Soldier: “After my discharge, I was in reserves and we were on active duty. On one of our missions, someone threw stones, and then got arrested shortly afterwards, nearby. It was a kid from Ya’abad village. Really just a kid. Two, three days later we were supposed to go bother villagers there, go to his parents’ house and say: 'Your kid was arrested because he threw stones. Make sure this never happens again.’ And that’s what we did. We came at night, talked to his parents, and his brother who was a Palestinian Authority man. They didn’t even know that he had been arrested. They had no idea where he had been for three days, and that’s what I know.”

 

Interviewer: “How old was he, do you remember?”

 

Soldier: “I think he was 14-15. There was no point besides this. Our orders read to punish them a bit, motivate them to see to it that their kids wouldn’t ever do it again. That was the reason to enter the village. Wake up everyone around. So the thinking was didactic in that sense. Educate them to educate their kid.”