This article brought me back to my own bad days in Hebron. It has been a while since I wrote on this topic, but I am ready to write a bit more.
By the way, I wouldn’t say, as the author of the article does, that the settlers “do the governments bidding.” The settlers do whatever they please. They share common interests and work together intimately with the government and the army. Even when they are in suppossed conflict, they are actually playing “good cop/bad cop.” Sharon wants the settlers to go crazy so he can tell the world what a “great sacrifice” he is making moving some troops and settlers out of Gaza (if that happens).
The City of the Dead – Part 4 by Aron Trauring
Our “base” was located at the bottom of a hill. Up the road was the Kiryat Arba settlement. It wasn’t part of our patrol assignment, so we never went up that way.
Normally, even in other West Bank assignments, we would go to town to buy real food or soda to supplement the awful stuff the army gave us. But Hebron was such a powder keg, we would only go out to our patrol points and come back to the base, always watching our back. On a couple of rare occassions, when we did duty near the Cave of the Machpelah, we would go into the settler’s store to buy a can of soda. But we weren’t suppossed to and we always had to be on the look out for officers. Once we were caught, and our officers really cracked down. I suppose the army was concerned about settlers lodging complaints against some pissed off soldier making a nasty comment, so they tried to keep us as far apart from the settlers as possible.
In most other assignments, particularly in the West Bank, strangers driving buy would often stop and give us snacks, particularly before the Sabbath. Another reason for our growing hatred of the Hebron settlers is that they only were hospitable to soldiers wearing Kippot, if at all. The lack of real food was quite depressing, since our army rations in Hebron were particularly awful. Besides all the other crap we had to deal with, we were always walking around feeling hungry.
The building we were in was not far from one of the main thoroughfares in Hebron. Right around the corner from us was a bakery. On occassion, our officers would turn a blind eye and allow a few soldiers to go out and buy hot “bagels” and pitas. These bagels are not like the one’s associated with New York Jews. They are large and very fluffy, instead of being dense. They are coated with oil on the outside and sprinkled with sesame seeds.
Such bagels are often sold with little paper bags filled with zatar (a spice mixture containing sumac, thyme and salt). We would break off large chunks and dip the piping hot bagel into the zatar. Those Hebron bagels will always remain one of the most pleasurable culinary experiences of my life, and the only pleasant memory I have of that place.
Hebron was the only place we took seriously the day and night guard duty we posted at the front door of the “base” and on its roof. Roof duty was considered the more hazardous of the two. Several times bottles were thrown at the soldiers at the roof, filled with human feces. We used to joke about it, but I would have to say most of us would have prefered getting shot at, then being hit with one of those.
One night I woke up in the middle of the night, which was pretty unusual considering we were constantly over worked and over tired. In general, when we did have a chance to sleep, it was deep and dreamless. For some reason I glanced up at the door, and noticed, to my horror that no one was doing guard duty! Everyone else was soundly sleeping (except for the soldiers who were out on patrol). I went over to the duty list, to see who was suppossed to be at the door. It turned out to be the unit’s worst slacker, the guy who was always giving lame excuses to get out of patrol and guard duty. He was lying in his bed sound asleep.
I was extremely pissed, and pushed him out of his bed and onto the floor. He got up slightly dazed and asked me what I was doing. He refused to go back to the door. I started shouting at him, which woke up one of the officers, who, when I aprised him of the situation, almost physically dragged the guy to the door. Although we all tried to avoid doing work as much as possible, there always was a strong spirit of mutual support and camaraderie in our unit. The idea of shirking your duty and putting your fellow soldiers in danger was an unthinkable and unforgiveable breach of the unit’s norms of acceptable behavior. The guy was mercilessly harassed the rest of our stay. Not long after, he was kicked out of the army. That was actually what he wanted, so it wasn’t much of a punishment. But we were all happy when he didn’t return to our reserve unit the next year.
As is always the case with the army, sometimes orders come down without any apparent logic behind them. So despite Kiryat Arba being out of our region, one day I found myself in a jeep with one of my fellow soldiers, on our way to guard duty at the entrance of Kiryat Arba. We got dropped off without any specific instructions (par for the course), and were told we would be picked up in about four hours.
So we stood there at the entrance of town and mostly chatted with each other. He was a russian immigrant and more politically conservative than I was. Like typical Israelis, we quickly got into a heated though friendly political argument. We were soon joined by a Druze Border Patrol soldier, who was also there on duty and who joined in on our conversation.
Not far from us there was a young Palestinian boy hawking sabras. He was large and fat, though he couldn’t have been more than 13 years old. He seemed a bit developmentaly disabled. All of a sudden, the border patrolman called to the boy, in Arabic, and asked him to come over. Somewhat sheepishly the boy walked over to us. The soldier started asking him some questions, and then he noticed the boy was wearing a cloth bracelet. He yanked the boy by the hand and started shouting at him, pointing at the bracelet. It was obvious he was accusing the boy of something and the boy was denying it. All of a sudden the soldier slapped the boy hard twice across his face. The boy started blubbering and crying. The soldier shouted at him some more and then waved the boy away. The boy left us still sniffling and obviously totally humiliated.
During this whole exchange me and my fellow Russian comrade kept looking at each other in bewilderment. When the boy was slapped we both flinched. When he sent the boy away, the border patrolman noticed we were both extremely uncomfortable. So he explained to us that the bracelet the boy was wearing was the colors of the Palestinian flag — red, white, green and black. As I have noted earlier, getting Palestinians to remove flags was one of our main duties when on patrol. Putting up flags was one of the Palestinians main acts of defiance. To him the explanation was obvious and he was very smug and proud of his actions. After that short explanation, the patrolman got into his jeep and drove off.
Me and my friend looked at each other for a moment, and then we turned our eyes away. We could still hear the boy snuffling not far from us. Then, my friend said over and over “He shouldn’t have done that. He shouldn’t have done that.”
In the course of my 50 years I have done some stupid things in my life. I have made big mistakes and little ones. I have done things some other people consider really wrong (writing this blog being one of them). But I don’t regret any of those. I paid for my mistakes, learned from them and moved on. I don’t care for the opinions of most people, so I don’t base my behavior on what other people think. The few people whose opinion I do care about, like me the way I am, flaws and all. But that incident encapsulates why I deeply regret my service in the Israeli army, why I still feel shame when I think about it. I have written elsewhere how I have reconciled myself to that regret. But I still feel particularly bad about this incident.
Other people might view this incident as trivial. No one was killed or even injured. So why does it bother me so much? I don’t feel bad that I didn’t stop the patrolman from hitting the boy. It happened so fast and was so unexpected, there was nothing I could have done. But what bothers me is that afterwards I didn’t say anything. Not to the patrolman. And not to the boy.
The most popular piece on this blog is the one entitled And Then They Came For Me. It’s precisely about speaking up when you see something wrong. When I wrote it, I had that incident in my mind. Not that it would have made any difference or changed the mind of that patrolman had I reprimanded him for his senseless violence. And perhaps my words of apology wouldn’t have lessened much the humiliation and pain that young boy felt. But it is precisely because I had to do so little to take a stand and that I risked nothing in doing so, that I feel particularly bad about it. I was given such a simple test that day and I failed.
Tags: City of the Dead, Feature, Hebron, Settlers