The story which brought me here happened in Gaza. After these two incidents, I think there was a period at the beginning of the Intifada where they assassinated people with helicopters, a huge media frenzy because sometimes it would miss and kill other people. They decided to send people in, ground forces, and we started to get ready. This was at the beginning of the Intifada? Yes, it was at the beginning of the Intifada. Until then there were a few assassinations with helicopter missiles . . . from a media perspective . . . I remember it was a huge mess because there were mistakes and they hurt other people and they informed us we were going to do a ground elimination operation. Is that the terminology they used? “Ground elimination operation”? I don’t remember. But I remember that we knew it was going to be the first operation of the Intifada. That was very important for the commanders and we started to train for the operation, the plan was to catch a terrorist on his way to Rafah, block him in the middle of the road, and eliminate him. Not to arrest him? No, direct elimination. Targeted. That operation was canceled and a few days later they informed us that there is an operation, but we’re going on an arrest operation. I remember the disappointment that we were going to arrest him instead of doing something groundbreaking, unusual in combat, changing the terms—instead we’re going to arrest him. The operation was planned . . . Can I have a pen and paper? Yes. [Drawing] This is the road, here is where the APCs always are. We were supposed to relieve the guys in the APCs, and when the car arrives, and then intelligence from the drone, we move here with the armored truck, cross the road, there are also dirt paths here from the bases, and inside the armored truck there’s a hole on top and a step for the soldiers to pop their heads out of the truck like in the A-Team and basically block the road here. He’ll stop here and we’ll shoot at him from here. To arrest him or shoot at him? I’m now talking about the first plan—to arrest him. When everyone gets out [of the truck] like that with their weapons to stop him, to say, “Get out of the car,” and that’s it. Very simple. When there are jeeps here, they’re supposed to be security jeeps, pretty big ones. And that’s it, we went out on the operation, when I . . . Which force are you in? I’m in this force, two soldiers and the operations commander—here. Do you have a sharpshooter’s rifle? No, an M16. There’s another vehicle here but I don’t remember where it was located. What kind? A jeep or an APC. Anyway, we’re waiting inside the APC, there are Shin Bet agents with us, and we can hear the updates from intelli- gence, and it was amazing: “He’s sitting in his house, drinking coffee, he’s going downstairs, saying hi to the neighbor”—all kinds of stuff like that. “He’s going back up, coming down again, saying this and that, opening the trunk now”—really detailed stuff—“he’s opening the trunk, picking up a friend”—he didn’t drive, someone else drove, and they said his weapon was in the trunk. We knew he didn’t have the weapon with him in the car, which made the arrest much easier. At least it reduced my stress, because I knew that if he ran to the trunk to take out the weapon, they’d shoot at him. It was reasonable to assume he wouldn’t do it. Which force did the Shin Bet agent sit with, with the jeeps? With me. In the APC. He didn’t see. Maybe there was also another Shin Bet agent there, I don’t remember. We were in contact with command and they informed us that he’d arrive in five more minutes, four more minutes, one more minute. And then there was a change in the orders, apparently from the brigade commander: elimination operation. A minute before. They hadn’t prepared for that. They’d prepared for something unexpected, like if maybe he didn’t have a weapon—a minute to go and it’s an elimination operation. Why do you say “apparently from the brigade commander”? I think it was the brigade commander. Looking back, I think the whole operation seems like a political trick by our commander, who was try- ing to get bonus points for doing the first elimination operation, and the brigade commander trying, too . . . everyone wanted it, everyone was hot for it, for this kind of business. The car enters, and not according to plan: really their car stops here, and in front of it another car, here. That’s the car we need, and here’s another car coming into the section. From what I remember, we had to shoot, he was three meters from us. We had to shoot, and after they stopped the cars I fired from three meters through the scope, and the gun fire made an insane noise, just crazy. And then this car, the moment we started shooting, started speeding in this direction. The car in front? No, the terrorist’s car started speeding—apparently when they shot the driver his leg was stuck on the gas, and he started flying. The gun- fire increased, and the commander next to me is yelling “Stop, stop, hold your fire,” and I see that they don’t stop shooting. They don’t stop shooting. In those cars, they get out and start running, they’re running from the jeep and the armored truck, shoot a few rounds, and then go back. Insane bullets for a few minutes. “Stop, stop, hold your fire,” and then they stop. In that car, the car in front, they fired dozens if not hundreds of bullets. Are you saying this because you checked afterward? Because we carried the bodies. The armored truck brought the bodies. There were three people in the car, and nothing happened to the person in the back. He got out of the car, looked around like this, put his hands in the air, and the two bodies in front of him were hacked to pieces. He sat in the back. In the car with the suspect? Yes. I checked afterward, I counted how many bullets I had left—I shot ten bullets. It was terrifying: more noise and more noise and more noise. It happened in a second and a half. And then they took out the bodies, we carried the bodies, I have no idea why. We went to a debriefing. I’ll never forget when they brought them out at the base, I don’t remember which one, they brought out the bodies, and we’re standing two meters away in a semicircle, the bodies are covered in flies, and we’re having a debriefing. The debriefing was, “Great job, a success. Someone shot the wrong car, and we’ll do the rest on the base.” We went back to base, I’m in total shock from the bullets I saw, from the crazy noise there. We saw it on the video, it was all documented on video for the debriefing. In the debriefing I saw all the things that I told you, the people running, it’s clear, the minute of gunfire, I don’t know if it’s twenty seconds or a minute, but it was hundreds of bullets and it was clear that everyone died, but the gunfire went on and the soldiers are running from the armored truck, fire a few bullets and run back. They show it in the debriefing and I see a bunch of bloodthirsty guys firing insane amounts of bullets, and at the wrong car, too. The video was just awful, and then the unit commander gets up, who we’ll be hearing a lot about. What does that mean? He’ll be a regional commanding officer or the chief of staff one day, and he says, “The operation was not carried out perfectly, but the mis- sion was accomplished, and we had a call from the chief of staff, the defense minister, and the prime minister”—we’re all happy, getting compliments, it’s good for the unit’s prestige and the operations it gets, and you know, just “great job.” The debriefing was just cover-up after cover-up. Meaning? Meaning they don’t stop and say, “Three innocent people died.” Maybe with the driver there was no choice, but who were the other two? Who were they, in fact? At that time I had a friend at a course with the Shin Bet, I remember he told me about the jokes that went around about the terrorist being a nobody. He probably took part in a shooting, and the other two just had nothing to do with the whole thing. What shocked me was that the day after the operation, the newspapers said that “a secret unit killed four terrorists,” and there was a whole story on each one, where he came from, who he’d been involved with, the operations he’d taken part in. And I know that on the Shin Bet base, jokes are going around about the nobody we killed and how the other two aren’t even con- nected, and at the debriefing itself—I’m going back a bit—they didn’t even mention it. Who did the debriefing? The unit commander. They didn’t mention it. It’s the first thing I expected to hear, that something bad happened, that we did the opera- tion to eliminate one person and ended up eliminating four. I expected everything would stop and he’d say, “I want to know who shot at the first car. I want to know why A-B-C ran from the vehicle to join in the bullet party.” And that didn’t happen. At that point I understood that it just doesn’t bother them. These people do what they do and it doesn’t bother them. The next day, when the operation was published in the newspapers—I was in shock. Did the guys talk about it? Yes. There were two others I could talk to and tell them that I don’t understand how it happened . . . The second guy was really shocked but it didn’t stop him from carrying on. It didn’t stop me, either. It was only after I was released from the army that I understood. No, even in the army I understood that something very bad had happened and I didn’t know how it would affect me. When I was released from the army, I couldn’t believe that I’d gotten to the point of shooting at people. It’s not practical and it’s field security, but I couldn’t imagine myself get- ting an order to kill someone without knowing who it was. I don’t know how I got to that point. And today I can say, even if it was Osama bin Laden I wouldn’t shoot him. The Shin Bet agents were as happy as kids coming back from camp. What does that mean? So happy, high-fiving and hugging. Pleased with themselves. Smiling, they didn’t even join in the debriefing, it didn’t interest them. I couldn’t believe how an order to kill someone could be carried out in a minute. What exactly was the politics of the operation? How come my commanders, not one of them, admitted that the operation failed? It failed so badly and the shooting was so all over the place that the ones in the truck got shrapnel from the bullets. They just shot at them, at the truck itself. It’s a miracle we didn’t kill each other. They didn’t mention it.