, who in many cases faced truthfully their own dehumanization and wrong doing; and secondly to members of Breaking the Silence. Anyone who knows Israel will know that it requires courage to publish such a book into a public made of citizen soldiers and which has long venerated its defence forces, a public in which most families must know in their hearts, but would prefer not to face,the truth that many of their friends and family members could tell the same stories.

This book is also admirable because its editors wisely avoided political comment insofar as it follows inevitably, strictly, unavoidably, from what the soldiers said they did and witnessed. This ensures the book’s integrity as a book of testimony. It is divided into four sections.

The last section– Law Enforcement: A Dual Regime has perhaps, the most direct political implications, for it makes undeniable, to anyone who accepts that the testimonies are for the most part truthful, that the IDF has for long been complicit in the settlement programme pursued by successive Israeli governments. That programme that has been so extensive that many people on the left and the right believe the two-state solution is now unrealistic. That is because they believe that no Israeli government would be prepared to dismantle as many settlements as would be necessary for a two-state solution that is acceptable to the Palestinians as even a minimal fulfilment of their national aspirations. But because its conclusion is inescapable if the testimony is truthful, it is not a conclusion drawn in the pursuit of a controversial political agenda. It is therefore quite absurd to say, as some of its critics have, that Our Harsh Logic is a book of propaganda.

The distinction I have drawn between conclusions that follow inevitably from the testimonies in this book and conclusions, which though they may be reasonable, do not strictly follow from the testimonies and are therefore controversial, is very important. It is important because if Our Harsh Logic expressed conclusions of the latter kind– that is, conclusions that are reasonable but which, because they do not strictly follow from the testimony, can also be reasonably contested– it would have undermined its integrity as a book of witness because it would have undermined trust in it.

Perhaps I lack imagination, but I cannot think of any political opinion about the options in the Israeli Palestinian conflict that need deny, if they are brutally honest, the testimonies in this book. Even radical settlers could accept them and then say that the deeds they record are the price they are prepared to pay for the success of their struggle for a Greater Israel. The testimonies are consistent with a two-state solution and consistent with a one state solution of the left and right wing varieties. They are consistent with Zionism, post Zionism and anti Zionism.

That, I believe is true of the book considered only as a book of testimonies. The editorial position, however, appears to be inconsistent with any position that denies Jews an Israeli identity as part of the solution to the conflict. That, indeed, is suggested even in the book’s title– Our Harsh Logic, rather than the impersonal “The Harsh Logic of the IDF” or some variation on that. The explicit use of the first person plural indicates identification– regretful, sorrowful, shamed, identification, but identification nonetheless. It is therefore expresses the only form of patriotism that is worth anything– truthful patriotism; the patriotism that desires to live a national life without the shame that would be the only truthful response if the nation’s leaders and soldiers committed crimes that would justifiably bring them before an international criminal court. From the perspective of such patriotism– patriotism that is distinguished from its counterfeit that we call jingoism– even severe criticism of one’s country can be amongst the highest form of loyalty to it, an expression of the highest concern for its welfare. In publishing Our Harsh Logic, Breaking the Silence expresses just such concern for the country of which it members are citizens.

Who should read this book? Obviously everyone for whom the Israeli Palestinian conflict matters. But also, everyone who is not a pacifist. As I said at the beginning, no one should be surprised by the testimonies in this book, which of course, is one reason why no one has any reason to doubt that they are on the whole truthful. If we are not pacifists, then we rely on our armed forces to protect what we cherish most deeply in our national lives. Yet hardly ever do we think seriously about how we might reduce the vulnerability of our soldiers to the dehumanising consequences of protracted war and therefore to the likelihood that they will do morally terrible things. All citizens need to know the depressing truths recounted in Our Harsh Logic, not only in their heads, but also deeply in their bones.

This is a transcript of the speech given by Raimond Gaita at the launch of