Testimonies
Searching and Capturing of Houses
Representative
Rank: Staff Sergeant Unit: Orev elit unit, Nahal brigade Place of incident: Hebron Description: It was Hanukah, December 2002. Our other team was away, taking part in the Shirutrom TV broadcast [annual fund-raising event for IDF soldiers] in Jerusalem. So they somehow managed to assemble a team, though not a complete one. In the afternoon they suddenly told us to go into a Palestinian house, they don’t know for how long, they don’t know anything. Before we left for this house, we found out it was a house in Hebron we’d already taken possession of before for a period between two and four weeks. We entered the house in the evening without really knowing what we were doing there. A couple of hours later they told us a TV team is coming to film us. At about 9 PM a team of the IDF Spokesman’s Filming Unit came by and brought us some doughnuts.
Five minutes before their arrival the company commander briefed us. We were fully equipped and dressed to the teeth. He told us to be “representative” and “avoid talking about our activities” and most important “not to show the slightest sign of being worn out or fed up”. And then the TV team told us to pose like this and like that with the doughnuts … Smile, all of us, some of us... They brought a Hanukah candlestick for us to light and filmed us. The team stayed with us for maybe ten minutes, and they said they would send the videocassette to all the channels.
I know they showed it on the midnight newscast of Channel 2 – how “IDF soldiers celebrate Hanukah in Hebron”… You know how it is. The next afternoon we left that house, even though we had been ready since morning: They simply started throwing stones at us and disrupting order so we delayed our leaving.
The most surreal thing about this story is that I don’t remember any attempt on the part of the commanders to explain in the briefing or in any other way what was the idea behind the whole thing [getting into that Palestinian’s house]. You know – no purpose, no assignment orders as was usual. That’s what quickly led us, the team, to the conclusion that we were sent there that night just for the TV show.
Searching and Capturing of Houses
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