Now, the kids are the craziest thing. There was this boy there, we were on patrol, three-four soldiers and the squad commander. In auxiliary company, the squad commanders are not the best soldiers around, with all due respect to the army. So this three-year-old kid starts spitting at cars. Taxis go by and the kid starts spitting at them.

Spitting at the vehicle? At the vehicle. I don’t remember seeing him spit at people, but it’s very easy to spit at a vehicle, because the driver is sitting inside. He won’t get out, won’t do anything to you. And the commander says to me, what do you want? We’re one soldier, a commander and three other soldiers, and they’re all happy. The most I could do was not participate in the show, but it’s really, like, in Hebron, this kid went and spat at the Palestinians’ taxis. On the street. There were Palestinians there. From what I’ve heard on the news, nowadays there are hardly any Palestinians living on that street, because of all those incidents. Now. Back then, this was 2000, before the intifada, it was the Jewish settlers. But it was a Jewish minority there. 450 settlers inside a whole Arab neighborhood. So then this kid goes up towards Tal Rumeida, still on Shuhada Street. He comes and starts shouting at the Palestinians and chasing them away from their tables, their chairs. A five-year old, a really small kid. The Palestinians start shouting back at him, just shouting. And the soldiers come, I was part of the force, [and say] “Hadi al-walad,” meaning ‘little boy’ in Arabic. Backing him up. Of course, and they weren’t surprised. They encouraged him, and afterwards they, what do you want. Actually backing him up, that kid.

Who, the soldiers or the settlers? The soldiers. The [adult] settlers had nothing to do with this. One of my traumas in the army was that a soldier comes saying he’s there to defend his country, and a four-year- old kid comes up to you and tells you what IDF stands for [in Hebrew] – Settlers’ Defense Forces. And you see it in a way that’s so right. But when a four-year-old comes and says that to you, I felt humiliated. You feel humiliated, that you come there and have to do something like that.

That’s what a kid told you? A settler kid, five years old. The settlers were okay with us. I remember that Noam Arnon once came along and poured us some cold drinks, he was really alright. But okay in the sense that, you’re here to protect us and nothing else. That’s why I’m not really surprised about all the demonstrations in Hebron and the removal of the Jewish settlement, where [settlers] threw paint balls at soldiers and stuff. As soon as they see that the soldiers aren’t protecting them, they see them as collaborating with the enemy. And then they can do…