Human Page #3

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in a village near Nablus.

I deployed our forces.

To flush him out,

we shot at the walls

as a demonstration of strength.

A woman came out of the house,

carrying a girl

and holding another by the hand.

It was 3 AM.

The girl panicked and ran toward us.

I was afraid she'd blow herself up.

I yelled at her in Arabic to stop.

She kept coming.

I fired above her head.

She stopped.

At that moment, time stood still.

It was the shortest

and the longest moment

of my life.

The girl remained alive.

And so did I.

But at the same time,

something died

in us both.

When a child is shot at,

it kills something inside.

I don't know what.

When an adult shoots at a child,

it kills something inside.

Something dies

and something else

has to come to life.

I was ashamed of shooting at her.

A painful shame.

And above all, this sensation

of my finger

pressing the trigger

and shooting at the girl.

From this finger pressing the trigger

something had to come to life.

One of the most impactful things

that will occur,

after being in combat,

is the feeling

of killing another human being.

Once you've experienced it,

you'll see

that it's not like anything else

that you've experienced before.

And unfortunately,

that feeling,

your body will want

to experience again.

It's really difficult

to try to explain to somebody

what that feeling's like.

Right now,

I still feel like experiencing

that again,

and it's probably why I keep

a loaded weapon in my house.

I yearn or desire for someone

to try to hurt me

or to break in

or to give me an excuse

to use that violence

against somebody else again.

On the 16th of January 2007,

an Israeli border policeman

shot and killed

my 10-year-old daughter, Abir,

in front of her school

in Anath where I live.

She was with her sister

and two friends.

9.30 in the morning.

In her head in the back

from a distance of 15 to 20 meters

by a rubber bullet.

Abir wasn't a fighter.

She was just

a child.

She didn't know anything

about the conflict

and she was not part

of this conflict.

Unfortunately, she lost her life

because she was a Palestinian.

I'm an Israeli who lost his daughter

to a suicide bombing

on the 4th of September 1997.

And I am a product of...

of an education system.

These are two societies at war.

They socialize the young generation

to make them able to sacrifice

themselves when the time comes.

This is true to Palestinian society

and this is also true

to Israeli society.

Because we are human beings.

Sometimes you think:

"If I kill the killer

"or anyone from the other side,

from the Israelis,

"or maybe ten,

"this will give me back my daughter."

No.

I'll cause another pain

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