Occupation Videos

20 years from the fall of the Berlin Wall, there are other walls in other parts of the world still keeping people separate and unequal. In Ni'ilin yesterday, Palestinian activists tore down a segment of the wall across the West Bank in protest of increasing Israeli settlements and in memory of the Germans who tore down the Berlin wall and helped bring a close to the Cold War.

Micha Kurz was an Israeli soldier during the second intifada, and when he left the military he co-founded Breaking the Silence, an organization that collects stories from members of the service (which is compulsory in Israel for young men and women) who served in the occupied territories. Breaking the Silence allows soldiers to confidentially speak out about the things they did and saw while in the military. Kurz is now with Grassroots Jerusalem, where he helps bring together grassroots social justice activists from across Israel. Kurz notes that his Jewish upbringing is what caused him to question the way Israel conducts the occupation and to speak out against it, and he talks to Laura about what Americans can do to help bring peace in Israel and Palestine.