Name: *** Rank: first sergeant Unit: nachal Description: In the Taybe area, we conducted stakeouts. There were many illegal workers who would infiltrate (to Israel) all of the time. It was despairing seeing this. You look out, see people , from here, from there, with bags, walking. There isn't a fence, nothing. In the end, out of all of those who infiltrated , tens, I don't know how many were there, the border police would catch around ten and make them run in front of the jeep back to the checkpoint. They would run because there is a jeep behind them and weapons pointed at them, the jeep driving slowly. A speedy march back home.
Name: *** Rank: first sergeant Unit: Nachal elite unite Description: At first we had reservist interrogators from 504, at the onset of the events. They were highly patriotic. Yes, we had some on our crew. What did they do? They beat up prisoners. A lot. Terrible slaps, shakings, yells, intimidation. As far as we were concerned they were Shabak interrogators and knew what they were doing. Sometimes I thought they crossed the line.
Like what?
Like slapping someone really hard in the face who claims he had no idea about something, like where his brother was. Wild slaps. Really wild. I think they broke his jaw. Truth is I never saw anything quite like it, and I've seen a lot, believe me.
Where did this happen?
Late 2001. I really don't remember where. We were searching for his wanted brother, and he didn't know his whereabouts. The interrogator took him into a side room and beat him up like hell. Mad slaps. And the man kept claiming he doesn't know. So either he really took it well or he really didn't know, one or the other.
Did you run into many such cases? Was this a routine thing?
Pretty much… It depended on the interrogator. Some were more violent, some less. Some of them speak quietly and scare the hell out of people, and others scream like crazy. The Arabists on our crew didn't hold such interrogations, they didn't exert physical force on people they interrogated, but spoke to them in Arabic, used the loudspeakers in Arabic on a house, trying to assess the situation.
Name: *** Rank: first sergeant Unit: Nachal elite unite Description: On such extended operations, searches involve actually occupying the territory. In Jenin we did this by breaking holes in walls. Someone would stand there with a 5-kg. hammer.
Everything was done 'cold', not 'hot'?
'Hot' is more fun. I'll give you an example of 'cold'. Someone stands there with a 5-kg hammer or a chisel or the like, begins to take apart the wall. As soon as there's a little hole, you'd stick a barrel of a gun through to the other side, so they'd know not to mess with it.
And shoot?
No. Continue drilling, enter the home. Separate the men and the women. Check the men's IDs. Pass the numbers on to the Shabak, and on to the next house. Give out candy to the children and some tuna cans if they're hungry. We had candy in our gear throughout the operation. That's as far as searches are concerned.
So you proceed straight through the broken wall to the next home?
Yes.
What do you do in the houses? In between?
In houses where soldiers stay overnight they drive the people out and wire up all kinds of booby traps so we won't be reached. A kind of miniature army position is created, with guard positions and an alert team. A small outpost. We didn't do this often, only on extended operations. It happened in Operation Defensive Shield, just a few times. Usually the inhabitants would be assembled in one room, all the people of the house, men on one side, women and children on the other. Sometimes they were made to stay that way for several hours, other times for a few days, as the need arose. Sometimes we'd conduct a 'hot' search, and that was a bit more complex because we had to remove everyone from all around. In Jenin there are many houses built of mud – now there's nothing left there in the refugee camp – and apparently this is a very strong type of construction, much more so than concrete, highly recommended for any housing. Sometimes when we detonated explosive charges there, instead of blowing up the wall they made the roof fly up, for the roofs are made of tin so they'd fly up in the air and the wall would remain intact. We had to place some more explosives so that the wall would collapse too. That's how we'd move from house to house.
How do you choose whether to make a 'cold' or a 'hot' break-in?
Whenever possible, we prefer the 'cold' version.
What's the criterion?
A relatively thin wall.
What does a thin wall look like? No, that is much easier to tell. A thin wall is made of plaster. It is very thin, you can sense it. A thin wall is not made of mud and rock. It's thin. We always preferred the 'cold' break-in. Naturally this was under the command of our first officer-in-charge.
What are the results of a 'hot' break-in on the ground?
Insane destruction. Nothing remains intact in such a house. Nothing remains in a room that is blasted. There was a case in Ramallah where we entered the home of a high-ranking official of the Palestinian Authority. This was quite at the beginning, and we didn't really know how much explosives to use, so we placed a brick explosive. There were two doors facing each other there, and from the blast, one door collapsed, the other flew against the wall and stuck to it, inside the house. All the stairwell windows were shattered, the walls cracked, everything inside this house was wrecked including the refrigerator, the door of which was torn off. Total destruction.
All because of one brick explosive?
Just one. Yes.
And after this experience with the brick explosives you switched to finger explosives? Yes, definitely.
How many fingers?
It's trial-and-error. Some bolted doors are held with better hinges, some with less. There are iron doors.
Why is a 'hot' break-in necessary? No one home?
Yes. No one opened, and if you need to search the house, you break-in 'hot'.
After the destruction of a 'hot' break-in, you're on a weapons-search.
Yes.
What's left there?
Everything. Just messed up. A lot.
Did you run into any looting?
I don't know if you'd call it looting, taking knives and such. I mean, there are knives in a terrorist's home, sometimes decorated daggers with all kinds of Arabic calligraphy, as far as we're concerned these are extreme Islamists, and we cannot have a terrorist owning such knives, so we'd take them. We'd take them along to our base - some of us would, in their gear.
Where did such a case take place?
I don't remember. I recall many such instances, can't tell you whether it was Jenin, or Tulkarem or the like. I can't tell you exactly.
And vandalism?
Not intentional. Sure, we destroyed property but only for operational purposes. I have destroyed refrigerators, closets, when you're on a 'hot' break-in and have to do a quick search for weapons or hideout entrances, you work quickly. You turn the whole house inside out. If there's a closet full of clothes you need to empty it, to see what's behind inside, and you don't have the time to start folding everything back up again. So for operational needs, we did destroy property. Not intentional vandalism.
Name: *** Rank: first sergeant Unit: Nachal elite unite Description: When two terrorists infiltrated from Jordan and a reservist was killed, we were alerted right after an operation, to do searches. The border with Jordan, or part of this border is the stream, the Jordan itself. Well, the River Jordan, if you will, and that river bank is covered with reeds. Searches there were conducted with a dog and shooting. This means you send a dog in, it sniffs around, comes back, you spray the area with ammo. And then we identified the bodies, and shot to confirm the kill, to make sure they're already just bodies. But it goes much further than that. In your training, I believe in regular infantry training as well, when you take a hill, at least that's the way it was in my unit, you reach a cardboard target, you touch it with the barrel of your gun and go 'boom boom', and there's some procedure to call out 'one down!' or 'I got one terrorist' or something of this sort. That's procedure, that's what we were taught in basic training. In anti-terrorism courses as well. (…) In that case back on the Jordanian border, I know that some of my mates later took pictures of themselves with the bodies. I didn't see it as I wasn’t on the spot. They said they took pictures with the terrorists. They removed the bodies. Since this was still the passage to the border, no one but ourselves was allowed to approach, so they were ordered to remove the bodies. They did, it's such a stinking mission. And when they got back to the bus they said they had taken pictures of themselves with the bodies. They held a camera. I did not get to see the developed pictures.
Name: *** Rank: first sergeant Unit: Nachal elite unite Description:
Have you ever had to confirm the kill? Yes.
What was actually there?
Terrorists' bodies. One in Ramallah. Battalion 50 ran into a building – I think it was during Operation Defensive Shield – full of Palestinian police and security people. The battalion sustained two casualties, retreated and did not have a picture of the situation. They did very good work. There were five terrorists in the room. Terrorists, Palestinian police, I don't quite know which, wearing civilian clothes, with Kalachnikovs and pistols. Serious guys. Before we entered the room, you see people lying on the floor, and you don't know what's with them. The point is at that moment to make sure you pass the guy without him operating an explosive belt, or a grenade he's holding. So you shoot him in the head as close as possible, as certain as possible.
Name: *** Rank: first sergeant Unit: Nachal elite unite Description: There was this one case where we went in live, and a mother had forgotten her 3-year old son in the room.
What actually happened?
It was a live entry into a building. Evacuating everyone and searching the whole building. This is just the worst, because you have to go into every home, get all the people out. Everyone waits downstairs, the kids cry, absolute mayhem. People have to be moved outside, we have to take care not to injure civilians, treat them nicely, and watch out not to be killed yourself. (…)
You go over the whole building? Going live through the whole place?
Yes. Sometimes it's specific floors, at others it's not specific. It depends. (…) Anyway, they went in, sprayed a home, suddenly some woman got hysterical: "My son, my son"… After the man-search they conducted a weapons search and suddenly saw a little 3-year old kid lying terrified under a bed and let her go. What insane luck he had, not getting killed. Don't worry, later we improved our shooting too, because in fact this was an operational mistake, because just as he had been curled up there… It wasn't an operational mistake because we didn't want to kill him, but it shows you that if there had been a little terrorist then we wouldn't have hit him and he would have sprayed us. So later we improved our practice and little children were no longer hiding under beds. This case did shake us a bit.
What did it do to your unit?
It focused our procedures. Since then, when you shoot at a bed, one soldier lifts the bed while the other shoots. Or you shoot in a very specific way at beds or sofas. These are practices that I know the army now really sticks to. Everything we learned we passed on inside the army. There was a nice folder of lessons-learnt from our operations. What did it do to the unit? Other cases were carried out by the unit.
Rank: Staff Sergeant Unit: Nachal 931 Place of incident: Nablus Description: We sit and rest in one of the Arabs’ houses – sit on a couch – and in front of us there is this old woman. Really old, probably scratching 80-90, or so. She is giving us this look… that says, I imagine: “You came into my house, blew it up, now you’re on my couch. What are you waiting for – for me to serve you something to drink?” And the two guys sitting next to me – guys from the engineering platoon – were paying this game of… I don’t remember [what they called it] on the old woman. So I say: “Come on guys, get a life… to role up paper-balls from papers that were laid there, and throw them on her – have some respect.” And they say: “respect for whom? For a Shahid’s [suicide bomber] mother?” –“it doesn’t matter, a Shahid’s mother or not, this is an old woman in front of you – an old person in front of you. It doesn’t matter what this person’s repertoire is.” And I remember their looking at me with this amazed look of “Where have you come from? Where have you landed on us from? Are you with us? Where were you born? Where…” Their gaze just told me: “It is not that we… Where did you grow up?” such a horrified look of: “What?! What does this mean - throwing papers on a person… We are throwing papers on an Arab. There is a big difference.” I can’t tell you that I saw people who just molested others – if I ever saw it, for at the Nahal it is a bit different – among other things because the little difference I [my presence] would make at this checkpoint, that arrest, that patrol… I tried to prevent this kind of things from happening, but I came home for the weekend – after that time in Nablus – that weekend I went to the ‘prayers-road’, and I remember getting back home and feeling so dirty, so defiled. I am not sure if I remember correctly, I think I got home on the verge of tears, or even crying for those three days in Nablus – just going from one house to the next, and blowing house after house.
Rank: Staff Sergeant Unit: Nachal brigade, 931 battalion Place of incident: Hebron Description:
Early 2003
We occupied a house in Hebron. You know the procedure – the family moves to the bottom floor. We were on the third floor, and we set up a hose to urinate into, which would drain outside.
We placed the hose so that the urine would flow into the yard beneath us. There were some chicken coops there, and that’s where it fell. And that was the daily joke. To wait until the father or one of the children would reach the chicken coops, and then everyone pisses. Oh…. I just remember a friend who liked to brush his teeth, wash his mouth out with water from the canteen, and then wait until someone passed below, and then spit the water out.
Those were some of your options. Yeah, those are just some of your options. No one will prevent you from doing that kind of things. Usually not the commanders in the field, unfortunately, because most of them are no different than the rest. It’s simply within the realm of possibility. You can choose to, and you can choose not to. There’s no one to judge you for it.
Rank: Staff Sergeant Unit: Charuv battalion Place of incident: Beit Ilma refugee camp Description: I’m telling you, during Operation Determined Road, which took place in August, there were families who were thrown out of their homes because there was a TV there, and people wanted to watch Argentina vs. Nigeria [a World Cup soccer game].
Same thing happened where we were, in Ramallah and Bethlehem. What’s the dynamics? What does “thrown out” mean?
You have a really cool division commander, you belong in an experienced company, this one is not a beret, a second-lieutenant rank on the shoulder, and a ‘keep-your-distance’ kind of commander. It’s a man you go out with on Friday night. He’s one of the crowd; we had some laughs together. There’s this commander authority … cool. Now he too happens to be an Argentina fan; he too wants to watch the game. So you say to him: “Listen, man … here and there … this house and that house, they’re all the same, but here they have a TV, man”. He simply chucked out a family so he can watch Argentina-Nigeria. You see, I’m not even talking to you about the small things.
Rank: Staff Sergeant Unit: Orev elit unit, Nahal brigade Place of incident: Hebron Description: It was Hanukah, December 2002. Our other team was away, taking part in the Shirutrom TV broadcast [annual fund-raising event for IDF soldiers] in Jerusalem. So they somehow managed to assemble a team, though not a complete one. In the afternoon they suddenly told us to go into a Palestinian house, they don’t know for how long, they don’t know anything. Before we left for this house, we found out it was a house in Hebron we’d already taken possession of before for a period between two and four weeks. We entered the house in the evening without really knowing what we were doing there. A couple of hours later they told us a TV team is coming to film us. At about 9 PM a team of the IDF Spokesman’s Filming Unit came by and brought us some doughnuts.
Five minutes before their arrival the company commander briefed us. We were fully equipped and dressed to the teeth. He told us to be “representative” and “avoid talking about our activities” and most important “not to show the slightest sign of being worn out or fed up”. And then the TV team told us to pose like this and like that with the doughnuts … Smile, all of us, some of us... They brought a Hanukah candlestick for us to light and filmed us. The team stayed with us for maybe ten minutes, and they said they would send the videocassette to all the channels.
I know they showed it on the midnight newscast of Channel 2 – how “IDF soldiers celebrate Hanukah in Hebron”… You know how it is. The next afternoon we left that house, even though we had been ready since morning: They simply started throwing stones at us and disrupting order so we delayed our leaving.
The most surreal thing about this story is that I don’t remember any attempt on the part of the commanders to explain in the briefing or in any other way what was the idea behind the whole thing [getting into that Palestinian’s house]. You know – no purpose, no assignment orders as was usual. That’s what quickly led us, the team, to the conclusion that we were sent there that night just for the TV show.
Rank: Staff sergeant Unit: Orev elite unit – Nahal brigade Description: We came for an operation in Tul-Karem. We were at Beit-lid. They prepare us for thirty days; we are placed inside armored troops carriers, as a team of sergeants. Entering houses in Nur-A’Shams. We get the orders in Beit lid, and do not really understand what is going on: because they say something, to seize houses, and we don’t really know what is happening and what we are supposed to do. This is the first time we get into the cities. I was shocked by this order. Even when I tried to ask questions, I only got ignored.
What was the order?
There was this order to seize houses, to evacuate the families, to send them who knows where, and we couldn’t really understand. [Seize] ‘territories from which you can easily govern the area’ that’s was the slogan. That’s it. Back then, we didn’t really understand what that meant, where it came from, what, why, who, shmoo. We tried to ask. But I only got ignored. And there is this thing I brought you. I tried sending this question to the chief military legal council.
Was that before you went on this operation?
The answer came back a lot later.
What was the question?
It was all kinds of worries about this order, what its source was, what it relies on. The answer is, as usual, as all other answers. And it arrived three months late. When I approached my officer, he only mocked me for half an hour, saying: “what do you think, that the prime minister gives illegal orders? Where did you get this notion from?”… The more there were questions, the more the doubt crept in, regarding what we were doing there, and about the timing. We were just a political tool. That means that two days after a terrorist attack, we enter; 30 days collective punishment… and we don’t understand why we have to do that, and why send people who haven’t done anything outside their houses. And that’s where I lost my naivety. That’s when I understood – through my questions and the answers I received from the commanding officers at the unit base – I understood there was no one to talk to.
What was the chief military legal council’s answer?
He said the order was legally based upon a regulation from 1904. That was his very short answer. 1907, Hague regulations, section something something, which says private property can be seized in military circumstances. Something unclear like that. I understood I don’t have anyone to talk to, because I got the same answer by insanely going over the heads of my commanders [and directly approaching some high officer].
So we get an order to go into refugee camps. Al-Amri, I think. There was this order that we are now supposed to go into a different refugee camp every week; to “go through it”. ‘Go through it’ means searching it thoroughly and all. We were cynical about it, and called it ‘Aktzia’ [term naming the evacuations of European Jewish Ghettoes during second world war]. We would come and get all the men – from 15 to 50 (there were always all kinds of numbers) – to the school building. Everyone to the school building, and we had them there all day. We were left with the women and children and passed from house to house with maps – searching every house. We – god boys – open the cupboards, look, move something aside, move it back… All day long. And that day was the [soccer] world cup final. And it was terribly hot. And we go around the place – as usual in this kind of operations, we don’t find anything. Our officer was all the time trying to… we went a team of five, to explode every door. But it was, as if it was, secretive. Not really, just to train our exploding skills. So we would learn a bit. And also he was exited by the soccer game: every door which was a bit hard to open – even thought we had tools for ‘cold entry’ [which does not involve explosives], a hammer, and everything – we had to blow up. A door that took more than thirty seconds [he would want us to blow up]… We would argue with him. We tried to tell him “There was no need, it’ll open in two minutes, there is nothing suspicious about the place anyway.” It got to the point we yelled: – Not to blow up. – Yes to blow up! Shut up already; don’t interrupt the work.
What do you blow a door up with?
With explosive fingers and threads.
Meanwhile, it is noon. It gets hotter, we want to make more progress, and we want to finish. And again, as always, it comes from the officer. He starts making a mess, entering rooms, he is fed up. He makes a mess. We got to this absurd situation, when we went behind him putting things back in place and tidying up after him. In my own experience it mostly comes from the commanders. Every bit of “limit-crossing”, every bit of “doing it just because” mostly comes from the commanders. That day was just disgusting. We found ourselves watching the world cup final game with this miserable woman and a child. We sat there in their living room, inside the refugee camp. I was too tired, because of all the stair cases; I wasn’t… I didn’t even get a glimpse. I was wrecked. They talk to each other on the radio, “cool!”, “goal!”, here, there. A totally surreal scene. When I think about it now – a friend pointed that out, but I didn’t notice it so much at the time – The World Cup finals is like a holiday. On that day you send … how many men are there in a refugee camp? 6,000? You send them all to the school building [the detention point] and they are punished; it doesn’t matter what the situation is. Same thing they do now, they have a Hudna [truce] for the Olympics. A little bit of sensitivity. It doesn’t matter. Just a trivial thing.
Rank: Lieutenant Unit: 932th redgiment of the Nahal brigade Place of incident: Jenin refugee camp Description: During combing activities in Jenin refugee camp during Homat Magen Operation we moved from house to house through walls of houses in order to protect our forces from the shooting in the streets.
Most walls were broken by hammer blows and in many cases we used explosives in order to make the initial hole in the wall.
On one occasion a soldier broke an inner wall between two neighboring houses. The wall was quite yielding and on it were loaded shelves. Although there was reason to hurry up and all the team was protected the shelves were not emptied and were destroyed with the wall. After the hole was big enough I went on with the force under my command into the next house. When I came back the soldier carrying the hammer returned with us. Right after we came through the hole he blew the TV set that was nearby with the hammer in his hand.
I reprimanded him and yelled: why did you do that?
His answer: what does it matter anyway?
At the end of the action I gave his name on to the company commander to be trialed and when he didn’t pass on the name to the battalion commander I did so myself. The battalion commander told me it was right to put him to trial but as so much time has already elapsed it would give the feeling of a scapegoat.
At that point I was already on duty with another company and didn’t pursue the matter any further.
It was about a month between the operation and my conversation with the battalion commander.
Rank: Staff Sergeant Unit: Egoz, Golani brigade Place of incident: Ramallah Description: Upon Entering an apartment in Ramallah, we were instructed to search it thoroughly.
We handcuffed every man aged approximately 14 to 55, and seated them at the entrance to the apartment. We placed all women and children in another room (there were around 15 people in a not very big apartment).
We dismantled everything in the house. One of the women shouted something each time she heard something breaking, and one of the officers assured her not to worry, since nothing happened (that’s what he said).
After a while the interrogators arrived and got mad at us for dismantling the place. They sent us to the stairway and stayed with the grown up men inside the apartment. We were all nervous. We told the officers that this was the procedure, and that the interrogators should be glad to see us working thoroughly. Only on the way back, the officers calmed us down, and said that the interrogators asked to pass the message that they were pleased with our work, and that we shouldn’t take their show seriously, since they made it for the people at the apartment.
A “wet” search of a house from which the family came out and the wanted man was not found. Regulations are to shoot at any object which can be a source of danger to the soldiers during the quick entrance – cupboards, beds, sofas, curtains etc.
1st sergeant A. entered the living room, which was quite empty [of furniture] and shot one bullet at a personal computer in the room. When asked by others why he did this, he responded jokingly and made fun of the whole thing.
Date: 6/30/2002 Rank: First sergeant Place of incident: Al-Amri [refugee camp], Ramalla Description: During search operations in the [refugee-] camp, which were going on all day, the team commander insisted on blowing doors and gates up, even when it was unnecessary, because we had suitable entry equipment. When we insisted that these blasts were redundant, he lost his patience, and yelling, he demanded that we shut up and go on with it. Also, during those searches, me and my teammates had to go after the officer and reorganize the mess he made in the rooms he searched.
Rank: First Sergeant Place of incident: Ramallah Description:
August 2002
We entered Ramallah and we were told to take up positions in a building opposite the Muquatah. A day earlier, a group of soldiers from the Duchifat unit had taken this building. The Palestinian Ministry of Communications used the building and it was full of photographs, tape recordings, etc. When we entered the building we noticed that all six floors had been ransacked. There were ripped up pictures and smashed television sets with shit inside them and the window of the recording room was broken.
Rank: First Sergeant (res.) Unit: Battalion 50, Nahal brigade Place of incident: Hebron Description:
3 weeks after the beginning of Homat Magen [operation Defensive Shield]
Battalion 50 took over the city of Hebron about four months before “Homat Magen” (Operation Defensive Shield). At this time it was to be replaced by Nachal Battalion 932. The changeover started in stages and my company of March 2001 was the first to leave the front. We were replaced by the parallel unit. We went out on regular leave during which time we were called back to participate in Operation Defensive Shield. The rest of the battalion stayed on in Hebron and that is how we found ourselves with unit 932 while the rest of our company remained with 932 in Hebron. After three weeks we exchanged in order to reserve our original organization. Two or three days after we had returned, I went up to the “pharmacy” post, (it was near a pharmacy…hence called the pharmacy post) that was next to the Bus parking lot beside the open lot beside the tomb of the Patriarchs. As part of the procedures, we would go up to the roof of the building in order to watch the over the roads coming into the crossroad. While going up to the watch, I noticed that one door was broken into and I remembered that it hadn’t been like that when we had left…. We opened the door and viewed a horrific sight...The place was a doctor’s clinic and what we saw were wooden doors that had been completely smashed and glass showcases had been destroyed. Syringes scattered all about, along with documents, drawers that had been upended and smashed, and the worst was the used toilet paper scattered about and two piles of shit smothered on the floor….
Rank: First Sergeant Unit: Batallion 50, Nahal brigade Place of incident: Nablus Description:
August 2002
During an entry into Nablus, we entered a number of houses where we stationed ourselves. One of them was an empty school building were we guarded for a few days. In this building were a few guard posts…one was in a laboratory, and everyone who guarded there poked around in the lab and started to touch and break and even take some things from there. Finally, when we left the building, it was a mess.
Rank: First Sergeant Unit: Battalion 50 , Nahal brigade Place of incident: Rammala, Bitonia Description:
April 2002
During Operation “Homat Magen” [Defensive Shield], our unit ended up going through and staying in various houses of Palestinians who had been temporarily removed to another place. In just about every place we entered, we did so with good intentions of not taking advantage or destroying, but over the course of a couple or three days, soldiers found themselves resting on the sofas watching television, the furniture was broken. People would wipe their asses with towels from the bathroom, making use of personal computers in the house. It is impossible to point out only one house because this happened to everyone in every house.
Rank: First sergeant Place of incident: Ramallah Description:
During Homat Magen [operation "Defensive Shield"
Having finished a shift of a guarding mission, in one of the houses that was completely evacuated of its residents (I don’t remember where they sent the people) I went up to the top floor (the post was in the entrance to the building, and we sat on the fifth floor), I stopped on the third floor to take a shit (I knew the toilets in our floor was jammed), and when I have finished I noticed there was no toilet paper, so I used the clothes in the laundry basket, and the bathroom curtain.
