human shields in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict

US tax deductible donations can be made through the website of the New Israel Fund . US tax deductible donations can be made through the website of the New Israel Fund . That’s how you called it, ‘neighbor procedure’? Yes. In our briefings we were simply told to order a neighbor out, etc. Who gives those briefings? The unit commander. Anyway, you order a neighbor to come out of his house, ask him to go to the house of the wanted man and to call all the residents in there to come out. In other instances, the neighbor was also asked to enter the house after they had gone out, in order to check that no one was left inside. Just to check that no one’s there. Now, there was a lot wrong with this, beyond the fact that, on the most basic level, the ‘neighbor procedure’ was outlawed by the High Court of Justice in November 2002 or a bit before that. I remember this because it was outlawed just a bit before I enlisted, and there was a mess because, I think the General Staff recon unit carried out some arrest mission and the neighbor got killed, they killed him – the Palestinians in the wanted man’s house killed their neighbor – so it was outlawed altogether. And that’s it. Now, besides the fact that it was altogether outlawed, sometimes women and children were used for this purpose. Children. Do you recall a specific case? Yes. I think it was in Tul Karm, or maybe Qalqilya. I think it was Tul Karm. It was a complex of several houses, several floors high. We got all the people out. There was no one there, the guy we were after wasn’t there. There was concern that he was still inside, etc. So at first, neighbors were used, and later they used some kid. Bilal. I even remember his name, Bilal. I remember because I was very angry about it, they kept sending him in to check whether there really wasn’t any one inside, to open all the doors, turn on all the lights, open all the windows. What answers did you get from them? That they know it’s illegal but even so, they’re still willing – I’m quoting my unit commander here: I know it’s illegal, but I’m willing for that neighbor, or that mother, that woman, to be killed so that none of my own combatants will be killed entering a house. He gave examples of an operation we had where the wanted man had locked himself in, and a dog was sent in several times and didn’t detect him, and the mother was sent in several times to open the doors. She did, and every time the dog went in and didn’t find him. One squad noticed that every time, she didn’t open a certain door on the roof, so they forced her to open it. The guy really was there, and the next time the dog came in, he killed the dog. The commander gave this example, which in his opinion saved the life of a combatant, and for that, he was willing to risk the lives of, you know. That’s what the unit commander said to you? Yes. On the other hand, the battalion commander said to me – before our talk, I got hold of the actual wording of the ‘neighbor procedure’. At that time, the procedure was allowed by the High Court with a lot of reservations, and I got hold of those reservations and studied them beforehand, and told the battalion commander: Here and here and here we’re not doing it properly. That meant us using children and women, and not always asking them whether they want to do it. Sometime they were forced with threats, etc. What kind of threats? We’ll arrest you too, and such. Not threats of physical violence. Arrests, that kind of stuff. Harassment, basically. You come up to someone and say: Come with me. Does he say: I don’t want to? No one said they didn’t want to do it. When you bang on someone’s door in the middle of the night, put a gun in his face and light, and tell him to take his clothes off and turn around, check that he hasn’t got a weapon and then begin to ask him: Who lives here, who lives here, go there – he doesn’t say, I don’t want to. But when the person later on says: I don’t know, I’m not this and that, and you think h