If anyone would have told me 20 years ago that in the future I would advocate for Palestinian rights I would have thought he or she is ridiculing me. Growing up in a fervent nationalist and religious home in Jerusalem, in which part of what was considered a proper education is taking us to demonstrations against any political settlement with the Palestinians, in support of settlements in the West Bank, and frequent visits to the Israeli settlements in the West Bank, I strongly believed in Israel's impeccability, high moral standing as well as in the hostile and murderous intentions of Palestinians. In fact, it was not that Israel was not right, but that it was not right wing enough. If the same person would have claimed the same 10 years ago, I would have become offended and insulted. I believed that Israel was the land which belonged to the Jewish people only, that Palestinians were nomads who did not originate from the land, that they were an angry and restless mob of people who desired to kill Jews and that they could therefore be stopped by force only.
As I became a teenager and began to question the narrative with which I was brought up, I thought that a two state solution made more sense for the sake of peace. Division seemed a way to ensure both sides will be happy and a rational choice. Yet being an avid reader of the Israeli newspapers and taking its commentators at their word, I thought that Israel was ready for a compromise but Palestinians never were. I also believed the IDF was a moral army.
At age 15, while volunteering in an emergency room of the Shaare Zedek medical hospital in Jerusalem, I brought in a wounded person following a suicide bomber attack in Ben Yehuda Street. He died shortly after. This experience logically left a strong impression on me. I thought it was a clear sign that Islam commanded people to kill as many infidels or Jews as possible and that in the face of such irrationality only defense through the use of arms is possible.
Although I had plans to leave for the US at age 18, since I had a strong motivation to explore the world and receive a broad education, I felt I had a moral burden to join the Israeli army and stop suicide bombers from carrying out similar attacks. I could not escape my responsibility, I thought. Just as many soldiers risked their lives and died to protect me, now it was my time to do my part, I believed. At age 18, I volunteered, although I was not obliged to, to serve in an infantry combat unit where engagement in confrontation was highly likely. The training was quite difficult and the sudden lack of freedom and time to read was quite painful but I learned to develop my physical powers to a degree I did not imagine possible through the power of will. Years later, I could not help but not take pride to having served in the Israeli army, having overcome the many physical and mental challenges such a training posed.
However, along with the training came the indoctrination. We were taught to obey our commanders blindly, were given a strong sense of purpose as defenders of our nation from terrorism and believed we have achieved a strong camaraderie with one another.
After going through basic and advanced training, I was sent by my commanders to become a combat medic and was then sent to the Jordan Valley around October 2002. As a young soldier, I had no idea it was occupied illegally by Israel. We were given the impression it half-way between the West Bank and Israel with its status unclear and without too many Arabs. The Jordan Valley was perceived as a rather peaceful area, yet we were told to be on tight guard and prevent the infiltration of terrorists from Nablus via the Valley. Little did we realize at the time that it was occupied illegally and that the question of Israeli sovereignty in the area would become a central issue in Israeli-Palestinian talks a decade later, while all signs point to the possibility that the Jordan Valley will remain a stumbling block for any potential two state solution.
The six months of training we received prepared us for a conflict with a neighboring country's standing army or for arresting and stopping suicide bombers. We were never given an idea of what our actual duty would be. In one of the first days since we were stationed in the Valley, we were given a mission to enter an empty home in the Palestinian village of Bardale located near route 90. From the roof we could see children playing, mothers hanging their laundry and wandering sheep. There was no physical danger to us. Yet we were standing on top of the roof of an empty house, our guns ready and loaded in our hands for any possible incident. "What are we doing here?" "This is a real occupation", I thought first, then mustered the courage to whisper to a friend several hours later. He agreed, but we did not know what we could do. As soldiers we were trained and indoctrinated to follow orders. Being a soldier means giving up a large degree of personal choice, as well as the possibility to reflect independently on things. The lack of sleep and complete lack of freedom mean one must listen to one's commander and will do so with a perverse relief of having one making decisions for him.
Only later, did we realize that our goal in the village was to show our presence and intimidate the villagers since a year earlier, someone in that area, though not necessarily from that village, fired on a private car of a settler's road, and murdered a nearby female resident of one of the settlements. Our goal in the following months was to tour the village and harass its residents as much as possible.
First, we had to man checkpoints at the entrance to a village, stopping every car that went in and out and checking the documents of its passengers. We could barely sleep and spent 8 hour shifts at the checkpoint while gaining 8 free hours immediately after in which we could do eat, sleep or read. In various occasions, Palestinians who passed by us who did not have permission to continue since they did not live in the village were told by our commanders to return and go via a different route. I later understood that Palestinians who did not live in the Valley were not allowed to drive through it, and that we served as a mechanism to ensure the Valley is isolated from the West Bank.
We would enter the village of Bardale at night, search homes and enter schools at day while children were studying. Our goal was to show our 'presence' and therefore scare off Palestinians from attacking Israelis. Our commander would go in with 3-4 soldiers, who would walk into homes, search them, throw a sound grenade next to a family on occasions and point barrels directly at old men and women. We were not stopping terrorists but occupying a village and terrorizing its residents. I was quite uncomfortable doing all this. It was clear to me from the first day that this was wrong and illogical and that we were in fact occupying innocent people. Yet the group dynamics of a army unit are as such, that most soldiers tend to follow orders, both due to fear of being isolated by the rest of the soldiers with whom one naturally spends all his time, and due to the psychological tendency to trust and obey the commander in charge, a tendency reinforced by 6 months of intense training and a process of indoctrination. In addition, we felt the height of excitement of being brave soldiers who protect our nation from terrorism, with a strong sense of heightened self-assuredness and extravagant and self-righteous self-confidence reinforced by frequent talks by our top commanders. On my part, I obeyed my commanders while trying to do the minimum, having believed that if the other soldiers would be there instead of me, the situation would have been worse. I was too weak at the time to stand up for my own rights and for the rights of others, having been eager to please and fearful of confrontation. However, I tried to do the minimum, and am lucky for the fact that I never beat or abused physically one of the people we occupied, nor did I wound or kill anyone due to a rare and fortunate circumstance of events.
We never found any weapons, but we continued to harass the families of Bardala, eventually occupying several vacant homes there and remaining there for days on end. Our commanders would instruct us to enter schools, search children's books for pictures of suicide bombers, enter private homes in the middle of the night and search them. We also waited at the other entrance of the village for people who try to enter it by foot, who would then find us emerging from our hiding places and telling them to return back. Yet, despite this senseless abuse, I still did not consider leaving the military. I naively believed firmly that the day would come when we will actually stop terrorists and everything will be worthwhile. I also was brainwashed to believe that the Israeli army was a very moral army and that our abuses were an exception to the rule. Little did I know that in fact, in comparison to other occupying units, we were lucky in that we were not involved in heavy fighting as took place in Jenin and Nablus during the height of the Second Intifada.
In the following weeks and months, the situation intensified and deteriorated. We were given the order to patrol Tubas by jeep at night with the hope of attracting Palestinian fire so we can respond and kill the shooter. The gunman did fire at our jeep, and we disembarked and fired back. However, the gunman managed to escape and no casualties resulted. During Operation Resolute Path ("Derech Nechusha"), we went on to occupy for a week the cities of Tubas, Tamun and Taysir. We once again occupied a large house whose family was evicted, searched countless homes in vain search for desired weapons and expected gunmen to shoot at us at any given moment, an event which never took place. On a separate occasion, we occupied the village of Auj