Soldier: So there’s a school there. We’d often provoke riots there. We’d be on patrol, walking in the village, bored, so we’d trash shops, find a detonator, beat someone to a pulp, you know how it is. Search, mess it all up. Say we’d want a riot? We’d go up to the windows of a mosque, smash the panes, throw in a stun grenade, make a big boom, then we’d get a riot.

 

Interviewer: And the locals were praying at the time?

 

Soldier: Yes, possibly. Everything goes. It’s best, in the middle of prayers. That annoys them the most. You know what it’s like. Soldiers are bored. They want action. Some are already waiting for the Palestinians outside, to fire rubber ammo as soon as they come out. Once we came – actually this was not planned – one of our guys went up to the window of the mosque, smashed it, and suddenly a riot broke out . So we came, shot rubber ammo, and they all scurried back inside. So a soldier went up and threw a gas canister inside.

 

Interviewer: Into the mosque?

 

Soldier: Sure. Can you imagine what sort of riot broke out there? I tell you, I never saw one like that. In Hebron we were provoking them like crazy. Then the company commander was alerted, the command jeep, because we needed more permission for these riots. The commander arrived, and said: 'Look for this and that, shoot at the knees.’ We had a screwed up company commander, a real Arab-hater, too. We went out and there was this terrific riot, cement blocks were thrown at us from rooftops, everything. I had never seen such a riot in Hebron. You know, they’d get really upset at us when we threw stun grenades into their holiday prayers. So the commander got annoyed, stopped, froze everyone, just when all the Palestinians want to come back from the mosque. He wouldn’t let anyone through. Old people want to get home – nothing moves. It’s already 11 p.m., they’ve been standing there for some four hours. People are getting really nervous. He goes: 'Okay, marksmen, up on the roofs. Soon Molotov cocktails will be flying.’ We were waiting for this. He says: 'Wait, they’re getting annoyed.’ He is used to annoying people: 'Give them time, we’ll warm them up.’ Some begin to push. He picked up stones, threw them at people, said: 'No one gets through.’ A car came. He picked up the blocks that had been thrown from the rooftops, and boom boom, smashed the car. 'Get out of here, fuckers!’ Smashed the whole thing. Lights, everything. Left nothing whole. Crazy.

 

Interviewer: How did the riot end?

 

Soldier: It was a big one. We fired a lot of rubber ammo. A lot. Every time we’d catch Arab kids, hold them like this, with stones, like retards. You know, so that the others would throw stones at them, not at us.

 

Interviewer: Turn them into human shields?

 

Soldier: yes.

 

Interviewer: Did it work?

 

Soldier: Sometimes. Depends how much you provoke them. With the mosque it was a bit hard, because we were stoned from all directions.

 

Interviewer: The kids don’t want to run away? Don’t manage to get away?

 

Soldier: You know how badly beaten they get? You catch them, push the gun against their body, he can’t make a move, he’s totally petrified. He only goes: 'No, no, army.’ You can tell he’s petrified. He sees you’re mad, that you couldn’t care less about him and you’re hitting him really hard the whole time. And all those stones flying around. You grab him like this, you see? We were mean, really. Only later did I begin to think about these things, that we’d lost all sense of mercy.