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Home » Soldiers »

Testimony - "Things happen, what can you do?"

 

Name: Anonymous
Rank: First Sergeant
Unit: -
Location: Nablus, West Bank
Date: 2005-2006
 
A former Israeli soldier provides a testimony to Breaking the Silence in which he describes how they were authorised to shoot to kill anyonw throwing a Molotov cocktail and how a fellow soldier accidently shot a child during a riot.
 
Soldier: Riots we’re in – we were told to shoot, of course, if anyone throws a Molotov cocktail. If we detect someone like that, we should fire in his direction. If someone heats things up you can shoot either very close to him or to his legs or something like that.
 
Interviewer: Who decides that someone is heating things up?
 
Soldier: That’s the point. There isn’t anyone. I remember the guys next to me, all those fanatics who see all the Palestinians there as heating things up.
 
Interviewer: And then what: Live ammunition or means for crowd dispersal?
 
Soldier: We had means for crowd dispersal, but for us at the firing positions with our normal weapons, there’s one guy with these means, but, you know, once we had a real serious riot. Everything was thrown at us, we were shot at from all directions. You hear the shots as if they’re one meter away from you and have no idea where they’re coming from. You don’t know who, you can’t see, it is probably above you or from the sides and you can’t see a thing.
 
Soldier: How many soldiers were you?
 
Interviewer: We were six guys inside an armored jeep, and there were a bunch of other guys there. The whole battalion.The whole recon unit. And we were forced to be there because one jeep got stuck there and we had to stick it out. There were attempts to haul the jeep out, and the whole time all of Nablus was on its feet. There were four guys killed that evening. Or that day, rather.It was already morning.
 
Interviewer: Four guys from your unit?
 
Soldier: No, four Palestinians. I remember there was a real crowd next to us, rocks were being thrown at us. You die, I remember acting dead in order to do something to make them stop, get away, run away from us. The guy next to me fired at the ground to make them run away, and the he goes: 'Oops!’ I look and see a kid bleeding on the ground and the crowd indeed was gone. The kid lay on the ground, bleeding. I think he was still alive. I don’t know what happened to him afterwards, whether he was killed or not. I do remember him being removed. And four Palestinians were killed that day. No one spoke to us about this. There was no inquiry.
 
Interviewer: That whole episode began with a jeep that got stuck and needed to be hauled out?
 
Soldier: We were on our way back when a jeep got stuck, turned on its side. We had to haul it out. Of course, everyone stayed. And that brought on the biggest riot I’ve ever experienced, and I’ve been in plenty of them. We were shot at and explosive charges were thrown at us from all directions, and boulders, stones, refrigerators, dishwashers, everything was thrown at us – anything they had. I remember that I couldn’t even urinate from all that stress. We were in that riot for some 10 hours. A long time.
 
Interviewer: Out in the street or indoors?
 
Soldier: Yes, from inside the vehicle. I believe he aimed at the legs or next to the kid. Could be he didn’t hit him with the bullet but that it ricocheted. But the kid was lying there bleeding. So … He also said to us, like: 'Don’t tell.’ No one talked to us about this. No one asked anything. Well, okay, a riot, so things happen and what can one do. Those guys throw Molotov cocktails at us so we have the okay to shoot to kill.
 
Interviewer: Regardless of their age?
 
Soldiers: Regardless.
 
Interviewer: How was he with this afterwards, the guy who shot the kid?
 
Soldier: I remember saying to him: 'I’m sure you’re really upset about this.’ I didn’t want to intervene, really. But I was actually the only one on my team who was bothered by such things. And I don’t bring them up too much, didn’t say too much.
 
Interviewer: How was a riot normally dispersed?
 
Soldier: Mainly with means for crowd dispersal: teargas, rubber ammo. Also when shooting rubber, one should aim at the legs, not at the center of mass of the body. Always. But at some point we were told: 'If you realize you have to use live ammo, go ahead and use it.’ So of course we first shoot in the air, or at a wall, or at the ground, and there are cases where shots are fired and hit the target either unintentionally or on purpose. But dispersal in general? Mostly teargas. Essentially these guys also don’t want to get too close. I do remember that we fired, they were about five meters from us. Suddenly we saw someone come out of a stairwell holding this giant rock and, boom!, he throws it, and that rock hits our vehicle. It’s scary, suddenly you don’t see a thing. They get close and they you use everything you have and that’s it. That was a riot. A tough one. We had lots of those. It was just the longest, really the hardest. But there were plenty. Stones were thrown at us, shots were aimed at us, I remember that in nearly every mission I was on, every action that lasted till morning, we were shot at.