There's absolutely no excuse for deliberately killing a 4yr old. The conditions in the Occupied Territories bring out the worst in all parties.


---Staff Sergeant (res.) Liran Ron Furer cannot just routinely get on with his life anymore. He is haunted by images from his three years of military service in Gaza...
...how they humiliated a dwarf who came to the checkpoint every day on his wagon: “They forced him to have his picture taken on the horse, hit him and degraded him for a good half hour and let him go only when cars arrived at the checkpoint. The poor guy, he really didn’t deserve it”; how they had a souvenir picture taken with bloodied, bound Arabs whom they’d beaten up; how Shahar pissed on the head of an Arab because the man had the nerve to smile at a soldier; how Dado forced an Arab to stand on four legs and bark like a dog; and how they stole prayer beads and cigarettes – “Miro wanted them to give him their cigarettes, the Arabs didn’t want to give so Miro broke someone’s hand, and Boaz slashed their tires.”
Chilling confession
The most chilling of all the personal confessions: “I ran toward them and punched an Arab right in the face. I’d never punched anyone that way. He collapsed on the road. The officers said that we had to search him for his papers. We pulled his hands behind his back and I bound them with plastic handcuffs. Then we blindfolded him so he wouldn’t see what was in the Jeep. I picked him up from the road. Blood was trickling from his lip onto his chin. I led him up behind the Jeep and threw him in, his knees banged against the trunk and he landed inside. We sat in the back, stepping on the Arab ... Our Arab lay there pretty quietly, just crying softly to himself. His face was right on my flak jacket and he was bleeding and making a kind of puddle of blood and saliva, and it disgusted and angered me, so I grabbed him by the hair and turned his head to the side. He cried out loud and to get him to stop, we stepped harder and harder on his back. That quieted him down for a while and then he started up again. We concluded that he was either retarded or crazy. “The company commander informed us over the radio that we had to bring him to the base. ‘Good work, tigers,’ he said, teasing us. All the other soldiers were waiting there to see what we’d caught. When we came in with the Jeep, they whistled and applauded wildly. We put the Arab next to the guard. He didn’t stop crying and someone who understood Arabic said that his hands were hurting from the handcuffs. One of the soldiers went up to him and kicked him in the stomach. The Arab doubled over and grunted, and we all laughed. It was funny ... I kicked him really hard in the ass and he flew forward just as I’d expected. They shouted that I was a totally crazy, and they laughed ... and I felt happy. Our Arab was just a 16-year-old mentally retarded boy.”---