Breaking the Silence komt met bekentenissen over de mishandeling van kinderen

 Breaking the silence heeft een nieuwe collectie bekentenissen het licht doen zien. Breaking the silence is een organisatie van Israelische oud-militairen die - na hun diensttijd - hun hart luchten over hoe zij zich, als 'troepen die de orde moeten handhaven' in de bezette gebieden, hebben misdragen jegens de Palestijnen die zij eronder moeten houden. De nieuwe collectie gaat vooral over hoe kinderen worden mishandeld en heet 'Children and Youth - Soldiers Testimonies 2005-2011'. De volledige tekst is hier te vinden .
Ik heb een aantal fragmenten hieronder gekopieerd. Ik moet bekennen dat ik ze zelf alleen vluchtig heb gelezen. Ik word letterlijk misselijk als ik dit soort zaken lees en krijg heel verkeerde associaties. (Ik moet steeds denken aan die foto van Joden in Wenen die van de nazi's de staat moesten schrobben met een tandenborsteltje). De wetenschap dat de soldaten die aan het woord zijn zelf eerst dit soort dingen hebben gedaan alvorens ze - als een soort biecht die ze absolutie zou verlenen - naar buiten te brengen, maakt het er niet beter op. Natuurlijk is het beter dat Breaking the Silence bestaat dan dat het niet zou bestaan, maar op de één of andere manier zou ik toch graag willen dat de Israeli's die nu laten blijken dat het misschien niet deugde wat ze deden, dat eerder hadden bedacht.  

 
Joden in Wenen schrobben het plaveisel onder het toeziend oog van de SA en lachende omstanders.


1
"What is that job, really?"
Unit: Armored Corps
Rank: First Sergeant
 2005 Nablus 

We moved to the Ariel area, near Nablus. We were in charge of the entire road that crossed the West Bank from west to east, all the way up to the checkpoint at Tapuach Junction. Our designated mission was to prevent acts of terrorism. Simply handle the population. We would enter villages on a daily basis, at least twice or three times a day, to make our presence felt, and… it was like we were occupying them. Showing we’re there, that the area is ours, not theirs.
How is this done?
A patrol goes in, or two patrols, two hummers secured by a jeep, and raise hell inside the villages. A whole company may be sent in on foot in two lines like a military parade in the streets, provoking riots, provoking children. The commander is bored and wants to show off to his battalion commander, and he does it at the expense of his subordinates. He wants more and more friction, just to grind the population, make their lives more and more miserable, and to discourage them from throwing stones, to not even think about throwing stones at the main road. Not to mention Molotov cocktails and other things. Practically speaking, it worked. The population was so scared that they shut themselves in. They hardly came out. Earlier I recall a lot of cabs with people on their way to work near the main road. Then it hardly existed any more. The whole village shut itself in. This just shows what a company commander is capable of doing.
What level does this reach? What is he able to do? At first you point your gun at some five-year-old kid, and feel bad afterward, saying it’s not right. Then you get to a point where… you get so nervous and sick of going into a village and getting stones thrown at you. But it’s obvious, you’re inside the village, you’ve just passed the school house, naturally the kids will throw stones at you. Once my driver got out, and without blinking, just grabbed some kid and beat him to a pulp. And that kid was just sitting in the street and looked like some other kid, or wore another kid’s shirt, or perhaps he was that kid but that's not the point. He beat him to a pulp. Didn’t detain him. Just beat him. And I remember they had this pool hall. These were already the more ‘serious’ guys, the ones who throw Molotov cocktails. In order to get them out, detain and interrogate them, we’d catch them – my company commander caught a 12-year-old kid there once, and made him get down on his knees in the middle of the street. Yelled like a madman – it looked like some Vietnam War movie – so that the other guys come out or else he’ll do something really bad to them. He’d do something to that kid. I knew it was just a hollow threat, and after all the guy’s an officer, and I don’t think an officer would do anything, but…
 Actually shackled him?
He had a plastic shackle. I remember it was raining. We went in, and as usual stones were thrown at us. My communications man who runs fast caught this kid who supposedly threw stones, shackled him and took him to the company commander. Brought him back to this place in front of that pool hall.
In Arabic?
No, in Hebrew, very loud so that the kids from that club would come out so we could interrogate them. They didn’t come out on their own.
What did he yell at the kid?
He yelled at him to shut up and the kid cried of course… He also peed in his pants, in front of the whole village. He got him on his knees and began to scream in Hebrew, to swear at him: "Those fucking kids from the club should come out already!" "Get those whores out!" "Let him be scared!" "Look what I can do!" "I’ll show this kid." Finally the kids didn’t come out, but we always had in mind that image of the old Arab with his keffiya and stick. Regardless if there’s shooting or stones, no matter what, he’s a kid in the middle of the street. Kids and soldiers both would respect him. So this old guy comes along and somehow convinces my company commander to release the kid. And that’s how that episode ended.We got out of there. The next day two Molotov cocktails were thrown at the main road. So we didn’t really do our job. And you wonder what that job really is.

-----------------
About the use of 'rubber bullets'
Nablus 2006-2007
(.......)

When you begin getting hit with stones, you get out of the jeep?
No.
You shoot the rubber ammo from inside the jeep?
You shoot through the loophole.
Where do you aim? Do you choose some kid at random?
Yes. Choose someone, aim at his body.
Body?
Center of mass.
10 meters range at the center of mass?
I remember one time we put a kid down.We didn’t kill him but someone hit the kid in the chest and he fell and probably lost consciousness, or at least, it was pretty close. About 10 meters'.
Were you instructed as to how to use rubber ammo?
No. It’s like… There are rules. They tell you to shoot four. There’s this cluster of rubber bullets, pieces with four parts, packed in a kind of nylon. You can break it in two, so it’s stronger and flies further. As soon as it’s four it’s less strong and flies less far. We’d usually break it in half.
Is this something you were told to do? That if you want to achieve a longer range you break it in half?
No, we figured it out ourselves. It’s something that’s common knowledge in the army. People know about this. It’s not… When you use a weapon, you get to know it pretty well, I guess.
Just so you know, as soon as this pack is broken in half, it becomes lethal.
Really? Well, that’s what we did.
We did, too. As soon as the 'tampons' are separated, they’re lethal. The nylon must not be removed.
Not removed?!
No.
We barely fired a whole cluster, I mean four. It’s like you want to save ammo too.


"Boom boom"
Unit: Kfir Brigade
Rank: First Sergeant
Hebron 2006-2007
We haven’t mentioned the Jews in Hebron.
The Jewish shits.
They gave you a hard time?
Sure they did. But there’s nothing much you can do about the Jews there. What are you going to do? That’s the worst part. There are cases where you already wish you could beat them. For example, you know the "Worshippers' Path"? This Jewish kid walks along, an Arab kid passes by, boom, the Jew kicks the Arab kid in the face. If the Arab would hit him back I have to catch him and slap him on the face, see? The Jew is free to do whatever he likes.
Did you work with the Border Police?
Yes, they’re the worst shits. What we do is nothing in comparison to them. They didn’t give a damn, they go around breaking people’s knees just like that. I remember once some Arab was caught throwing stones, they put his leg up against the wall as he lay on the ground and, boom, someone just stepped on his knee. No mercy. I said: "Wow." I could never believe the level of cruelty I saw there, how could they…
We’d pass by on patrol, let’s say, and see them standing at the checkpoint, saying to someone: "Come here." Boom boom, hit him, kick him, and it’s just a kid. "Go on, don’t talk." "You’re talking? Get over here again." Boom, boom. Start a stopwatch and make him run back and forth. He has 20 seconds to get me a soft drink.
What, from the grocery?
Yes. Beat him to a pulp. And then the kid gets back: "He wouldn’t give me the drink." "What do you mean? Go tell him now that if he doesn’t give it to you, I’ll slaughter him." That’s how they’d speak to him.
In Arabic?
Of course. Lots of Arabic-speakers in the Border Police. Lots of Druze.

---------------------------
22
"A kind of game"
Unit: Reserves
Rank: ***
Ramallah 2011
On Friday morning we went out to the village. My platoon had to occupy two houses.We split into two squads. One force took the roof of a house, and the other took another roof. The residents of these houses already know that their houses will be taken over on Friday because they have a good lookout position over the village. We were told that the person who lives in the house we took over, the father, is a Palestinian policeman.We got to the house. He asked: "What do you want?" At first he tried to resist a bit. "Why are you entering my house? It’s my house." We said: "You are familiar with the procedure, we have no choice, we have to go in. We stand here on your roof every Friday." So he said: "Okay, go in." He resisted just a bit, he wanted to close some door upstairs first… And one soldier couldn’t hold back, of course, and saw this as resistance and immediately began to yell at him: "Shut up, what are you doing?", while the guy didn’t even intend to put up any resistance. He was really nice.
I mean, he was very meek. He didn’t really have a choice anyway. We came in, five soldiers, and the mother of that Palestinian policeman tried to resist a bit, too, and yelled at us why we were going up, it was their house. Except for that soldier who yelled, we were relatively okay. We spoke nicely to them, we said: "Listen, we didn’t come to mess up your house. Go ahead, lock up everything you need, finish, tell us and we’ll go upstairs." I mean, we treated them really well and as a result except for that yelling in the beginning, they were alright. Then we climbed up to the roof. It was around 10:30-11 a.m., and on the other roof, at a distance of about 300 meters from us, we saw the other force. And then nothing happened. One soldier with a teargas canister launcher, and other soldiers without anything but stun grenades, are on the lookout. The heat is intense, it’s July, the roof baking in the sun, they get bored. Once in a while they enter the stairwell where there’s a bit of shade – smoke, drink, eat, and go back. But in the meantime nothing happens. Absolutely nothing for about an hour. We’re on that roof and nothing happens. Then at some point we see two people suddenly going behind some house. We don’t know what they’re going to do,what their deal is, but two people were spotted so this was a great opportunity for the soldier with the launcher to fire some teargas in their direction. Then you see how from the other roof also, our guys, and really the Border Policemen downstairs, begin to fire teargas every two minutes in some direction, because they spotted someone walking. This means, that on that Friday, if you were a Palestinian and you didn’t want to get hurt, you couldn’t walk around in your village street from 11 a.m. If you turned, that already makes you suspect and you’d be targeted with teargas or a stun grenade or something. Then it starts – people run away from the gas and suddenly the Border Police see them running, so – oh, they’re running? Then they’re definitely suspect and so they, too, start firing gas. You look out from your rooftop and see this scene – from about three different posts teargas is being fired at various targets in the village. Nothing massive, but it is still starting to rain gas. Around 1 p.m. we hear the Muezzin sounding the call to prayer for about 15 minutes, and after that we‘re told over the radio: "Now the demonstration will begin." Usually after prayers they come out and then we really see the mosque, but we still can't see its entrance, and then we hear people chanting on the megaphone, very weakly. I didn’t see the people. Later I watched this on video. You really see it's nothing spectacular, maybe 20 people. Not some mass demo. 15-20 people. We couldn’t actually see the demonstration from our post, but I began to see that teargas was being fired at them from all directions.
Who was it, the other force?
Mainly the Border Police. The demonstrators were advancing towards them on the road so the Border Police began to throw teargas and more teargas in that direction.And that’s it. We hear that the demonstration stopped.
How much teargas do you think was fired that day?
A lot. Perhaps close to 100 rounds. Certainly many dozen, maybe over a hundred.But it's important for me to mention one more thing: The atmosphere among the soldiers is… It’s like some kind of game. Before Nabi Saleh, everyone wants to arm themselves with as much ammo as possible, so they’ll have plenty to fire. It’s for kicks. You have lots of stun grenades, eventually there’s nothing you can do with one, you have to throw it, so they’re thrown for the sake of throwing at people who are not suspected of anything.And in the end, you tell your friend at the Friday night dinner table: "Wow! I fired this much, you fired that much, I stopped this, you stopped that…" I mean, it's fun and games, elation, a chance for release and people just fire it all. That’s the experience. Around 2 p.m. the company commander ordered us to go downstairs, and it’s time to patrol the village on foot. So we gathered at a kind of village square, where there’s a grocery as well, people were sitting there having refreshments, so the commander asked the grocer to close up and go away. He did, of course. Then lots of Palestinians started coming, but it was actually mainly internationals, Israeli anarchists and so on who started coming. They didn’t demonstrate, didn’t throw stones or yell or anything. They just came and stood there. We were about 10 soldiers, and then the battalion commander’s front command group arrived, too, one of the brigade officers came with a document declaring the place a 'closed military zone,' and we told them in Hebrew and English both: "This is a closed military zone. Anyone who does not leave will be arrested." In fact there was no reason to arrest them, they were just standing there.
But if it’s a closed military zone you have to arrest them.
But they did nothing. We stood there, even spoke with them a bit. At that moment,things broke up: some soldier tried to grab someone so he ran away. There were little things, you heard a shout and someone was running, but it’s no incitement, nothing like that. Until the demonstrators decided they would not budge, and a guy who was a reservist, in fact a settler, from the auxiliary company, an older man who was a volunteer reservist, around 50 something, began to go berserk, and became really violent. He lost it. He grabbed women and threw them to the ground, grabbed press cameras and threw them in a sewer, broke them, and this was a real provocation. he touched some woman, and immediately guys jumped to protect her, so all the soldiers jumped them. Anyway, all hell broke loose just because of that one reservist who started it all because he came along and didn’t even wait. He was told he had to disperse them so he started hitting, kicking, and throwing anything that moved. Any Palestinian, anything. The press didn’t interest him, he simply went wild.
Really lashed out?
Yes. Lashed out, seriously. At some point the battalion commander told some officer to take that wild soldier and keep him away from the area. Send him back to the company. "I don’t want him here, don’t let him near." We also felt we overdid things. I noticed other soldiers were also feeling very uneasy. Because we were always being told this is exactly the kind of thing demonstrators are looking for, and here they got it from that berserk soldier. Later there was an inquiry, the company commander spoke and said: "That guy was not from our company but it is important to mention that it’s an exceptional instance, and if it were one of my subordinates I’d throw him out of the company straight away. Keep that in mind..."
How was this exceptional?
He spoke about values, said this was out of line… Around 3-4 p.m. we began to get people out of the village, either by arrest or by chasing away all the people who were not from the village itself. Anyone who was not a Palestinian had to leave. Then they began to hide in houses, so soldiers under command of our company commander began to search the houses. We reached a house, the commander asked to bring the owner out, we knew that about 20 anarchists had just entered it. He said: "What do you want me to do, stop them from coming in?" So the commander said: "Yes." He said: "I can’t keep so many people out." So the commander simply arrested the guy. Blindfolded and shackled him, took him into the jeep. Now this was the kind of arrest where the man is not taken to some detention facility because he wasn’t actually rioting or anything, he was simply taken to the 'Pillbox' Post and made to wait there until about 8 p.m. when everything was over and then he was returned to the village.
An older man?
Yes, about 50 years old. We walked the village, didn’t see any more people out because they hid inside the houses, came back to the main square, there was this father there, the grocer. He was with his many children and children’s kids – they spoke fluent Hebrew. Many boys were standing there with him. One of them, around 17 years old, annoyed one of the company commander’s staff.
Annoyed?
He smiled or something, so immediately an order was given to arrest two of the sons.
Why?
Because he smiled or something. First the father said, no, don’t arrest them. I’ll beat them up. They did nothing. Didn’t throw stones. So the commander said: ‘No, he was provoking us. He provoked a soldier of mine." And we simply took them, blindfolded, shackled, into the jeep and to the pillbox where they were made to wait for hours…
There was an Israeli press photographer who simply stood there. Wouldn’t leave. He was told: "This is a military zone, everyone has to leave!" I mean, leave how? They ran into houses. He wouldn’t, so the soldiers grabbed him by force, threw his camera on the ground, made him lie down, shackled him. He began to swear at them, he said: "You’re Nazis..." this and that. While he was shackled, he said: "Just get my camera inside my bag." His bag was on his back. So some soldier came to get his camera inside the bag. It was returned to him without the film. He was all dust, and treated violently, forced to the ground and his head hit the ground, and he wouldn’t give up, continued to curse the soldiers, out of frustration, ideological badmouthing.
But you said that at some point you were told to remove everyone who didn’t belong in the village.
Right, but we went around the houses and didn’t find them. We were playing cat and- mouse for about an hour. Then we said: "What, are we going to start "What, are we going to start a house to-house search?" So the commander said: "Let's go back to the central square, and if you see them outside, chase them, catch them." But we didn’t see those people. Outside were only Palestinians because they knew we wouldn’t arrest them if they weren’t holding stones. So we reached some house, the commander wanted everyone out to make sure no anarchists were there. One soldier was sent in to make sure there were no internationals there, and that’s it… Around 5 p.m., we had nothing left to do in the village so the commander took our force to the nearest pillbox. He said: "Wait here, if there’s anything happening you’ll be alerted, and if not, just wait in the pillbox. He said, take off your vests, make some coffee. In other words, there’s no assignment for you right now. As we went down to the pillbox from the village, on foot, one of the soldiers already had ammo in his barrel and the safety catch was off, so there was nothing left to do but fire. Now, if you’re a smart soldier you fire at some open ground – those soldiers weren't lacking. We went on and the whole time he kept saying: "What should I do with this?" So coming down from the village, there was no demonstration, nothing. There was this grocery and some kids hung around there, so when we passed them at some 200 meters away he decided to turn around and fire in their direction. He didn’t hit them but he was bored so he decided to waste the ammo in the direction of those kids who weren't connected to any incident. At the pillbox were the two detainees, and we had to watch over them. They sat quietly. The soldiers did nothing, we just talked amongst ourselves, and occasionally one of us ate a peach and of course threw the pit at a detainee. And occasionally I'd see someone go over to them and step on their balls, stuff like that. Little things, not harsh violence, or…
Stepping on their balls? That doesn’t sound like nothing.
Just lightly, to show him: "I’m still here." Or if he moved a bit because the position he was sitting in was was uncomfortable, then they'd yell at him: "Hey, don’t move!" and give him a little slap. But no violence, I mean not beating them up, or smashing their faces with rifle butts or anything. That’s it. Around 8 p.m. everyone came back from the village and we were told to fold up. We asked the company commander over the radio what to do with the detainees, and were told that they would be released. And I really saw them being taken, without the blindfolds, free to walk back to the village.