Israel Matzav

Sunday, March 06, 2011

IDF training soldiers to kill 'settlers'

The people in the picture have nothing to do with the story.

Haggai Segal reports in Makor Rishon (a Hebrew-only paper with no website that is very popular in Judea and Samaria) that three months ago, an IDF Colonel presented troops from the Carmeli brigade with a training psychodrama that was 'resolved' by killing a Jewish 'settler.'

Scenario #2: A group of soldiers sets up a roadblock in the territories an hour before the Sabbath. A tense driver approaches from one of the settlements. The soldiers explain that he can’t pass for the time being because of a suspicious item in the area, He demands that they let him pass anyway because it is almost the Sabbath but the soldiers insist on blocking
him. The settler driver then gets out of his car, draws a knife and puts it against the neck of one of the soldiers and threatens to kill him if they don’t let him pass.

With the participation of the reserve soldiers watching the psycho drama performance, the drama is “resolved” by killing the settler with shots to his head.

Settlers among the reservists protested the scenario, noting that such a scenario never transpired but the colonel who wrote the scenario rejected the complaints, saying that he didn’t understand what all the fuss was about.

Segal notes that the same scenario was repeated at the next round of “Dilemma Theater” presentations to reserve solders in the brigade but it was dropped after that.

The IDF Spokesperson defended the scenario to Segal, writing that “scenarios are frequently intentionally exaggerated in order to prepare the commanders so that they can deal with complicated situations”.

When was the last time soldiers had a psychodrama with a confrontation like this with a member of 'Peace Now'?

Labels: IDF following orders, IDF psychodrama training, revenants