Tear Gas Monologue

TEAR GAS MONOLOGUE In the spring of1978, Time Magazine reported that Israeli soldiers had lobbed tear gas grenades into a locked school building crowded with Arab children in the West Bank town of...

...Later we found out that the officer made the decision by himself, on his own authority, without reference to the established rules...
...That's what interests me...
...After we had gotten out all of our bitterness, he tried to explain...
...He said that he cared about the Arabs as much as we did, but that to fulfill our duties correctly he had to be tough...
...And maybe, in a real battle, when I see an Arab family, I'll kill the whole bunch of them...
...We all felt weird, deep down...
...At that moment we wanted more than anything else to enter that college...
...There was one of us who had consistently refrained, in all of the riots and demonstrations, from beating up Arabs...
...The grenades were near the door so they tried to escape out the windows...
...That first moment, we thought, now we can pay them back...
...We were four kibbutznikim and two guys from the city...
...We patroled as we wanted to and not as it had been laid out for us to do...
...But he backed away from a confrontation with us, an argument...
...And he felt he had restored quiet to the city...
...It could be that there had just been a recess and the officer in charge assessed the situation incorrectly, figuring they were planning a demonstration...
...These weren't pebbles, but large rocks and blocks...
...We didn't recognize the name of the school...
...Subsequent inquiries by the Ministry of Defense uncovered that the Time story was substantially true, and that there had been an army cover-up...
...Then we got an order to surround the school and find those who escaped...
...No way they can kill...
...There were about twenty of us...
...There exist very deliberate orders not to enter schools, and these were enforced all the time...
...And I wonder where I can go, what I can do with that thought, because it could lead me to a point where one day I will just kill somebody, just like that...
...We didn't see anyone in the hall...
...We didn't see them outside, either...
...Without any reason...
...My own problem, as a man who received a special kind of education, who has nothing against Arabs, is to explain to myself how I got to the point where I could throw the grenade...
...At the school gate we spoke with the officer: We told him he was crazy, stupid, that we couldn't believe he had risen in the ranks...
...They threw rocks at us...
...We saw no signs of rock throwing...
...He was actually proud of it...
...It's interesting, in general they were religious, they wore yarmulkes, the guys who saw a certain measure of justification in it...
...How could you get to the point where, despite years of an education which tells you that all people are people, you can negate all that and throw grenades at eight-year-olds...
...We also didn't meet together too often...
...What shook me up the most is the fact that I actually did it, that all of a sudden all of my values disappeared...
...But our orders were clear...
...There were disturbances among the students in the college...
...We saw it as revenge...
...We started thinking it over: how could we have done this...
...Some fainted...
...We began to see that the showing off, the "presence," itself provokes them...
...They looked at us and we at them for one long second...
...And then we saw them in the crack and they saw us...
...Not a chance...
...This expressed itself in their cracking down hard at demonstrations...
...I got hit...
...The teachers, all women, were in the rooms...
...Why don't you think it over first, why don't you even wonder whether it is right...
...How can you throw a grenade at them...
...We went back into the school and opened the doors so the gas could get out...
...We surrounded the school and all of a sudden we found 8-and 10-year-old children on the wall with broken legs...
...he stood outside, not knowing what to do...
...Because there was an order to stop anyone even remotely suspicious...
...And yet, I opened the door and threw the grenade I did not have to throw...
...We no longer stopped Arabs on the street...
...Later, in a general review of our reserve duty, he praised us for this action, said that we'd acted like brave soldiers...
...It was a personal decision...
...Mothers who had brought their children to school had sensed some trouble brewing and so had remained on the scene...
...Nothing was thrown at us...
...We ran as quickly as we could...
...He just stood there silently...
...There we met an officer who gave us grenades and told us that we were going to go into the school and throw the grenades into the classrooms...
...We were very nervous...
...Maybe 10 of them...
...And then he cried...
...The General responsible for the cover-up was dismissed from the army...
...When we arrived at the school there was activity...
...We took the kids, ourselves, to the hospital...
...The officer evidently saw them outside moving around, felt something was going to happen, and gave his orders...
...They threw rocks at us, and we saw them, and it was impossible for us to respond...
...He volunteered to stay back and cover us...
...When we did go on patrol we cut a low profile, tried not "to demonstrate a presence" too much...
...One guy was wounded in the hand, not seriously...
...He looked awful...
...We received an order to go and demonstrate a presence...
...To "demonstrate a presence" means to show that you are there, that they shouldn't think they can do whatever they want to...
...So maybe those kids suffered for a short time, but afterwards it would be better for them because the town would be quiet...
...For example, when we heard about a riot at a school, we took our time getting there, and when they saw we hadn't arrived they broke it up themselves...
...They didn't even have the chance to protect themselves...
...And sometimes he had to take extreme measures, in order that they become afraid, and what he'd ordered us to do was the most extreme thing he'd ever done...
...At a certain moment, I did something which I didn't believe I was capable of doing...
...We left our weapons and our helmets and shields and packs outside (we knew they were kids) and ran in with the grenades...
...We were very hot under the collar and happily accepted his order...
...How could we have done this...
...Evidently, they feel quite strongly that this area should remain ours, and they simply figure that in order to retain it we have to show strength, because it's a part of the State of Israel, and we can rightly do anything at all in order to prevent our losing control over it...
...We were not particularly proud of what we'd done...
...We got there, a 10 minute ride away, at about 3 p.m...
...And then, we threw the grenades and slammed the doors shut...
...And maybe this had no connection with religion, anyway...
...They threw rocks and bottles at us...
...Of course, after this happened, the incidence of rock throwing and blocking the roads increased dramatically...
...No one would have had to know about it...
...We said that many actions made us think about disobeying orders...
...And I have to ask the question...
...We only stopped them when we absolutely had to...
...we got sent out in different actions...
...The kids were evidently pretty shaken up...
...We received orders not to respond...
...It gave them a push...
...They said, you must always remind them that we're here...
...Before we got there they barricaded the road...
...But we never imagined that the kids would freak out and overestimate the danger and jump out of the windows...
...There was an unspoken agreement about this...
...TEAR GAS MONOLOGUE In the spring of1978, Time Magazine reported that Israeli soldiers had lobbed tear gas grenades into a locked school building crowded with Arab children in the West Bank town of Beit J alia...
...A blind and unthinking hatred...
...At a certain point the blood rushes to your head, especially when you've been hit by a rock...
...Me, personally...
...We preferred not to talk about it among ourselves...
...Remember our perspective: we had just finished the Litani operation, the Lebanese action, and there was flack all over the West Bank, and we ran to quiet things down everywhere, the sooner the better...
...That is my problem...
...The kids collapsed into our hands like butterflies...
...He had no regrets over what had happened...
...At worst they cause dizziness, and usually only a bad smell and some tearing in the eyes...
...The Command asked us: do you have any other ideas as to how we can rule over one hundred and fifty thousand Arabs without being tough...
...This wasn't what he had in mind...
...In the wake of the Holocaust where Jews were gassed, did what happened to me for a moment happen to the Germans for several years...
...Here and there someone fired a gas grenade in the air, so that the wind would blow it to them and they'd stop throwing stuff at us...
...Does man have an inner need to hurt and even kill others...
...They fell like flies...
...We went to stop them and to break it up, to say, there is a regime that is concerned with what's going on, and taking matters into their own hands wouldn't make things any better...
...They were watching this whole scene from a ramp—I think these were the mothers although I really don't know for sure...
...Even he threw a grenade...
...Everyone yelled at him...
...Then when we saw the kids lying on the ground, we suddenly understood what we had done, what had happened here...
...Many things were said, like, let's stop going on patrol...
...There were disturbances...
...We hid or used our own equipment as shields...
...I figure that if we hadn't wanted to do it then we could have gotten away without doing it...
...It's clear that if we had gone there in the morning, before going to the college, we wouldn't have done it...
...Because no one would have said anything to me if I had not thrown it...
...Several lay sprawled about on the field below...
...The principal of the school saw everything we did...
...The Israel Defense Force denied the charge...
...In any event, they saw the whole thing...
...We were under orders not to enter the area where they were hanging out, from where they were throwing the rocks...
...How could you carry out these orders without thinking over the right and the wrong of it...
...For me, it was revenge for the rock which hit me earlier, a result of the hatred which had welled up inside me...
...A few moments passed...
...No one would have said anything...
...These same guys were always volunteering to go beat the crap out of them...
...We looked but didn't see the students...
...Tear Gas Monologue was initially published in Shdemot, (Hebrew), No...
...Some of us were hit pretty badly and were forced to leave...
...We knew that these grenades don't kill...
...And someone said, "You know, they really didn't do anything to us, nothing at all...
...And we didn't ask ourselves: why all of a sudden did we get an order to enter a school...
...There were three or four classrooms with doors closed...
...His superior officer wasn't around and he was pretty shaken up when he heard about it later...
...All of a sudden we received an order for a few of our group to go to a nearby school...
...For sure, not all of the religious guys agreed with them...
...Some months later, one of the soldiers involved, a kibbutz member, spoke about what had happened...
...We even stood by the doors so that they couldn't get out...
...It has been reprinted in Israel's leading daily, Maariv...
...We returned to the other guys pretty shaken up...
...This school had two stories...
...Some of them justified the thing: "no choice," "a good Arab is a dead Arab...

Vol. 4 • July 1979 • No. 7


 
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