Reply #3: Testimonies - Routine

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Testimonies - Routine

Name: ***
Rank: First Sergeant
Unit: Nachal

The Battalion Commander would tell the Company Commander: your guys are in the territores, there is a "code red", what the say today in the US, and mangae. What do you mean "manage"? There still wasn't a seperation into areas, no rules of engagement. Everything is built slowly. How you deal with the fact that the arabs in the area are getting to you. It's like you decide, that until there isn't a constitution, then there is survival of the fittest. Who is giving orders, that doesn't matter. Whatever is decided will happen. If you are at a point when you think something is rigth, fire a round into Nablus, so you tell your Commander that you were fired at, and you shoot back. Tha'ts how your commander works as aweel, and he passes his ideas to the Battalion Commander, who probably also thinks that that is the right way to act.

"I did not think"

Rank: Staff Sergeant
Unit: 401 Armor unit
Description: What does “crazy mess in the territories” mean?

Crazy mess…I was in a combat division in which – how to say it in Hebrew? - "there was neither law, nor judge" in this division. Everybody does whatever he wants. And I, specifically, did whatever I wanted...

What is 2000cell?
2000 cell are 2000 machine-gun bullets. Out there they used to shoot at us a lot. Really: every day. Grenades, missiles, everything. So there was this order that every once in a while all weapons have to shoot towards a wall, so it doesn’t hit the houses or anything else. But the freedom that we’ve had…we fired a lot. And 2000 bullets, automatic fire, directed at the whole city, at houses and at doors, was something that everybody did, not just me. I do not know why I did it.
What were you thinking when you did it?
I do not know. I was with the gun. I did not think. In the army I never thought. And I used to come home and tell about it to my friends, which means I was not ashamed of it. Nothing. I did what I was told to do. And besides, everybody did it. That was the custom - officers and such, everybody knew. It never happened that they had told me to shoot here or there… and I would stop to think ‘what if’… First I took the shot; later, if I thought at all, it would always be too late. I never thought while I was doing that.

Unit: 50th battalion, Nahal
Place of incident: Hebron
Description:

An outpost in the heart of a Palestinian neighborhood, a whole floor in a Palestinian house.
In the post are a commander, two soldiers from the Hebron troop and two snipers.
During a reconnaissance of the Border Police 3 policemen arrived at the post and out of boredom shoot 3 gas grenades aimlessly into the town.

A Body a Day

Rank: First Sergeant
Unit: Armored Corps
Place of incident: Gaza Strip
Description:

the open-fire orders would constantly change. Meaning: there were times when – ‘Every person you see on the street, kill him.’ And we would do it. We wouldn’t think. We would just do it. I am talking about certain periods, not all the time. The first time we were deployed in Gaza there was a time when, say, at 1 am, we would have to go on an operation – to demolish some Palestinian police building. And the open-fire orders were: “Every person that is on the street – shoot to kill. Don’t mind whether he has or has no gun on him.” There were such cases. And at other times, only if the person had a gun, or… It would change from place to place. There were places like the fence, times when they would infiltrate… There were times when every person spotted in the general area of the fence, even if it was relatively distant …. ‘See him in the vicinity of the fence: shoot to kill’; not thinking twice about it. And I tell you we would do it. I wouldn’t begin in such a case to try to scare him off, or anything like it. In the end it got a lot calmer, for there were agreements and all. But at the beginning, at the early period of my basic training, each day, someone would have killed someone, or shoot an innocent person…

Did your commanders instruct you in briefing before operation that the open-fire orders were “Shoot in order to…”?

Yes. Commanders meaning: battalion commander and up.

On a routine operation, when fire is being shot, will there be an investigation?

It depends. Depends on the commander… first of all, there were these commanders who wouldn’t report nothing, anything; they ‘rounded the corners’ when it came to such things.