Things I remember, some are more “classic” in this context, of a “classic” occupation. There were more personal things, things that are scalded in you. One of these cases simply shocked me, when I came in with my crew, I was the sergeant, my officer and I arrived at an observation point with a sniper crew. And, of course, we constructed what we needed and created a common language and all these things and we entered into the village area. Slowly, slowly, sneaking, we arrived at the target destination, the house we were about to enter. Suddenly, from inside the house we hear someone shouting, like an animal, and we were like: “they’ve exposed us, they’ve seen us.” Real shouts… I can’t even imitate it. Like something wounded. So the officer and I consult, what we should do, we can’t continue, we’ll be exposed. He takes his weapon, breaks the window, and points his flashlight into the house. And there’s a woman lying there, retarded, old, she can’t move. And we see her, because we’re looking. The family watches her, they don’t want to go in and help her. And I hear myself saying: we’ve got nothing on this family. This woman didn’t do anything. This house is only a spot that we want to control and use as an observation point. And we caused this woman to feel unimaginable stress and she’s screaming like some wounded animal, and for no reason. In the end we entered the house. And it happened so many times that what you planned didn’t… it sometimes does but you enter and you’re responsible for this situation of this miserable woman screaming. I can’t forget her voice, her miserable voice. You enter the house, just another family, and you see the furious look on this child’s face. And you know, you’re no idiot. You think that there’s no doubt you’re just adding wood to the fire that is already lit. This kid looks you in the eye. You humiliate his father and you wake him up in the middle of the night. And you enter again and again and again, and the father says his door has already been broken but nobody compensated him. And this expression on the kid’s face, and his parents hush him: “be quiet, be quiet!” And he wants to erupt at you, and part of you wants him to erupt at you. And that’s one of the smallest things. And it doesn’t matter how nice we were. When I was sergeant we would never leave a house without tidying it up, and if we had candy, we’d give the children candy. But between us, that’s bullshit, that’s crap. It’s in order to soothe your conscience, you’re not really doing anything. You enter their house and [if] you have to break a window, you break a window, [if] you have to get on the table, you get on the table, [if] you have to make a mess of their house, you’ll do it, and if you don’t have time and have to leave immediately, you’ll leave without tidying up. Because that’s how it is, nothing to be done, because we’re waging a ‘just war.’ That’s it, basically. These are the things carved in my soul. Every evening. These things happen every evening when you enter houses.
And this happened in the Nablus area, the story with the old woman? Yes, it was in the area… in one of the refugee camps. If I’m not mistaken it might have been in the old Askar. There’s a new Askar and an old Askar, I’m not sure. But it’s one of the villages in the Nablus area, but it’s, like, a tiny little story.