Breaking the Silence : Seeds of Hate

(Original Hebrew : http://www.nrg.co.il/online/1/ART/886/791.html)

Seeds of Hate

Breaking the Silence with “A”, a veteran combat soldier who had already seen many things in the occupied territories, but since he participated in a collective punishment in a Palestinian village just a week ago, he cannot sleep.

Chen Kotas-Bar, nrg/Maariv

22 March 2005

Some of the testimonies that have been given in recent months in the framework of Breaking the Silence related to incidents that happened soon after serious [Palestinian] attacks. The responses corresponded. The soldiers spoke of the desire to take revenge and to settle accounts.

The incident that “A” – an infantry combat soldier who is currently deployed in the occupied territories – is talking about took place last week, in one of the quiet sectors in the West Bank. And maybe it was precisely that relative quiet that stirred “A”, an experienced combat soldier approaching the end of his term of service which included many months in the field, to open his eyes and break the silence.

For fear of the reaction of his commanders, and also out of concern about self-incrimination, the complete details about “A” – name of his unit, place of the incident he speaks of – have been withheld by the editors.

* A Proper Collective Punishment *

“We’re talking about life over there now. We’re no longer in the days of an attack [a Palestinian terrorist attack] every day. Even I was surprised. I thought we would be a bit more moderate. It’s a quiet sector, in relatively quiet times. But no. What I’m talking about happened a few days ago, maybe a week. A Molotov cocktail was thrown at the entrance to one of the quiet villages. The bottle was thrown onto the pavement, nobody knew who was responsible.”

“Within about half an hour, the sector commander gave the order to go from house to house in the whole village, to take out all the men, from 11-12-year-old boys to the old men. When the order came down – it already seemed shocking. “Pick up all the men in the village.” That doesn’t sound good. Bring all the men out. What does that mean, bring them all out ? We took them out. I’m not from yesterday in these matters ; I’m a veteran, but this time it was different, because this was a clear case of collective punishment. There was nothing else here, no operational dimension. A curfew is a collective punishment too, but at least it can be explained by operational necessity. Here, no.”

“We started to go from house to house, it was ten at night. We have settlers too, that kind of right-wingers, extremists. So you can imagine how the extraction from the houses was carried out. By threats, aggressively, guns pointed at children.”

“In places where I have been so far in the Territories, the Palestinians were already used to us. They were people who already knew the routine, from problematic areas. Not here. This was a quiet village. We fell on the people with total surprise. In these houses, when we entered, the children still got scared. A child opens the door, a soldier points a gun at him. It’s tough.”

“Afterwards we gathered all the men in the schoolyard. It was a shocking sight. All the men sitting on the ground, including boys age 11 and up. The guys who were guarding them didn’t let them move, not even to go pee. Whoever needed the toilet just had to hold it in. They divided them up by age groups and they just sat there, waiting. They took their ID cards, but nobody even looked at them. They just made them sit.”

“After two hours or more of sitting, the battalion commander came. He took an interpreter, told him to tell the Palestinians that ‘if a Molotov cocktail is thrown again on the road, this village will not breathe.’ Like that. A proper collective punishment. Nobody even smelled their hands to see who threw the bottle. Nobody checked them. After a few hours they sent them home.”

* I don’t believe in refusal *

Why didn’t you refuse ?

“There are many reasons not to refuse. I don’t believe in refusal, in the reality of today. I do [carry out orders], and try to talk to the commanders, to whomever I have to. I also try to do it differently, even though there’s no such thing. If my eyes are apologetic when I pull an 11-year-old boy out of his home in the middle of the night, who didn’t do anything, that doesn’t fix anything. And the toughest part – it’s something that remains between us and those who were there. Nobody knows about it, except us and them.”

“I didn’t sleep at night after that. It was hard for me to sleep, because you don’t get over it so fast, when you pull people out of their homes who are your grandfather’s age and children your brothers’ age, and you know that you and your friends are embittering the lives of these people. I will always remember that, what happened that night. And I said, I’ve already seen a lot of things in the Territories. But here it was pointless. Here we planted the seeds of hate, of the next terrorist attack. To see the little boys there and to know that ‘I, “A”, personally planted hatred of me in him.’ That’s the hardest thing. To know that it’s not over now. That they won’t forget it. And I won’t forget it either, and we’ll meet again.”

About “Breaking the Silence`

They are not refusers. They are not politicians. They love the State. They are just soldiers who were there, which is also here, and decided that it cannot go on. That someone has to stand and shout : wake up and see what’s happening to us. “Breaking the Silence” : every Tuesday Chen Kotas-Bar brings testimonies from the war in the Territories, and what it is doing to us.

Translated by Mark Marshall