Breaking the Silence › Testimony - You force people the age of your grandma out of some tin shed where they live
You force people the age of your grandma out of some tin shed where they live
testimony catalog number: 852350
unit: Judea Regional Brigade
area: Hebron area
period: 2012
We
went to Umm al-Khair, which is right up next to [the settlement of]
Carmel, we went there for a demolition. We demolished a shed or two in
there. You get an order about what to demolish, you coordinate it with
the brigade, and you do it. Every demolition we do, you bring people to
move stuff and you carry the contents out, put them at a distance from
the demolition site, take footage inside and around the empty structure
that we’re going to destroy. We walk through the structure to see that
there’s nothing valuable left inside of it, or anyone inside it, and
only after that we demolish it. Any claims that goats were killed, that
things like that were destroyed – are total fabrications, I tell you
this with certainty. I don’t agree with the demolition activities, and I
think that in most cases they are wrong – simply not humane. Would I
say that I’m at peace with what I did while I was in the army? No. But
would I say that we adhered to working according to the protocols, down
to the smallest detail? Yes, we did. We adhered to them and we knew
them, and there had already been cases that the civil administration was
sued because it demolished and wrecked things by accident. No structure
was demolished with its contents still inside, ever. We never
demolished a single house without clearing out its contents first. [One
time,] we went to Umm al-Khair, and there was a disagreeable demolition.
The village’s sheikh, he lay there in front of the tractor, and we had
to get the border police to pull him away, there was cursing and
yelling. In the end he came up to us and asked, “Do you hear the
tractors working in the new neighborhood in Carmel? What’s that?” And we
told him, “They’re building with an approved plan, you aren’t.” He
goes, “Does that sound just, to you?” And we told him, “That’s the way
it is.” And you know that the new neighborhood was indeed approved, and
it had a plan and they were working according to the plan and
everything, but that man, who lives five meters from their fence and is
illegal according to the administration’s definitions, that’s
unpleasant. It’s a difficult situation, a bad situation. You force
people the age of your grandma out of some tin shed where they live,
onto a pile of rocks, and it breaks your heart. But what can you do
about it. 
This testimony appears under these categories: House demolitions/razing
This testimony can also be read in Hebrew
Israeli soldiers talk about the occupied territories
