THOUGHTS ON TEAR GAS: A DOCUMENT FROM ISRAEL
Wieseltier, Leon
Beit Jallah is a lovely but restive town outside of Jerusalem, on the Bethlehem road. On March 21, 1978, students in Beit Jallah assembled to protest the Israeli incursion into Lebanon, begun...
...To arrest only when you have to, only when you're sure you must...
...Blind and thoughtless hatred...
...We didn't see anyone in the corridor...
...He felt that with this action he had restored quiet to the town...
...Here, we said right away, we can get back at them...
...There were disturbances...
...Basically, everybody told him that the conduct of the military government leads us to believe that in many cases orders should have been refused...
...The overwhelming demographic superiority of the native population, the inevitability of agitation and terrorism on the West Bank as Palestinian frustration grows, the mounting political costs among other nations for its reluctance to recognize the national needs of a Palestinian people—all these surely make it dangerous for Israel to persist in dominion over "Judea and Samaria...
...Because there was an order to arrest only those who we thought might...
...Because if I hadn't thrown it nobody would have said anything, not to me personally...
...that task calls for "a strong hand," as the officer in charge of the Beit Jallah operation was heard correctly to observe...
...And so, when we learned of a demonstration at some school, we would drive there in first gear instead of in third, and when they saw we weren't coming the demonstration would disperse...
...That same day Brigadier General David Hagoel, commander of the Israeli military government on the West Bank, was peremptorily dismissed from his post by Defense Minister Ezer Weizman...
...Also, a few of them lay on the ground in the yard...
...After we had taken out all our bitterness on him he tried to explain...
...Some of them simply collapsed, like butterflies collapse when they are sprayed with pesticide...
...The authorities asked us how, in our opinion, is it possible to rule over 150,000 Arabs without being tough with them...
...Four of us were kibbutzniks, and two from the city...
...Tossing tear gas into a school at Beit Jallah, this Israeli soldier discovered precisely what George Orwell discovered shooting an elephant in Burma—the futility of occupation, and its human costs to the occupiers...
...Later it turned out that the officer had taken it on himself, that he had broken with official policy...
...Every now and then someone would fire a tear-gas grenade into the air, so that the wind would carry the gas over and force them inside, and they would stop pelting us...
...We opened the door, 305 we saw—but we didn't really see—the students...
...Make a showing, they told us, meaning go out and let them know you're there so they don't think it's a free for all...
...But the cover-up of the action at Beit Jallah did not last long...
...We didn't see any signs that rocks were thrown...
...We stopped arresting Arabs...
...It was suggested that we stop our patrols...
...And they of us...
...And sometimes he must do extreme things to frighten the others and the most extreme thing he had done was what he asked us to do...
...They told us that we always have to remind them that we exist...
...What matters, in the end, is that it is impossible to administer the life of another people without at some point having to behave in the tawdry manner of a colonial power— without having to search and detain and arrest and even torture, without having to control opinion and censor newspapers and proscribe assemblies, without having to raze houses and hurl tear gas into schools...
...Translated from the Hebrew by JONATHAN RICHLER 307...
...The teachers were also there...
...Why don't you even consider if what you're doing is right...
...It is unfortunate, however, that the expansionists within Israeli politics have monopolized the vocabulary of security...
...For him we were an instrument of provocation...
...At us...
...We went up to the school and opened the doors to let out the gas...
...Hopes for the conclusion of a peace with Egypt were eclipsed by the anger and distrust unleashed by the PLO attack and the Israeli response...
...We tried to patrol our way, not the authorities...
...And there was someone who remarked that they hadn't really done anything to us, not a thing...
...For no reason, do you understand...
...For him it was a cause for pride—really, for pride...
...My personal problem—as a human being, as a man who received a certain education and who has nothing against Arabs—is how did I ever get to the point where I tossed a grenade...
...The school was two stories high...
...So far the facts, which should give pause...
...And we never asked ourselves why, all of a sudden, are they ordering us to go into a school...
...He had 306 not the slightest regret about the affair...
...He looked stunned...
...One guy was wounded in his hand, nothing too serious...
...We only caught a glimpse...
...I don't know for sure...
...And they didn't start throwing stones at cars and putting up roadblocks until after it happened...
...And so this is the question that I ask, maybe also in the wake of the Holocaust when they choked the Jews with gas...
...It looked to me as if he tried to pull someone over to him, but he didn't say a word...
...It was about five or ten minutes away—about three kilometers...
...And these weren't pebbles either, but big rocks, bricks...
...We circled the building and suddenly we saw children, eight to ten years old, against the wall with broken legs...
...They always volunteered to strike, that bunch...
...We told him that he was crazy, that he was nuts, that we don't understand how he ever got where he was, that the best he could be was a butcher...
...It was a personal decision...
...The children seemed very frightened...
...It is for the Israelis to decide if they wish for long to remain a nation represented by "a strong hand," if they wish to accept the consequences of continuing in political conditions so remorselessly damaging...
...No chance at all...
...They sat on some ramp from which they watched...
...Before we arrived they blocked the roads...
...Why don't you think about it...
...They pelted us with rocks and we saw them but we were forbidden to react, to throw them back or move in...
...At that moment we were ready to do anything to get into the building...
...There's no way they could kill...
...But there was an explicit order not to enter...
...On March 21, 1978, students in Beit Jallah assembled to protest the Israeli incursion into Lebanon, begun six days earlier to repay in kind the murderous Palestinian assault upon an Israeli bus on the coastal highway...
...Nor do the complex military and logistical realities of the region entirely justify the visceral view that the more miles Israel controls the safer it is...
...We began to see that when we make a great showing of ourselves it only stirs them up...
...This danger—of which Israel was more or less free until 1967 when it saved its own neck by seizing territory from its enemies—is the subject of the extraordinary document printed here...
...Anyway, they saw what was done...
...At worst they can make you faint, and most of the time they just stink and make you cry...
...And so, when we went out on patrol we tried to keep a low profile...
...Shortly afterward, the central area commander of the occupying Israeli forces ordered an investigation into the matter...
...The principal of the school observed all that we were doing, he stood outside and didn't know what to do...
...And after that he cried...
...Volunteered to keep us covered from the rear...
...So those children may have suffered for a while, but it will be good for them afterward, because there will be peace and quiet in the town...
...And maybe in battle, if I see an Arab family, I will kill them all...
...We brought the children ourselves to the hospital...
...the grenades were by the door and so they tried to escape through the windows...
...There were some who justified the deed and said that there is no choice, a good Arab is a dead Arab...
...That the children would get scared, wouldn't understand what was going on, and jump out the windows...
...Is there in man some need to kill other people and cause them pain...
...We didn't even see any students outside...
...How do you get to such a state, you a person educated in certain values and taught that another person is also a human being...
...No doubt, Israel does not intend to be such a power, but until some land is found over which the Palestinians may declare themselves sovereign, it will act like one...
...He replied that he likes Arabs no less than we do, but that to carry out his task properly he must act with a strong hand...
...As for me, my explanation is that this was some sort of revenge for that rock that hit me and a result of the hatred that welled up within me at that moment...
...There were three or four classrooms with their doors closed...
...We began to think about what we had done...
...Perhaps what happened to me that moment is what happened to the Germans...
...In the evaluation after the action he praised us for our role and said that we had acted like brave soldiers...
...There the Israeli soldiers stormed a school, shut pupils in a classroom and hurled tear gas grenades inside...
...There was sort of an agreement about this...
...There are standing orders against entering schools and these orders were always strictly observed...
...Nothing was thrown at us...
...We saw this as a sort of revenge but we didn't think the results would be like this...
...We preferred, those of us who did this, not to discuss it among ourselves...
...They made this plain by how hard they struck during the disturbances...
...It's very interesting, that those who were religious, who had the yarmulkes on their heads, were the ones who did the justifying, who saw some justification...
...We gave them the impetus...
...There was one of us who tried not to strike them during all the disturbances...
...We climbed on the jeep and reached the place...
...The officer who was there apparently saw them outside, making strange movements, and he felt that something was going to happen and gave the order...
...How do you then go and throw a grenade at eight-year-old children...
...for it was nothing to brag about...
...We ran as fast as we could...
...This is what concerns me...
...We arrested only when we had to...
...We left behind our weapons and helmets and shields and knapsacks—we knew they were children—and ran with our grenades...
...Or so they and their teachers claimed...
...We received orders to go and make a showing...
...What are you doing throwing a grenade at them...
...They threw rocks at us...
...In an instant I did something I didn't believe I could do...
...Afterward, at the gates of the school, we spoke with the officer...
...We were instructed not to enter the place where they were and from which the rocks were thrown...
...And I wonder how I am to proceed with this...
...major, who were charged with "infringement of standing orders...
...I mean, suddenly all values, everything, disappeared in an instant...
...How can you just follow all these orders without thinking twice...
...We took cover or used our shields, our equipment...
...His superior was not there, and he, too, was very shaken afterward...
...And maybe it has nothing to do with religion...
...About ten children...
...Of course, not all religious ones felt this way...
...I think they were the mothers...
...But our orders were to do nothing...
...Good intentions alone cannot maintain order on the West Bank...
...We went there to arrest them and to disperse the crowd...
...And everybody shouted that he was lucky we were reservists and had been released from regular duty because otherwise we would have refused his order...
...The whole thing happened after the Litani operation, the operation in Lebanon when there was unrest on the whole West Bank and so they wanted to get things under control as quickly as possible...
...There was a disturbance among the students at a local college...
...Thoughts on Tear Gas" is the transcribed account of the incident at Beit Jallah by an Israeli soldier who took part in the action, and who will go unnamed...
...It was time...
...We didn't know which school...
...That's my problem...
...Of course, Israel's security must be the primary concern of any redisposition of the contested territories...
...They can't even defend themselves...
...They looked at us, we looked at them, for a second, and then we threw the grenade and shut the door...
...Because one day it might bring me to kill people just like that...
...Disciplinary proceedings were also instituted by the Israeli Chief of Staff, General Raphael Eytan, against two more officers, a lieutenant colonel and a The document is reprinted, with permission, from Shdemot, 1978...
...It's clear that if we would have been there in the morning, before we went to that college, we wouldn't have thrown the grenade...
...Israeli authorities immediately denied that violence had taken place, however, and Western correspondents who credited the reports of these witnesses were accused of spreading "horror stories...
...We met an officer who gave us tear-gas grenades and told us to approach the school and hurl the grenades into the classrooms...
...When we arrived there wasn't anything going on...
...We even stood by the door so nobody could get out...
...We were very hot and even glad to do it...
...And then, when we saw the children on the ground, we suddenly understood what we had done, we understood what had happened here...
...You must understand that what troubled me was the very fact that I did it...
...But he wasn't interested in debating or arguing with us—that was furthest from his mind...
...Just stood there and was silent...
...But he also threw grenades...
...Nobody would have known...
...To demonstrate that there is a government that looks after matters there and that taking matters into their own hands doesn't make things better...
...On the West Bank the situation seemed explosive, and Israeli troops were ordered to Beit Jallah to disperse demonstrating students...
...I assume that if we didn't want to do it we didn't have to...
...Afterward we received another order over the radio, as we left the corridor, to surround the school and find those who escaped...
...In fact, we didn't see each other very often afterward, because we had different assignments...
...Yet, beyond the requirements of security there is another, no less grave danger posed for Israel by its occupation of the West Bank, and that is the moral and psychological corrosion that ensues from ruling over a large number of people who do not wish to be ruled...
...Nobody would have told me anything...
...We were nervous...
...It seemed that the mothers who had brought their children saw that something was up and didn't leave the school...
...We turned to our buddies, shaken by the episode...
...They threw rocks and bottles...
...And of course at some point the blood goes to your head, especially when you're hit by a rock...
...We started to think: how could we have done this...
...The results of this investigation were released on May 2. The witnesses' account was found to be substantially correct...
...There were about 20 of us...
...Could be that before we came there was a recess, which our superiors misjudged—thought that it was a demonstration...
...Suddenly an order came over the radio to send six of us, with our commander, to a nearby school...
...We knew these grenades couldn't kill...
...I didn't have to throw it...
...To escape the fumes, the trapped pupils lept through windows, and 12 were injured in the fall...
...There were those who received blows that really hurt...
...I too was hit by a rock, in my side...
...The Israelis had their hands full defending their operation in Lebanon and were not about to add fuel to their critics' fire with tales of abuses on the West Bank...
...For what finally matters is not that the Israeli government acquitted itself admirably of the affair, or that the Israeli occupation has been, by the dubious standards of such wrongs, relatively compassionate and in some ways even beneficial to the Palestinians who have endured 304 it...
...We just stood there...
...The children fell into our hands like butterflies...
...They seem to believe that there is a need that this territory be ours, and they said that in order to keep them down and maintain our control we must act with a strong hand, since this is a part of the State of Israel, and we are allowed to do everything in order to keep it ours...
Vol. 26 • July 1979 • No. 3
