When we did a deployment in [Mount] Gilboa, we got the Jalamah checkpoint. And we sat there in some kind of base, so there were patrols too. It’s the [Separation] Barrier there, it’s not like getting the Samaria area where you, like, you do arrests in Nablus. It’s more like similar to getting the border up north or something. You do patrols on the Barrier. There’s a serious fence there, and what happens is that if there’s activity near the Barrier, if there are shepherds there sometimes or someone who like, like is suspicious, it alerts the operations room and the patrol is sent out.

Who alerts? What alerts?There are sensors there (in the Barrier) or things like that. It sends an alert and then the patrol goes to that spot. One day there were two kids near the Barrier and it triggered an alert. The patrol went and took the kids, put them in the patrol jeep and brought them to the base. Five-year-old kids. They didn’t explain it to them, because they (the soldiers) don’t speak Arabic. They took them and said as an excuse, kind of like: [that] the justification for taking them was that these kids could have been sent with some kind of IED (Improvised Explosive Device) and then they put it there and it looks innocent, but actually they’re putting something there for you. Anyway, they took these kids to the base. It’s surreal, and I’m like: Why are we taking them? It’s kids, [they’re] scared to death, it was like they were being kidnapped. They don’t understand what’s going on. We put them in a base, now what do we do? So we were told to put them in the base’s security post, two cute five-year-olds, bro. I went and started playing with them, I try to talk to them: “What’s your name?,” [that’s what] I know how to say to them. They’re scared, they’re crying, and it’s two brothers, one brother hugs the other and tries to calm him down, and I’m, like: Fuck, this must be so traumatic for these children, they’re stuck here in this booth, think like this security post booth, it’s all like [covered in] drawings by depressed soldiers on the walls. And I’m sitting with them with a weapon, there’s no room to move, everything stinks in there. And you like don’t even know what the purpose is, when they’re going to be taken back, whether they’re going to be taken back. I went to the kitchen quickly, brought them a Milky (chocolate pudding), I sit with them there and I’m trying to play with them with a ball, make them laugh a little. He’s crying and wiping off the tears, but laughing a little too. And I remember like that guys from the unit turn up and they see me bringing them Milky, playing with them, and they like laugh: *** the lefty, like being nice to these kids is funny because they’re Arabs. It made me so mad how it’s like... Nevermind being laughed at, I didn’t care, but how is it funny that the kids... Why am I the only one who understands that it’s fucked up that there are two five-year-olds here who were kidnapped and they’re crying and they don’t know what’s going on with them and they don’t know where they are? They’re stuck here in some house with someone with a weapon and you think it’s funny that I’m being nice to them? What, what are you, like, are they cockroaches? Are you not supposed to be nice to them? What’s going on? Why doesn’t anyone realize that it’s fucked up? That’s how I felt. The sun went down in the evening and they just took them back to where they’d been taken from. They didn’t talk to the father or someone.

They didn’t notify anyone about this?They didn’t notify anyone. It was a kind of punishment, I remember, so they don’t do it again, so they learn their lesson, so they don’t like bring kids there. So, like, we’ll take them, we’ll bring them back, and then they won’t come to the Barrier anymore.