‘Not the boy, come on, not the boy’, pleads Eliyahu. The four year old is crying, it’s a non-stop howl. He’s stopped hugging his dead father and is crawling over to his mum, also in a puddle of blood, but she’s raised her arm for a second.

‘He’s got some lungs the little terrorist’, says Avraham.

Itamar to Eliyahu: ‘You gonna adopt him? We’ve just shot his mummy and daddy.’

Avraham looks Eliyahu straight in the eyes, a mere half a cm between their faces. ‘What do you think he will do when he grows up?’

Eliyahu says: ‘They were running from our artillery opening up on Beit Hanoun.’

Avahram: ‘That’s how dumb these folks are. They run straight into our positions. With their little kids. Sick parents they are.’

Eliyahu stands in front of Itamar’s gun barrel. ‘Look, please don’t shoot the boy.’

Avraham: ‘Orders are orders. They entered the no go zone around our perimeter. The major was clear about that.’

Eliyahu: ‘Orders are orders? Befehl ist Befehl?‘

Avraham stomps Eliyahu in the left shoulder with the butt of his rifle. Eliyahu falls. Itamar shoots. He laughs. ‘Wow, right in the head. He blew up like a pumpkin and did a sommersault in the air! Did you see that? Did you see that?’

Avraham: ‘No, I didn’t. I was dealing with our little terrorist sympathizer here.’

Eliyahu is still lying on the ground: ‘I have detonated more apartment blocks than you!’

Avraham: ‘What’s your problem then?’

Eliyahu: ‘Those buildings were empty!’

Avraham: ‘You sure of that? And how many four year olds froze to death because you detonated their nests? You really are a joke you. The worst kind of coward. You can only fight when you don’t have to see the face of your enemy.’

Eliyahu: ‘You shot a four year old.’

For a few seconds Eliyahu trains his gun on Avraham.

Both Avraham and Itamar yell out: ‘We are reporting you to the major!’ Avraham adds: ‘You gonna be digging latrines.’

Eliyahu starts crying, sobbing and shaking. ‘What have we become? What is the point of this? Why can’t we stop this war? I just want to go home. Why are we doing this?’

Avraham spits at Eliyahu’s feet. ‘You were trouble from the start, man. You were just trouble from the start. Bullshitting us about how we have the wrong strategy to defeat Hamas. They are all Hamas. Can’t you see that? The only solution is to get rid of all of them.’

Itamar: ‘Every day we have to fight these terrorists AND the anti-semitic western media and then we have to put up with this traitor too.’

Avraham shoots Eliyahu in his right foot. ‘There, now you can go home. It’s a million dollar wound.’

Fast forward ten years.

A year after Gaza Avraham is part of a mob of settlers who beat a Palestinian-American to death close to Nablus. When the victim’s mother rings her son, Avraham picks up and says: ‘Habibi, your son won’t be coming home for dinner tonight. We have just bashed his head in.’ His wife leaves him after he puts the barrel of his gun up her behind one night, because she mentioned wanting to go back to the US.

One night driving in the local hills he drives into a metal chain spanning the road. Local men throw molotov cocktails at the SUV and Avraham burns to death. His friends destroy more Palestinian homes the next day.

Itamar starts abusing pain killers for inexplicable back and neck pain. He’s left impotent. A condition for which he blames his fiancee, because she ‘nags too much.’ One day he beats a 12 year old nephew because he said the war in Gaza had been pointless and had ruined Israel’s reputation forever. He’s unemployed and only shows any excitement when he is at army reunions bragging about how many terrorists he’s killed. The neighbours on his street in Asjdod have started avoiding him entirely.

After Eliyahu’s wound – for which he got a medal – healed he wrote a book about what he saw and did in Gaza. It came out in 2026 titled ‘What dies in you when you kill’. Even Eliyahu didn’t tell the full truth though. He mentioned the four year old in all grim detail. But that wound? Khamas did it.

The book became a medium success in countries like Ireland, Spain, Denmark, Norway, even the US, but every book signing tour became almost like public lynchings. No matter where he went there were always a few Israelis or their sympathisers to come brand him a traitor and terrorism enabler.

He tried fanatically working out at the gym for a while, but after about four months of that he hung himself on a rack for pull-ups.

Nobody in his family and no former army buddies attended his funeral.

His mum did renovate the kitchen with the modest royalties from his book. She never mentions Eliyahu, but when pressed she will say something like: ‘All that western propaganda really messed with his head. He was always a little too sensitive for this world.’