Sometimes you find in your postbox an envelope which must not be ignored.
Many letters beginning with "I am addressing you as a well-known columnist" turn out to contain some very touching but highly amateurish new novel or book of poetry, and with the best of my good will I don't really feel inclined to inflict samples of it on my readers. But the envelope which I got this week from "Shovrim Shtika" (Breaking the Silence) was something I couldn't ignore.
It contained a slender booklet, utterly black in colour (which is highly appropriate). It contained the testimonies of soldiers who served in the Territories during the present Intifada, the kind of soldiers who don't often talk.
The criminal side of war is something you will not see on the evening news, nor will you see it in the Khaki Films produced by the talented Barabash brothers. The most true war books are those which tell of the eroding borderline between heroism and malignant moral degeneracy. In one such, "Farewell to Arms", Hemingway took care to warn us that every war is a crime, even the most necessary and justified one - as he knew from personal experience.
I feel it as a nearly sacred duty to publicize excerpts from these Voices of the Soldiers (though I did not want to totally ruin your weekend, so I did not choose the worst ones. After hearing these voices from the ground, you can't help thinking that there might be something to issuing an arrest warrant in London against an Israeli general accused of war crimes during the present Intifada.
I have concentrated on the testimonies from Nablus, which I left as they are - in the soldiers' own words, and without editing.
Don't shoot me, I am just the messenger.
Targeting the Children
The witness: 1st Sergeant, Paratroops
The Location: Jenin
Date: February-May 2003
Description:
We took up positions of ‘Straw Widow’ (a disguised ambush). We were told that this ‘Straw Widow’ was against armed people and against people climbing on our armed vehicles. Our APCs (armed personnel carriers) were cruising 24 hours a day close to buildings (in Jenin), waiting for kids to climb on them and try to dislodge the top -mounted MG (machine gun) - and when the kids come, to shoot them. Wee had fixed observation posts in houses inside Jenin’s Casbah, the APCs were on the streets, below us. They were moving continuously.
We were expressly told that we were just waiting for someone to climb on an APC. We were ordered to shoot to kill. We quickly understood that we weren’t expected to deal with armed people, as no armed Palestinian would roam the streets with so many APCs around. They (our authorities) were looking for children or plain people daring to climb on an APC or on any other armoured vehicle. We understood that from the talks with our officers.
After a day or two, a 12-year old kid climbed on one of the APCs. There were lots of guesses about his age. First they said he was 8, later, that he was 12. I don’t know. In any case he climbed on an APC and one of our sharpshooters killed him. I already mentioned, we were looking for kids. The neighbouring company also had an incident with a kid or teenager, climbing an APC, who was also killed. Some of us said that this whole operation was unnecessary as its purpose was to kill kids, while others said that it was very good.
Was it known that he was unarmed?
He was surely unarmed and he climbed on this…. No one asked you why you had two Xs (a mark on the rifle signalling a killed target), and if they were armed, they were legal targets.
The Wild West at the Nablus Casbah
The witness: 1st Sergeant
The Location: Nablus
Date: End of 2003
Description:
Let’s start with the things you want to tell, the things lying heavy on your heart. I ask you to tell everything, what happened, how you felt, what do you think now…
What disturbs me most, and what bothers me most is the lack of value of human life in the Territories. When my friend was killed, I caught myself suddenly saying ‘Wallah’ (exclamation of surprise) here’s a man gone, in the middle of his life. A person whose life has stopped. His aspirations, what he was, what he said, the happy moments of his life, his jokes, his friends. A man’s life has lots of aspects, and all of a sudden, everything stopped. And then it dawned on me that this was the death of a human being and you start thinking ‘Wallah’ what about all these people we killed ? And my team killed….innocent people, or at least apparently innocent people. Some were killed by mistake, really by mistake. But what’s a mistake? Really—say ‘we are sorry’. We killed your husband, your daughter, your child or your grandfather or whoever.
And there were who were executed, on orders that in my opinion were illegal. As I told you, the most disturbing thing to me is that there is an absolutely Wild West in the Territories. Brigade Commanders, Regiment Commanders and Company Commanders do whatever comes to their mind. No one checks them, and no one stops them.
Many nights we went into the (Nablus) Casbah. Our firing orders were simply "2 to 4". That is: anyone you see in the Casbah between 2.00 am and 4.00 am should just be shot. These were the words: ‘doomed to die’.
Who spoke these words ?
Words we heard from the CC (Company Commander) in the briefing. The CC gave us a briefing before every mission. Sometimes he said between 2 and 4 whoever wanders around the Casbah is doomed to die, or sometimes between 1 and 3: doomed to die.
[….]
It happened during the battle of the Casbah. We took over a strategic building, set up positions there, and one of the sharpshooters identified a man on the roof. The man was on a roof about two roofs away from us. I think he was between 50 to 70 m from the sharpshooter. Unarmed, I looked at the man with a night vision binoculars. He was unarmed. It was 2AM: an unarmed man on a rooftop, turning around. We reported it to the PC (Platoon Commander) who ordered ‘Take him down’. He (the sharpshooter) shot and took him down. The PC, in a radioed message, actually sealed the man’s fate to die. An unarmed man!
Did you see that he was unarmed?
I saw with my own eyes that the man was unarmed. He (the sharpshooter) also reported: ‘an unarmed man on the roof’. The PC interpreted it that the man was an observer. He interpreted that the man was an observer (for the terrorists) …I myself didn’t shoot, a fellow soldier shot and killed him. And you start thinking that in the US death sentences are imposed, and on every sentence there are thousands of appeals, as they take it very seriously, judges, academically trained people, and there are demonstrations, and so on.
Actually a 26-year-old man, my PC, imposed a death sentence on an unarmed man. Who was he? What’s that ‘an observer?’ So what? Is that enough of a reason to kill him? And how did he know he was an observer? He obviously didn’t know. All he knew was that there was an unarmed man on top of the roof, and he ordered to kill him, which, in my opinion was an illegitimate order, and we carried the order out, and killed a human being. The man died. In my opinion that was outright murder. And that wasn’t the only case. [...]
We entered at 2AM, and at 4AM the sharpshooter’s position, of which I was part, identified a man carrying a bag. I, too, saw the man this time. The man walks on Jama Al Kabir Street, carrying a bag in his hand, between 3AM and 4AM. When this was reported to the squad commander and to the PC, the order was given to ‘take him down’. He was shot, taken down. Killed. A man fell. Something in order of 70 m from the house. Then the jeep of the PC’s CP (Command post) came and ‘confirmed kill’. A really brutal ‘confirm kill’: throwing two grenades on the body that smashed it completely. Then they opened the bag to see what’s in it and found: pitot (pitah breads). Pitot!
An Eighty Year Old With A Bullet in his Gut
Witness: Staff sergeant
Place of Incident: Nablus
Description:
There were operations titled ‘Looking For Trouble’. What does ‘Looking For Trouble’ mean? It means going on a patrol, touring the nablus Casbah, hope someone will shoot at us, and that we get into combat.
Now, when one says that ‘fire was exchanged, it does not mean… people do not understand that ‘exchange of fire’ [usually] means that the Palestinians shot a bullet, one or two bullets from a Kalashnikov or a gun or I don’t know what, and that this is usually followed by the soldiers shooting back, spraying, shooting quite freely everywhere… So "fire exchange" is not really fire exchange. It is one initial shot of theirs, and spraying in all directions of ours. Almost never is there an identification of the source of the fire. This concept of fire sources is something nonexistent, you know. Rarely does one identify a source of fire… Sources of fire – this is very relevant to this story – sources of fire means 360 degrees of shooting. This is what ‘sources of fire’ means. You don’t know from where you are being shot at… It must be at us, because we are the only force in the Casbah… So we were being shot at; for sure. The reaction to this shooting was… Usually when one shoots, the procedure is to get inside a house as quickly as possible, to get out of the alleys, to enter as quickly as possible into a house, and shoot. Everyone is saying: “I identity" – and how can you tell if that person identified something or only imagined it, or I don’t know – and shoots. In this type of cases, whenever there is fire, it becomes a complete mess. You don’t know what’s right and what’s left. Everyone is shooting… It goes a bit like this: [someone shouts] “Identify” – Boom Boom Boom. “Asking permission to open fire”. Something like that. It is a complete mess. People shoot at water tanks, identify 20 different images in the vicinity, and shoot with out too much… I was the commander [of that operation]. Someone tells me “I identify an image”. – What am I supposed to tell him? “Keep an eye on it”? I‘ve got nothing to say to him. What should I tell him? “Shoot it down”? – It’s an image – how can I tell what he identifies? I tell him “Keep an eye on it”. The soldier, maybe because he was under pressure, or perhaps… I think… Listen – all this business about people saying, “I was under pressure, I was scared”, I think it is all bullshit. Because I don’t remember… There is adrenalin, on action there is adrenalin, there is tension, but I don’t remember ever being scared, or others being scared. To be sure, it is a fact we were very cynical about this fear business and all. I think – and I can only speak here for myself – most of the shots I’ve taken, and I believe most of the shots of most IDF soldiers, and most of the things they identify, and all this pressure – you shoot not because you’re scared, and not because you’re a coward. It is because they want to mark that X on their rifles. One wants to go back and say – ‘Hey, I put an X. I killed this, I killed that.’ – ‘Hey you came out a man, you killed a man.’ So the finger is very easy on the trigger. In short: exchange of fire, end of the night, an eighty-year-old person, a bullet in his gut.
Where? Who found him?
The Red Cross. We didn’t… we saw the Red Cross people taking his body out. We never came in contact with bodies. The Red Cross would always come. The family probably calls, alerts the Red Cross; that is it. Another fire exchange casualty.
Weren’t there talk, later, about why this old person died?
No. None. First of all, not every one feels... I told you, my opinion is that this was a stupid shooting that resulted in someone’s death … some people think: “Look, what is he expecting? There are fire exchanges. Why is he at the window anyway? What does he expect would happen? – If in your Kibbutz there were fire exchanges, would you stand at the window?” Some people couldn’t care less about killing a person.
The Yossy Bachar Horror Show
Witness: Staff sergeant, Paratroops
Place of incident: Nablus
Date: end of 2003
Description:
In this operation we were supposed to enter the city. We called it “Yossi Bachar’s Horror Show”. (Colonel) Aviv Kohavi was replaced by Yossi Bachar. You know, every new brigade commander wants to leave an impression, wants to make a big entrance. He got us into this completely useless operation… There was this part when we put ‘New-Jersey’ roadblocks, those plastic roadblocks. So we put up these New Jerseys, and the kids there, those who throw stones all the time, would come and move them away. There was a mess. We couldn’t… In the beginning we would put the New Jerseys and the local residents would move them away, so we put it again, and then there were riots and stone throwing and it became a complete mess. Then the battalion commander gave the order: “Whoever touches the roadblock, the New Jerseys, must be shot in the legs.” Live ammunition. Shoot his legs. In my vehicle there was talk, and we asked whether he was out of his mind; a person touches the roadblock – are we to shoot him in the legs? [We thought] he was just making noise.
Apparently, this specific battalion commander. thought very highly of setting personal example. In a roadblock he came to – I was not personally there, but the guys from the commander's own crew … The man drove his jeep next to some New Jersey, and saw this kid touching it – apparently at some distance – and aimed at the kid's leg. But, you know, instead of hitting the kid in the legs he hit him in the chest, and killed him. For touching a New Jersey. If you’ll excuse me, I do not think of touching a New Jersey as a reason for death.
How do you know the kid is dead?
We got back to base from this operation, we talked, and then the guys from the commander's crew say: “Hey guys, he killed a kid, he killed a kid.” They told us the story. People who saw it happen. I’m pretty sure. I cannot think that someone went and checked his pulse, but not many kids survive a bullet in the chest.
These soldiers' testimonies tell of military service in an utterly impossible situation full of manifestly illegal orders, explicit orders to shoot civilians. revenge shootings reminiscent of third-rate Westerns, deliberate shooting of medical teams, mass "confirmation of death", a corrupt military apparatus, total moral indifference in all levels of the hierarchy.
The stories of soldiers expose not only the suffering of the people trampled underfoot, but also the hell which those who do the trampling go through. Every combat soldier knowns that painful experiences can lodge in your subconscious (thanks, Freud!), to be sometimes completely forgotten - only to suddenly re-emerge in highly unpleasant ways. And in a certain way, the Territories are the subconscious of this country.
Every person reading this authentic and chilling document would agree with the organization which published them: an enlightened society cannot exist without a constant examination and criticism of the army, the organization holding the most power in the society. Therefore, we should raise our voice in calling for an independent commission of inquiry to check and expose these testimonies.
You can read the full testimonies on the Breaking the Silence website
http://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/index_en.asp,
