Hello.
I am a newcomer to DailyKOS. I write here as I once considered myself liberal, and still have a few of those streaks left in me.
I am an Israeli, and served in the IDF from late 1999 until 2005 . I am still a reservist and "get around", so to speak.
I write here because I want others to know what I have experienced, and to tell about the day to day of the conflict.
I hope you will enjoy your read.
Eyal
A bit of background:
I was born and raised in central Israel. One of my parents had an American background so I got to learn english pretty well. In high school I was fine with the sciences, but preferred History.I joined the IDF in late 1999, watched from the sidelines at the unilateral withdraw from lebanon in May 2000, and enjoyed five months of the collective Israeli feeling of "bliss" until october 2000.
By October 2000 we had completed our most of our training, and the second Intifada broke out. I served in a combat role until I was injured (Bicycle fall busts ankle while on leave - nothing dramatic). By then I had experienced the nightly arrests, the raids, the roadblocks, and the seething fury and hatered directed in return. I stayed in the service (Heb-"Keva"), moved through various support roles, and saw the day to day of the occupation, the arrest, the planning and execution of targeted killings, the treatment of the population, the prisoners, the suicide bomber industy/society, the fear on the streets, the closed shops, the tears of funerals, and the islamic cult of death - Shahada.
An arrest goes wrong
The time was June 2002. "Defensive Shield" was about two months past us, and we were sent into the "Suicide Capital" Jenin to make an arrest. A suicide bombing requires several links in a chain: An explosives maker, a belt provider, a transport coordinator, a bomber-recruiter and, of course, the recruit. It takes planning and people with the know-how. The IDF policy was to capture terror supporters from across the board, going after all the links, interrogating them, finding out who they knew and going after them too. Israelis had been killed by the hundreds in the previous months, and we felt that every successful arrest was another life saved.
An arrest is a certain affair: getting the men together, intelligence briefings, ops planning, logistics, radio frequency calibration, weapons checks, beurucratic authorizations for the company (Heb-"Pluga") commander , battalion(Heb-"Gdud") commander, and brigade (Heb-"Hativa") commander. We usually went out at platoon (Heb-"Mahlaka") or "Pluga" stregth. Of course we had reinforcements on backup, and air support was usually a radio call away. This time we were going in small and fast.
We crammed into our vehicles and left our base after midnight, and got to the designated house. I was quite the 'veteran' (Heb-"Vatik") by then, and was commander of a 4 man squad (Heb-"Hulya"). We pulled up and fanned out around the house. The man we were after was an Islamic Jihad explosives maker. The intelligence guy had briefed us on how to recongnize him (Hint - burn scars, lack of one arm, half an ear... this guy had to learn from very bad explosives experience). He was supposed to be alone and unarmed. In fact we hailed him to come out with his hand up, he and another IJ guy opened fire. We wanted him alive for questioning, and he had women or children inside to we did no want to shoot. So began a
standoff. After a few hours a D9 (armoured bulldozer) was called up (There goes small and fast...). With his house collapsing around him, his family yet unharmed, the guy was about to give in, but dawn was also coming up. Given our NVG's we preferred nighttime, but that was a luxury that we did not have this time around. My Lt. sent me and my hulya to check our exit route, as with daytime came the gunmen.
Jenin and most other palestinian towns are really messed up. winding alleys and dead ends, tight quarters and sewage in the streets, you never know where a bomb might be hidden, and every window can contain a sniper. Anyways we went a few dozen meters from the main force to scout our departure route out for IED's (Heb-"Mitanei Tsad") and gunmen. My hulya took positions after me. I was already on the next alley point, and one of my guys was crossing. I saw something move on my side, and shots went out. The gunman saw two of my guys, shot, missed, they took cover. He did not see me and proceeded to change position. I took aim. Legit shot. He broke cover and started running. I aimed, and stopped. He wasn't running alone. Three kids, about 9 to 12 years old, ran around him and with him to give him cover. The range was fair. Had I taken the shot my chances were about 50/50 to hit. I saw the kids, and missed on purpose, but scaring all four enough to get them off the street and for my guys to take decent cover.
I ordered my guys for a sudden short gunfire burst in the general direction of the street - aiming at plain walls. This both masked our number, and naturally the gunmen ahead of us would return fire. The return fire was of one gunman only. His previous run across the street and a quick scan showed no IED signs. I thus returned to the Lt. and told him that there we could leave that way as the chances of IEDs being planted after we showed control of the intersection to be small. By then the prisoner was in custody. I sat with him in the armoured truck , he was blindfolded. I asked him his name (only as debrief prep, we knew he was our guy), and he said in hebrew "Od kama dorot, naharoh et kulchem, ad hayeled ha'aharon" in heavy arabic accent (arab accent replaces "g" sounds with "b" sounds, for example) the translation is "In another few generations, we will kill you all, to the last child". Another soldier in the truck knocked him out. We left Jenin that morning and returned to base, where he was handed to the ISS for questioning.
Was it wasnt the first time it had happened. What was the right thing to do in that situation? Other times soldiers were in much greater peril in such events, and each one of us made his reasoning, according to rules and regulations.
The Myth
The main point I wanted to make here was about a myth. The genocide myth. I have read this claim from several posts. These posts claim that what we were doing is genocide. Quoting all kind of strange legal stuff from different treaties. Twisting the letter of law against the spirit of law.
Most of my grandparent's entire extended families were wiped out in the Holocaust. My grandmother (mom's side) still wakes up at night with dreams of starvation. When I was a kid I wasn't allowed to leave any food on the plate at my grandmother's house. we had to eat it all. My grandmother's cousin was one of only two survivors of a nazi death treanch. all 37,000 jews of his district were wiped out by machine gun fire over three days. he played dead with a flesh wound and climbed out of the pit at night. He eventually, after mourning his wife and children, escaped from europe to the USA.
For 1000 devilish days the nazis averaged 6000 jews killed every day. To the last child. Torture. Starvation. Dehumization. Horror of unspeakable savagery and death by gas, gun, and popular support. Undescribeable in scope, in execution, in collective collaboration. Incompareable to any other mass killing of human history (and yes, I know armed conflicts have killed 130 million people in the last 100 years)
My point
As a soldier and and NCO, I want through this diary today and in the near future to say out loud: Were we, are we, heavy handed? Yes. Is this war? yes. Did we in fact carry out mass killings? No. Is deliberate harm to civilians our policy or intent ? No. Is there malicious, genocidal or murderous intent in our actions? No.
Harm to civilians a terrible result of the occupation, even if we try not to. We have an even worse time because the entire population is organized against us, with heavy haterd.
Our rules and regulation had us considering minimizing civilian harms in every route, from each corporal to the brigade commander who ordered raids with high civilian harm risks canceled.
about 5000 palestinians and 1500 Israelis had been killed in the conflict in the past 6 years. It is a bleeding, disgusting conflict, but not a genocide. In sepetember 1970 the Jordanians killed 10,000 palestinians in one month. Syria in 1982 in Hama killed 20,000 of its own citizens in two weeks. Iraq...enough said. Horrible Conflicts? yes. Genocide? no.
A bit for next time
We are the occupiers. the occupation is a beurocratic, rules and regulations, road, fence, sewage, tree, paperwork and barrier behemoth. We have on occasion hit thumbtacks with jackhammers. The occupation has poisonend the soul of my nation, sapped our strength and sense of self righteouness. We have made disasterous policy decisions (and non-decisions). However, he have not lost our morality of humanity. Genocide has not and will not be done by us. We have morals and emotions - we have a sense of reasonability, of risk management, of confronting and fighting those who would have us dead.
It is the other side I fear. In their eyes I see hatered that is so deep, that regardless of how it came to be, does seek mass murder, and fueled by ultimate, unrelenting, totalist destructive ideology and day to day hate education.
We have suffered horrible deliberate slaughter of civilians in homes, buses, coffee shops and restauraunts.
I heard them calling for our elimination in mosques, they have told it to me in my face, and I see their leaders saying it in arabic on their TV channels. Historically - from the 1947 calls for "A massacre on a historic scale" to the May 1967 calls "To throw the jews into the sea" Caption the PLO and Hamas founding charters, and in the relentless Iranian/Hizballa/Hamas drive to our destruction via terror&nukes, the rise of radical Islam and its march forward across the middle east, The total incompetence of the leadership of the Israel&The West, I truly fear for our collective future.
To sum things up
Genocide is a special term, used to describe the horrors of the Holocaust of world war II, of Rawanda in 1994. Do not cheapen it with false allegations, legal tongue twisting, and psycho-babble comparisons.
More conflict stories and thoughts next week.
Until next time,
Eyal