Soldier: Another episode took place on a patrol in a neighborhood parallel to Harsina neighborhood, north of Givat Ha’avot. We patrolled there and the kids yelled at us. Some of the soldiers, including the officer, were sensitive to this. I argued with them, I told them to just let those kids yell. They said: 'No, if they yell now, tomorrow they’ll throw stones. If they feel free, they’ll do anything they like and end up shooting at us.’ Their proof was that someone who was with us on patrol in another part of the neighborhood had a stone thrown at his neck, and the stone thrower disappeared.

 

Interviewer: How old were the children?

 

Soldier: 9-13 years old.

 

Interviewer: What did you do?

 

Soldier: We were five soldiers and a commander. We acted as though we were walking on. The commander called his deputy, telling him to take three soldiers and split up – break to the right and go around the children. The first time didn’t work. He told them: 'You’re such infants, you can’t surround them!’ He laughed at them. He took someone else and went to surround the kids. At this point, the kids sort of scattered. We tried to provoke them so they’d get closer and we’d be able to detain them.

 

Suddenly, we hear a noise coming from the direction we had come from and the commander gets on the radio: 'Get over here.’ We go to where he is and find out he’d caught one of those kids whose home was really close by. His father had just gotten home. The father claimed the officer had caught the kid and probably made him fall to the ground and dragged him. The father, a huge guy, scary, began to shout in fairly good Hebrew: 'What are you doing taking my kid?’ The officer yelled back at him to lower his voice, that’s what counted for him. Neighbors came, elderly people, trying to calm things down and explain them to the officer. The father was very worked up and the kid was half crying. The platoon commander, himself not in the greatest shape from the whole ordeal, got annoyed with the father, told one of the elderly guys to shut up, said: 'Lower your voice,’ to another.

 

I tried to help calm things down, too. I spoke with the older man and understood that he’d come to take care of the children. He said he’d tell their parents, beat up his nephew who was there and look to it that everything will work out alright and they’d never do it again. Everyone was so short tempered. Everyone wanted to show that they were in charge of the situation so no one listened to anyone and finally the old man insisted with the officer, spoke to someone and somehow made the officer listen to him. This was an attempt to heat things up and what bothered me most of all was that this became a kind of routine out there. If anyone as much as yelled at us, we’d stop and try to surround them. It happened mainly with that officer.

 

Interviewer: Is this something that happened repeatedly?

 

Soldier: Yes. Usually it didn’t work. In this case it turned into real chaos. A whole chaos with that family because the mother and grandmother both intervened. We’d try to provoke the children, stop cars, inspect people, check IDs of people so that kids would get closer and we’d surround them. Usually this didn’t work, the kids did not react to the provocation.