‘Anyone gets close, I kill him. Don’t bug me. I kill. I have no mercy.’
In shocking testimonies that reveal abductions, beatings and torture, Israeli soldiers confess the horror they have visited on Hebron
By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem
Saturday, 19 April 2008
The dark-haired 22-year-old in black T-shirt, blue jeans and red Crocs is understandably hesitant as he sits at a picnic table in the incongruous setting of a beauty spot somewhere in Israel. We know his name and if we used it he would face a criminal investigation and a probable prison sentence.
The birds are singing as he describes in detail some of what he did and saw others do as an enlisted soldier in Hebron. And they are certainly criminal: the incidents in which Palestinian vehicles are stopped for no good reason, the windows smashed and the occupants beaten up for talking back – for saying, for example, they are on the way to hospital; the theft of tobacco from a Palestinian shopkeeper who is then beaten “to a pulp” when he complains; the throwing of stun grenades through the windows of mosques as people prayed. And worse.
The young man left the army only at the end of last year, and his decision to speak is part of a concerted effort to expose the moral price paid by young Israeli conscripts in what is probably the most problematic posting there is in the occupied territories. Not least because Hebron is the only Palestinian city whose centre is directly controlled by the military, 24/7, to protect the notably hardline Jewish settlers there. He says firmly that he now regrets what repeatedly took place during his tour of duty.
But his frequent, if nervous, grins and giggles occasionally show just a hint of the bravado he might have displayed if boasting of his exploits to his mates in a bar. Repeatedly he turns to the older former soldier who has persuaded him to speak to us, and says as if seeking reassurance: “You know how it is in Hebron.”
The older ex-soldier is Yehuda Shaul, who does indeed “know how it is in Hebron”, having served in the city in a combat unit at the peak of the intifada, and is a founder of Shovrim Shtika, or Breaking the Silence, which will publish tomorrow the disturbing testimonies of 39 Israelis – including this young man – who served in the army in Hebron between 2005 and 2007. They cover a range of experiences, from anger and powerlessness in the face of often violent abuse of Arabs by hardline Jewish settlers, through petty harassment by soldiers, to soldiers beating up Palestinian residents without provocation, looting homes and shops, and opening fire on unarmed demonstrators.
The maltreatment of civilians under occupation is common to many armies in the world – including Britain’s, from Northern Ireland to Iraq.
But, paradoxically, few if any countries apart from Israel have an NGO like Breaking the Silence, which seeks – through the experiences of the soldiers themselves – as its website puts it “to force Israeli society to address the reality which it created” in the occupied territories.
The Israeli public was given an unflattering glimpse of military life in Hebron this year when a young lieutenant in the Kfir Brigade called Yaakov Gigi was given a 15-month jail sentence for taking five soldiers with him to hijack a Palestinian taxi, conduct what the Israeli media called a “rampage” in which one of the soldiers shot and wounded a Palestinian civilian who just happened to be in the wrong place, and then tried to lie his way out of it.
In a confessional interview with the Israeli Channel Two investigative programme Uvda, Gigi, who had previously been in many ways a model soldier, talked of “losing the human condition” in Hebron. Asked what he meant, he replied: “To lose the human condition is to become an animal.”
The Israeli military did not prosecute the soldier who had fired on the Palestinian, as opposed to Gigi. But the military insists “that the events that occurred within the Kfir Brigade are highly unusual”.
But as the 22-year-old soldier, also in the Kfir Brigade, confirms in his testimony to Breaking the Silence, it seems that the event may not have been exceptional. Certainly, our interview tells us, he was “many times” in groups that commandeered taxis, seated the driver in the back, and told him to direct them to places “where they hate the Jews” in order to “make a balagan” – Hebrew for “big mess”.
Then there is the inter- clan Palestinian fight: “We were told to go over there and find out what was happening. Our [platoon] commander was a bit screwed in the head. So anyway, we would locate houses, and he’d tell us: ‘OK, anyone you see armed with stones or whatever, I don’t care what – shoot.’ Everyone would think it’s the clan fight…” Did the company commander know? “No one knew. Platoon’s private initiative, these actions.”
Did you hit them? “Sure, not just them. Anyone who came close … Particularly legs and arms. Some people also sustained abdominal hits … I think at some point they realised it was soldiers, but they were not sure. Because they could not believe soldiers would do this, you know.”
Or using a 10-year-old child to locate and punish a 15-year-old stone-thrower: “So we got hold of just some Palestinian kid nearby, we knew that he knew who it had been. Let’s say we beat him a little, to put it mildly, until he told us. You know, the way it goes when your mind’s already screwed up, and you have no more patience for Hebron and Arabs and Jews there.
“The kid was really scared, realising we were on to him. We had a commander with us who was a bit of a fanatic. We gave the boy over to this commander, and he really beat the shit out of him … He showed him all kinds of holes in the ground along the way, asking him: ‘Is it here you want to die? Or here?’ The kid goes, ‘No, no!’
“Anyway, the kid was stood up, and couldn’t stay standing on his own two feet. He was already crying … And the commander continues, ‘Don’t pretend’ and kicks him some more. And then [name withheld], who always had a hard time with such things, went in, caught the squad commander and said, ‘Don’t touch him any more, that’s it.’ The commander goes, ‘You’ve become a leftie, what?’ And he answers, ‘No, I just don’t want to see such things.’
“We were right next to this, but did nothing. We were indifferent, you know. OK. Only after the fact you start thinking. Not right away. We were doing such things every day … It had become a habit…
“And the parents saw it. The commander ordered [the mother], ‘Don’t get any closer.’ He cocked his weapon, already had a bullet inside. She was frightened. He put his weapon literally inside the kid’s mouth. ‘Anyone gets close, I kill him. Don’t bug me. I kill. I have no mercy.’ So the father … got hold of the mother and said, ‘Calm down, let them be, so they’ll leave him alone.’”
Not every soldier serving in Hebron becomes an “animal”. Iftach Arbel, 23, from an upper- middle class, left-of-centre home in Herzylia, served in Hebron as a commander just before the withdrawal from Gaza, when he thinks the army wanted to show it could be tough with settlers, too. And many of the testimonies, including Mr Arbel’s, describe how the settlers educate children as young as four to throw stones at Palestinians, attack their homes and even steal their possessions. To Mr Arbel, the Hebron settlers are “pure evil” and the only solution is “to remove the settlers”.
He believes it would be possible even within these constraints to treat Palestinians better. He adds: “We did night activity. Choose a house at random, on the aerial photo, so as to practise combat routine and all, which is instructive for the soldiers, I mean, I’m all for it. But then at midnight you wake someone up and turn his whole house upside down with everyone sleeping on the mattresses and all.”
But Mr Arbel says that most soldiers are some way between his own extreme and that of the most violent. From just two of his fellow testifiers, you can see what he means.
As one said: “We did all kinds of experiments to see who could do the best split in Abu Snena. We would put [Palestinians] against the wall, make like we were checking them, and ask them to spread their legs. Spread, spread, spread, it was a game to see who could do it best. Or we would check who can hold his breath for longest.
“Choke them. One guy would come, make like he was checking them, and suddenly start yelling like they said something and choke them … Block their airways; you have to press the adams apple. It’s not pleasant. Look at the watch as you’re doing it, until he passes out. The one who takes longest to faint wins.”
And theft as well as violence. “There’s this car accessory shop there. Every time, soldiers would take a tape-disc player, other stuff. This guy, if you go ask him, will tell you plenty of things that soldiers did to him.
“A whole scroll-full … They would raid his shop regularly. ‘Listen, if you tell on us, we’ll confiscate your whole store, we’ll break everything.’ You know, he was afraid to tell. He was already making deals, ‘Listen guys, you’re damaging me financially.’ I personally never took a thing, but I’m telling you, people used to take speakers from him, whole sound systems.
“He’d go, ‘Please, give me 500 shekels, I’m losing money here.’ ‘Listen, if you go on – we’ll pick up your whole shop.’ ‘OK, OK, take it, but listen, don’t take more than 10 systems a month.’ Something like this.
“‘I’m already going bankrupt.’ He was so miserable. Guys in our unit used to sell these things back home, make deals with people. People are so stupid.”
The military said that Israeli Defence Forces soldiers operate according to “a strict set of moral guidelines” and that their expected adherence to them only “increases wherever and whenever IDF soldiers come in contact with civilians”. It added that “if evidence supporting the allegations is uncovered, steps are taken to hold those involved to the level of highest judicial severity”. It also said: “The Military Advocate General has issued a number of indictments against soldiers due to allegations of criminal behaviour … Soldiers found guilty were punished severely by the Military Court, in proportion to the committed offence.” It had not by last night quantified such indictments.
In its introduction to the testimonies, Breaking the Silence says: “The soldiers’ determination to fulfil their mission yields tragic results: the proper-normative becomes despicable, the inconceivable becomes routine … [The] testimonies are to illustrate the manner in which they are swept into the brutal reality reigning on the ground, a reality whereby the lives of many thousands of Palestinian families are at the questionable mercy of youths. Hebron turns a focused, flagrant lens at the reality to which Israel’s young representatives are constantly sent.”
A force for justice
Breaking the Silence was formed four years ago by a group of ex-soldiers, most of whom had served in Israel Defence Forces combat units in Hebron. Many of the soldiers do reserve duty in the military each year. It has collected some 500 testimonies from former soldiers who served in the West Bank and Gaza. Its first public exposure was with an exhibition of photographs by soldiers serving in Hebron and the organisation also runs regular tours of Hebron for Israeli students and diplomats. It receives funding from groups as diverse as the Jewish philanthropic Moriah Fund, the New Israel Fund, the British embassy in Tel Aviv and the EU.
Mazin B. Qumsiyeh, Ph.D., Special to PalestineChronicle.com
Palestinians and many Israelis are encouraged that civil society in Europe and North America has now engaged in other forms of struggle for peace with justice, including the growing movement of boycotts.
I just returned from my latest trip to Palestine, or at least to the part of Palestine I still have access to as a Palestinian Christian. You see, we Palestinians from the Bethlehem area (the birthplace of Jesus) are now denied entry to over 90 percent of Palestine and even to our capital and major economic center, Jerusalem (which is merely 7 miles from Bethlehem).
Israeli colonies dot the landscape from the Mediterranean to the River Jordan on land stolen from the native people. Six of the 10 million Palestinians in the world are now refugees or displaced people and the remaining Palestinians live in increasingly shrinking and impoverished ghettos (Ã la South African Bantustans at the time of Apartheid).
In all areas we visited the trend is the same: maximizing geography (under Israeli control) and minimizing demography (Palestinians on their land). Israeli authorities have evolved ingenious ways of ethnic cleansing since the more direct uprooting practiced in 1947-1949, when 850,000 Palestinians were driven out. The details of how this is done differ from area to area. A few examples may illustrate this.
The Gush Etzion block of colonies (Gilo, Har Gilo, Efrata etc) was successful in destroying the Palestinian economy in the Southern West Bank (from Jerusalem to Hebron). Jewish colonial settlers live in subsidized housing built on stolen Palestinian land and drive to Western Jerusalem or Tel Aviv without ever seeing the victims or noticing their plight. But movement of Palestinians is impossible between Arab Jerusalem and its suburbs like Bethlehem and Alkhader or areas farther south. This killed the Palestinian economy on both sides of the apartheid wall. Jerusalem’s Arab old city is a ghost town compared to what it was just 20 years ago. And the unemployment rate in Bethlehem is twice what it was in the US during the height of the Great Depression.
The old city of Hebron, near the Ibrahimi Mosque (the mosque of Abraham), is deserted. Tens of thousands of local Palestinians (and thousands of foreigners) used to flock to this busy commercial district until the few extremist Israeli settlers (with Israeli government support and protection) literally just moved in uninvited. They took over whole buildings or, in some cases, just the upper floors. They go on rampages, making life impossible for the native Palestinians. From the upper story rooms they squat in, they throw trash at the shops and pedestrians below. They routinely shoot at Palestinian civilians and destroy shops.
Thus some 400-500 colonial racists (under the protective eye of over 5,000 Israeli occupation soldiers, many of them from the settlements) control the lives and destroy the livelihoods of tens of thousands of native Palestinians. It is as if 400-500 KKK members where put in the middle of New York’s Harlem and were given permission and protection (with 5,000 white soldiers) to do what they want with the black population.
In this season of fruits and vegetables, villagers still try to sell products from their shrinking land holdings. But this brings much less money than in the old days when they had more land and were free to move and sell their products in large cities like Jerusalem or Jaffa or Nablus (or even to other countries). The cancer of the settlements built on Palestinian lands grows more destructive, while politicians stall with talk of a fictional “two-state solution” and “Israeli [but not Palestinian] security”. Israel’s plan was to do ethnic cleansing and colonization and then use any Palestinian resistance as justification (“security”) for further colonization activities. But Israel’s colonization continued even in times of relative calm (e.g. the seven years between the first largely nonviolent uprising and the more recent and more violent uprising).
All of this is done contrary to International law and with full US military, diplomatic, and economic support. It is also not in the interest of a just peace nor in our US national interests.
While the US infrastructure is decaying, the Israel lobby convinced President Bush to propose giving Israel $30 billion more of our tax money over the next 10 years. If Congress succumbs, as it did in the past, the consequences for US interests can only be dire among 300 million Arabs and 1.5 billion Muslims (not only in increased violence but the erosion of US economic power and interests around the world).
Palestinians and many Israelis are encouraged that civil society in Europe and North America has now engaged in other forms of struggle for peace with justice, including the growing movement of boycotts, divestments, and sanctions (BDS) along the same lines that helped transform Apartheid South Africa. That effort must now be intensified for the sake of all inhabitants, not only of Western Asia but also in the USA and around the world.
-Mazin B. Qumsiyeh, PhD is the author of “Sharing the Land of Canaan: Human Rights and the Israeli/Palestinian Struggle.” He served on the faculties of Duke and Yale Universities.
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Hebron – Ma’an – A gang of Israeli settlers set two Palestinian homes ablaze in the old city of Hebron on Sunday evening and a settler car ran over a 22-year-old Palestinian citizen, Noman Fawwaz Nazir, on Al Shohada Street, in the city centre.
Dozens of Israeli settlers gathered in the old market place in the centre of Hebron after the Israeli police distributed orders to evacuate two shops occupied by Israelis over six years ago.
Palestinian security sources informed Ma’an’s correspondent that a group of Israeli settlers stormed a mosque in the old market place and set fire to the building. They then set ablaze the home of local citizen Andurrahman Sammouh and another Palestinian house.
The settlers prevented the fire service from reaching the burning buildings.
Medical sources stated that Noman Fawwaz was admitted to Al Ahli Hospital, where he is being treated for the wounds sustained after being hit by a settler vehicle.
On the eve of the meeting to be held between Palestinian President Abbas and Israeli PM Olmert, director of Peres Peace Centre, Ron Bandak, called for the two leaders to find solutions to the problem of settlers in Hebron and evacuate them from the area.
Bandak told Ma’an’s correspondent in Hebron “we believe in partnership with the Palestinians and they cannot be strong unless they have their own state.”
Later on Sunday evening, dozens of Israeli settlers attacked the Palestinian homes near the Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba. They threw Molotov cocktails and stones at the buildings. Israeli soldiers seized five assailants, but there remains an atmosphere of high tension in the city.
Staffordshire University students union twins with Palestine Polytechnic (Hebron). Staffordshire University Students Union passed a motion to twin their Students Union with Palestine Polytechnic (Hebron).
In an identical motion to the one passed by Action Palestine in Manchester University the motion stated that students in Palestine have had their right to education consistently denied by the Israeli Occupation: checkpoints, attacks on Universities and limitations on movement which seriously hinder the ability of students in Palestine to learn and that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights declares that everyone has the ‘right to education’.
The union will now lobby Staffordshire University to provide at least 3 scholarships to Palestinian students who wish to study at the Staffordshire University as well as to support the Palestinian students in their “Right to Education†campaign and for their basic Human Rights within the territories of mandate Palestine and refugees.