There was a force that sat on the roof of "the House of Contention" (a Palestinian house barricaded by settlers in 2008 before officially becoming a settlement in April 2014), we got there, twenty kids running around, three rabbis sitting in the storage room and praying. There were two soldiers sitting on the roof with a radio, guys from my year. hey show me the Arab neighborhoods around. I asked if there was a Jewish neighborhood there, they said no. “So why are there two Jews here?” “Don’t know.” Two soldiers above protecting them, there were always two soldiers on the roof and two border police below in the middle of nowhere. The question “what am I doing here” came up a bit. It was a difficult feeling, with the local (settler) population, too. They would put up a giant sign saying “We love Givati (name of IDF brigade), they protect us”, and the next day someone would scribble on it “Death to all soldiers.” On the one hand, they're nice to you, they invite you for Friday night dinner. I refused to go, but my friends went. We had a Judaism NCO who was able to organize, through the premilitary preparatory program in Kiryat Arba (settlement), for soldiers to go to families for the Sabbath. The same preparatory program that later (its members) threw stones at soldiers. If you don’t cry, you laugh at how things are run there. It’s hard to understand the situation there, you don’t understand who you are protecting. And that whole thing with "the House of Contention". We were told to evacuate it, so we did. They (the settlers) did a pilgrimage with all their guys who came by foot from Jerusalem to Hebron, and who guards them? We have to. The Palestinians are demonstrating opposite. We get to the house and everyone starts throwing stones at us. You ask yourself, why, what am I doing here?

What do you do?

You find a place to be in where they won't throw stones at you and wait for them to stop. You can't do anything. Only the Border Patrolmen can respond, because they're police – so you call them. If a demonstration has to be dispersed, the Border Control clean it up, they beat people up as they know how to do.

Did you see how they operate?There was a Jewish outpost evacuated in the area. They brought in a Border Patrol unit, all walking in three lines, black vests, helmets on, you can tell they know what they're doing, not like the Border Patrol guys you see around there, more scary… They stand in lines and you see the Jewish masses coming out of Kiryat Arba to meet them, and they're standing with their shields, waiting. Whoever jumped on them was handcuffed and put aside. They're so big that they didn't need teargas grenades.