The Perimeter

I read the report.

The Perimeter.

Published by Breaking the Silence, an organization made up of Israeli soldiers who were there, who carried out the orders, who returned with more inside them than silence could contain.

They wrote it down.

Not to repent.

To record what no one else had the nerve to say.

I wasn’t there.

Never wore the uniform.

Never held a rifle.

But I am Israeli.

And now that I’ve read it — I can no longer pretend I don’t know.

What’s described isn’t a defensive operation.

It’s doctrine.

It’s public policy executed with bulldozers and daily quotas.

We have carved out a zone of annihilation — up to 1.5 kilometers deep — running the length of the Gaza border.

The objective is simple: to erase everything inside it.

To demolish what breathes, what shelters, what grows.

Houses, greenhouses, schools, factories, wells, fields, orchards.

Everything must disappear.

And it does.

The terrain is divided into polygons.

Green means success — over 80% destroyed.

Green climbs the charts.

Green becomes a number, a statistic, a benchmark of efficiency.

Soldiers are assigned targets.

Five homes a day.

Fifty a week.

If new explosives run out, they dig up old mines.

The task doesn’t wait.

The land must be leveled.

There is no combat.

Most areas are already under our control when the bulldozers roll in.

We don’t enter to confront.

We enter to erase.

Any presence inside the perimeter is marked as a threat.

There’s no visible line on the ground.

The boundary exists only on our maps.

Whoever crosses it — knowingly or not — is marked.

We shoot at silhouettes.

Men with bags.

Women foraging for food.

Children walking through fields.

There are no warnings.

Only execution.

Some of us say: “There are no innocents in there.”

That sentence holds up the logic that got us here.

But I don’t understand.

I don’t understand how a child becomes a target.

How someone sees a small body moving alone in a field and decides it must be eliminated.

But it happens.

It happens every day.

Because this is no longer about judgment.

It’s about obedience.

About applying doctrine until it becomes instinct.

Until the grotesque feels reasonable.

Until the exception feels like data.

Until the mistake feels like progress.

More than 3,500 structures have already been destroyed.

Over 35% of Gaza’s agricultural capacity has been buried.

Demolished sites are revisited to make sure nothing is left.

Where there was land, there is dust.

Where there was shade, there is fire.

Where there was a city, there is a map.

All of this is happening now.

While we read.

While we write.

While we vote.

While we pretend there’s a meaningful difference between ignorance and consent.

The testimonies are all there, in the pages of this report.

They recount what was said in the command rooms, in tank headsets, in internal briefings.

They expose the cold vocabulary of destruction, spoken as if it were just another part of the terrain.

They crack open the silence that keeps the machine running.

Breaking the Silence is the fracture in the gears.

The last moral lever we still have.

And if any clarity still exists in this country, it begins with this discomfort.

It’s not the government.

It’s not the military.

It’s us.

As a society.

As a political body.

As people who know — and go on.

The perimeter is real.

It’s active.

It’s being carried out with discipline.

Now that you’ve made it this far, now that you know what’s happening —

your silence becomes part of it too.

And I’ll go one step further.

I challenge you —

read the report for yourself.

It’s only a few pages.

A short read.

But if you manage to reach the end untouched, unshaken,

I strongly recommend you seek psychological help.

If you want more information, read the full report here:

https://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/inside/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Perimeter_English-2.pdf