Once, when I was on reserves duty, some guy was throwing stones and was arrested. I don’t remember whether we arrested him or someone else did. He was arrested soon after he’d thrown stones nearby. He was a boy from Ya’bad village, just a boy. Two-three days later, our mission was to harass civilians there, to go to his parents’ house and tell them: Your child was arrested for throwing stones, make sure it doesn’t happen again. And that’s what we did. We came at night, and a representative of the [Israeli] Civil Administration knocked on the door, spoke with his parents, and spoke to his brother, who was a Palestinian Authority man. They didn’t even know he’d been arrested, they’d had no idea where he was for three days. That’s what I know.

How old was he, do you remember? I think he was 14-15 years old.

And the family was just told that he’d been arrested for that, then they were scolded a bit, and then you just left? There was no purpose beyond that. I don’t remember the actual wording of the mission’s purpose, but in the briefings beforehand, we were told that the purpose was to punish them a bit, to motivate them to make sure that their children don’t do it again. That was the reasoning behind those house entries. It felt uncomfortable. Waking everyone up there. The approach was didactic, in that sense. To educate them to educate their child.