‘The scum is sniping children. I saw another little kid shot in the legs. He keeps crying out for his mother. There’s a sniper in the minaret of the mosque. He’s probably not alone. The whole mosque is probably swirling with them. The sniper shoots anyone who tries to get close to the kid. They have thrown the kid a rope from behind a wall, but the kid is too terrified and too young to grab on to that. He doesn’t know what is going on. Three women are sitting on the boy’s mother with their full weight to keep her from running towards her son. They have the hardest time to keep her down. It’s a trap.’
Hassan is the look-out of the Orphan Brigade. Not a single member has any parents left alive. Take Hassan for example. His father was an oil painter. A very talented one. He was bombed back in 2014, all of this paintings destroyed along with his wife and himself. Hassan was 9 at the time. To this day he hasn’t managed to buy back one of the paintings his father sold. They were all bought by Israelis, there’s not one painting of his father inside Gaza and Hassan has never been outside of Gaza.
None of them is married. They have no children of their own. Nobody is older than 25, except for their commandant, Mehdi, who is 36. He has fought in Syria for ten years. Before that he fought in Iraq. His parents died during the second Intifada. They burned alive in their car. Set on fire by a mob of settlers in the West Bank. Mehdi’s sister was five at the time. She was covered in burns and survived for a week. Suffering intensely the whole time. Mehdi remembers standing next to her at the hospital. She was howling in pain the whole time. He watched her die. He heard a nurse say: ‘I have never wished so hard for someone’s merciful death.’
He asks Hassan: ‘Did you see any tanks?’
‘They have tanks alright. They’re making the earth shake. They’re driving around aimlessly for very short distances. I think they’re actually scared and clueless as to what to do with them.’
‘How many did you spot?’
‘At least three. They’re behind the mosque. They can’t roll into the city proper, because there is too much rubble. They have no use for them, they’re just using them to intimidate. They’ve taken aim at some apartment blocks, but I think they’re low on ammunition.’
‘So now they’re sniping kids to make us move above ground’, says Mehdi.
‘We can’t sit here and do nothing’, says one of the other men.
‘Let’s not play into their hand’, cautions Mehdi.
Hassan says the sniper, after the boy was already down, shot off the fingers of the little kid to make it even harder for people to resist running towards him.
The men jump up and ask Mehdi to lead them out.
‘And do what right now? That’s exactly what they want us to do. It’s never smart to do what you know your enemy wants you to do. That boy isn’t helped by us going on a suicide mission. We’re not some Himmelfahrtskommando.’
Mehdi likes to throw in some German once in a while. It makes his blood run faster. He hopes it has the same effect on his men.
The men insist to go out and charge the mosque. They are not cowards. If they do it fast they will have the advantage of surprise.
‘You won’t have any advantage whatsoever. Right now all eyes are on the approaches of the mosque. You stick your head out of this tunnel and not only do you give away our position, you will have your head blown off clean less than two minutes later. I guarantee you that. Even these losers couldn’t miss you. How does that help the boy?’
He can see the men are still not convinced. So he looks them straight into the eye, one and after the other, and asks each one, as he grabs them hard by both shoulders:
‘Do you want to kill these pigs?’
When they say yes he tells them he can’t hear them.
He keeps screaming: ‘Do you want to kill these pigs?’ until they scream back ‘yes’ as loud as him.
‘We move out at night’, says Mehdi. ‘Sharpen your spades. Spades are excellent weapons in a brawl. The Russians used spades in Stalingrad too.’
They have these short spades which are excellent for digging trenches. You can lie down with them and still do some good digging. You can slash down hard. They don’t make a sound and they’ll cut into your shoulder like butter and crack open your rib cage.
‘They will be very dissapointed none of us comes out during the day. I know it’s hard, but if you want this scum to pay for what they’re doing you have to be patient now. Let’s pray.’
After prayer he pushes his men through a vigorous work-out. He keeps them busy. Busy soldiers don’t do crazy stuff. He makes them clean their weapons.
He reminds them how to best destroy a Merkava tank. ‘As you know the armor itself explodes on the first hit, it deflects the hit as the armor explodes outward. This does no substantial damage to the tank. You have to hit the tank several times in quick succession. Ideally from a distance of less than 50 yards. You have to hit it between the turret and the car. They have night vision goggles and we don’t, so it’s essential we catch them off guard. The moon will be out, so it will be clear enough.’
‘They might retreat at night’, says one of the men.
‘I don’t think so. Not yet. They think they have an excellent spot. They’re frustrated. They think they got us. They won’t let go now.’
Hassan is sent out again. He’s a little dapper fellow, fast like a hare. He comes back with a new report. He has tears streaming down his cheeks.
‘The boy bled to death. Two older men who tried to get the boy are down now. One looks dead, the other one is hit in both legs. I think a bullet went through his side and shattered both hips. I don’t think he will make it.’
At 3 am 9 men of the Orphan Brigade hit a Merkava tank four times. The two other tanks drove off and left their buddies in the mosque high and dry.
7 other Orphans stormed the mosque. Their spades cracked open skulls. There was the crunchy, snappy sound of bones breaking. Sqeaky pleas for mercy from mouths that had no mercy whatsoever for little kids and their mothers.
In the confusion whoever had the night watch shot two of his own colleagues to pieces with an Uzi. He shot himself in the head before any of the Orphans could get to him.
The sniper was sleeping high up in the minaret.
If there is a just God, then what was done to the sniper has been forgiven.
A hole was made in his gut. His bowels were nailed to a stake and he was forced to run around the stake until his bowels were knotted around the stake. When he fell onto his knees a spade slashed open his throat. Throughout his summary execution for war crimes he kept crying that he was only carrying out orders. You know, that amazing argument that didn’t work for the defendants at Nurnberg either.
By then the other two tanks had returned with back-up and started firing on the mosque.
The Orphans made their way back to the tunnel system.
‘This was almost too easy’, says Hassan.
Mehdi shrugs.
‘That’s what you get when you put college kids in uniform, brainwash them into thinking they are invincible and fighting inferior beings and don’t teach them a thing about securing a position.’
One of the men carried a large sack back to their hide-out. It’s a bag full of souvenirs the Israeli soldiers were collecting.
There’s a lot of lingerie, kids toys, family photos, cut off fingers, bloody scalps, some almost certainly of women, porcelain, some of it broken, several Korans with pages torn out, on some pages the soldiers have scribbled penises.
‘Why take lingerie? I don’t get it’, says Hassan.
‘I don’t get it either’, says Mehdi. ‘Maybe violence and sexuality are just linked in their minds, I don’t know. We will think about all this later. We have to move now. After this they will destroy the whole town. Hassan, get the word out that everyone who can should leave immediately. Tomorrow it will rain bombs on this place from the morning till the evening. We can relocate north and see what we can hit there. They think the north is safe for them.’
They pack their things in silence.
Every single member is thinking of his parents.
Of the last words spoken between them.
Of the last hug they got.
Of the last loving stroke through their hair by their mother’s hand.
Mehdi is racking his brain. He wants to find the perfect spot for an ambush up north. He knows the ground perfectly.
He has supreme confidence in his men.
None of them fear death, because they all know they will awaken in their mother’s embrace seconds after their deaths. In a parallel universe, they will be kids again, right before Israel murdered their parents, but this time they will live.
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The Confessor 