Company A was at a checkpoint called Noam, on the way to Jericho. I think it separates the Jordan Valley road and Jericho. It was winter, the beginning of 2001, and it was a pretty rough winter as far as I remember, raining and cold. There are the bases, which are basically a few buildings, where the unit that runs the checkpoint is located, and outside there’s an open shelter, which is basically the checkpoint. The checkpoint was very . . . I think it was improvised, I don’t remember, it wasn’t like the checkpoints today, which are like airport terminals.

That’s only certain checkpoints. Yes. No, but I think this one was set up shortly before we got there. And I sat there with an officer, the Company A platoon commander, who was really a fine person, considering it was Battalion 433. And we sat there, and they covered the shelter with plastic sheets because it rained a lot. And it was nighttime and aside from us no one else was awake, it was the middle of the night. And really, when I think about it now, it’s really scary that you’re sitting in the middle of nowhere, the wind is gusting around you, and the plastic that’s covering you makes it hard to hear and see what’s going on around you. And basically you’re waiting for a car to come, and how would you know? Because you see, you see the headlights. And we sit there, two of us, and the orders are—yeah, the great wisdom of the IDF—the order that day was to not let cars through if there are only men in them. The car had to have either a child or a woman in it to be able to pass. Yeah, of course it’s a specific order, very specific.

Did you ask . . . Why? Even if I’d asked, the other guy was an officer, that’s his duty. When I asked why, the answer was, “Those are the orders, what are you gonna do?” You’re not supposed to ask why in the army, and when you do . . .

But there can be pretty strange orders. True, there are some strange orders, and your duty as a soldier is to carry them out and not ask why.

Would you look for the logic? There’s no logic. If you look for logic in the army you go crazy. They’d lock you up.

So what would happen? You’d stop cars? No, there were almost no cars, it was the middle of the night, it was raining. But there was one car, I remember, it was a Subaru with two Palestinian men in their forties, I guess. They were very nice. They stopped, they asked to go through. And the officer, a guy with a head on his shoulders, didn’t say what every other person in the army would have said, which is, “No, you can’t.” Instead he said, “You need a woman or a child.” They argued a bit, and he said, “Those are the orders, what can I do, either a woman or a child.” They turned around, went into Jericho. Ten minutes later, they came with a boy in the backseat, and he says, “Please, go ahead.” He’s smiling at them and they smiled back, everyone understood that the situation’s just idiotic and ridiculous. Yeah, you know, it’s just further proof that the IDF’s job is to make the Palestinians’ lives miserable. Because if you think about it, there’s really no operational need. What’s the difference if the same men in the same car bring a child? They grab some kid, pay him a shekel and a half, tell him, “Come with us for an hour or two.” Yeah, so there it is. It just seemed ridiculous, not shocking. Today it seems shocking.