North Macedonia (Brussels Morning Newspaper), The Biden administration is considering imposing sanctions on units in the IDF implicated in war crimes. This brought back long-repressed memories about my own experience.
In 1979, just shy of my 18th birthday, my exasperated parents delivered me to the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) and forgot all about me. A clerical blunder regarding my medical records led to 3 months of boot camp infantry training in the then-infamous Golani Brigade.
In 1979, with the first stirrings of peace between Israel and Egypt, my battalion was sent to Halhul, a city north of Hebron, notorious for its anti-Israel sentiments and actions, including terrorism against civilians. We were meant to restore order in the wake of unrest owing to the imminent rapprochement with Israel’s hitherto most substantial enemy.
The war crimes commenced almost instantly at the explicit behest of the highest echelons of the IDF who visited our unit frequently. My commanders ordered us to torture the men in the city, regardless of status or age. A lot of creativity and inventiveness went into these sessions.
Every evening, we would circulate in the city in couples, armed with M-16s, among the groves and narrow streets and pick up dozens of denizens. We would bring them to our headquarters – a house on a hill that we had appropriated – and then proceed into a nightlong of sometimes life-threatening and relentless abuse.
Miraculously, I found myself tethered to S.G., a high school classmate. Together, we devised a code and documented meticulously, in two pocket-sized notebooks, every act and proceeding of the systematic degradation and attempted murders of the terrified, yet defiant locals.
A month later, having witnessed the death of an elderly man who was coerced into consuming a gigantic can of jam, I deserted the unit and traveled to Tel Aviv. It was a perilous trip, all on my own, in hostile and murderous territory, hitchhiking my way back to Israel. And there was the crime of desertion, of course. But I couldn’t act otherwise.
I finally made it. 48 hours later, unkempt and unshaven, I reported to the “Green House”, the seat of the IDF’s military court in Jaffa.
I was immediately seen by a military prosecutor and spent an entire week being deposed and deciphering the two incriminating notebooks.
I was placed under the protection of the Military Police and accommodated in the barracks of a transportation base, there to await the trial.
Based on our testimonies – mine and S.G.’s – the bulk of our battalion has been detained. We had to testify against them in a closed court session, an experience as terrifying as hitchhiking through the West Bank. My life and the lives of my family members were threatened repeatedly.
Despite our clearcut eyewitness accounts, the perpetrators were sentenced to a mere 6 months in prison. I knew what awaited me when they were freed, so I asked to be reassigned to the Air Force, where I spent the remainder of my military service as an instructor of math and physics to fledgling pilots.
Make what you will of this true story, which I have kept a secret to this very day. On the one hand, the unequivocal crimes were egged on by the top command at the time. On the other hand, the courage of two teenage soldiers who blew the whistle. On the third hand, the lenient sentence, a mere slap on the wrist, for dozens of offenses, up to and including murder. Not a black-and-white picture. Nothing in life really is.
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