Is it (serving in the Sde Teiman detention camp infirmary) something that stayed with you?Yes. I could, for the sake of the matter, say I was nice to them. On the other hand, I didn’t say: “No, I’m not going to work until you give this person something for the pain.” I didn’t do that. I don’t really know how to handle it. I’ve tried. I made requests. I think in retrospect, I might have acted differently. But I don’t think that I’m a more moral or a stronger person today than I was [then]. I don’t know if things would be different if I were to go do it now (reserve service in Sde Teiman), [if] I was told to go do it. OK, in the end, I’m a drop in the ocean. Maybe the right thing to do is to stay there, make a difference from within, although I don’t believe in that. I don’t know. It really screwed up everything I think about taking part in things or trying to witness things. It was really shitty. I feel like maybe some people might think that the right thing is to simply say: ‘I’m not going to go, even just to see it and tell. Because, like, it’s not worth it. I’ll just disengage from it. I’ll tell them I refuse.’ I couldn’t look anyone in my company in the eye. You hear people talk about complexity. Maybe there’s the high from the violence [and then] there’s the hangover. During [the high], you’re happy that, good, Gazans have it bad and shitty and they get beaten, and they don’t eat and don’t sleep, but [afterwards] you feel the exhaustion from this task

Did you think during [the service there] about testifying?Yes, first thing I say [to myself]: I’m going to talk about these things. I’m going now, and I know it’s happening, I know it’s happened, I know we have a torture facility. But what does it mean? That all these people I’m talking to, I’m going to put things out about them later? Like, I’m making a note to myself and then going to snitch afterwards. On the other hand, fuck these people. These are people who literally try to hurt people just because they feel like it. What, are you helping the interrogation? Are you part of the Israeli penal system? You’re just a small person, maybe you’re afraid, but you’re just a person who decided to hurt someone. The soldiers who beat [Palestinian detainees] see themselves as part of the [war] effort, [but] you’re not part of the effort. You just decided to beat someone because you feel like it for psychological reasons or I don’t know what. Like, it’s interesting that the impression you got at the beginning of reserve duty was different from the one you had at the end. At first, it was like “This is a just war,” and on my last day on reserve duty, I woke up in Sde Teiman and simply saw how an Abu Ghraib (a detention facility in Iraq which was made infamous when American military abused detainees in the early 2000s)-like thing was taking shape. You see normal, pretty ordinary people, reaching a point where they abuse people for their own amusement, not even for an interrogation or anything. For fun, to have something to tell the guys, or [for] revenge. The average Israeli who sees these things simply scrolls past it. They don’t see it. I don’t know if there is a greater impact if a soldier says it (that there was abuse) or not. It’s crazy that I say: “There are plenty of witnesses. There’s no need for me to testify about that.” But for real, it (Palestinians’ testimony) doesn’t count.