"One of the hardest missions for people is to face themselves in the mirror, to criticize themselves, to ask themselves really basic questions," says ex-Israeli soldier Avichay Sharon. "No one wants to touch sensitive nerves, no one wants to go underneath, scratch underneath within himself." Sharon is speaking in the film "Chinmoku wo Yaburu" ("Breaking the Silence"), a documentary by Japanese journalist Toshikuni Doi.
It is Doi's fourth film, one that puts faces on the people of Palestine. It brings their stories, their situations alive like no news report does. It does the same for Israelis and former members of the Israeli Defense Forces, specifically those who have voiced their concerns over the tactics and techniques employed by Israel in the Occupied Territories.
They are the members of Breaking the Silence, a nonprofit organization co-founded in 2004 by Sharon, Yehuda Shaul and Noam Chayut from which the film takes its name and which collects testimonies from the soldiers who served in the territories during the Second Intifada.