I remember the subtleties of the checkpoint better, not the extreme cases of abuse, rather what caused them. That’s where my awareness of the checkpoints came from, I’d think about it a lot. There was one time, afterward I used the phrase even as a commander, where some soldier took a Krembo snack. I grabbed him afterward, even though by then he couldn’t give the snack back, there was no one to give it back to, and I said that he shouldn’t do it, I don’t remember exactly what I said, I said something about it. And his response was, “You’re undermining my authority.” To me, these words stand for the terrible thing that checkpoints do to a normal person—not to someone who beats up Arabs, and there are plenty of those. This is what checkpoints do to an average kind of guy, someone who does nothing out of the ordinary. This kind of guy has no authority, but he doesn’t need any authority toward a fortyor fiftyor twenty-year-old who comes to cross the checkpoint. There’s no issue of authority here. Feeling “I’m above them” is irrelevant—you’re already above them. You tell them when they can cross and when they can’t, if they’re unruly you get annoyed, and you have the power to get annoyed because you have a weapon and you can close the checkpoint. So you control them. And when you suddenly say to someone, “Don’t do so-and-so,” you’re undermining his authority. So this phrase, “You’re undermining my authority,” stayed with me till my last day of service, and to me it says everything, because we’re talking about something minor, it’s not a soldier beating someone up, it’s not punching an Arab or hitting him with the butt of the weapon. It’s a basic outlook, everything begins with that. I don’t know how many of our soldiers reach that point, but let’s say it’s infantry, Armored Corps, Artillery, Anti-aircraft, Engineering Corps. It’s a lot. And there are plenty of others, it’s not just them. It doesn’t matter how much they oppose ideologically, it makes its way into you, this sense of supremacy. When I’m at the checkpoint, the hardest thing for me is how annoyed the soldiers get, it’s not just that they get annoyed for no reason, it’s like when a teacher gets annoyed. “You’re not doing what I told you to? I’ll show you what’s what.” Fuck, I’m standing here directing their traffic like a retard, so they better listen to what I’m saying. Of course, the more extreme response is, “I’m standing here with a weapon so do what I tell you. I decide who crosses and who doesn’t. I decide when to open the checkpoint and when not to.” It’s also kind of arbitrary. For those higher up, and I don’t know at what level, but I’m convinced—and I have many friends who are angry that I say this—but I’m convinced that the arbitrariness is a strategy. A strategy to undermine their confidence, their stability, so they won’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. I’m convinced of it. I don’t think it’s some kind of stupidity from someone higher up, I think it’s a policy, a strategy. I’m convinced.