Edit: You could just ignore this post and read posts 72-73, by SiyoorMan and Fxtrrage. They covered it pretty well.
Thank you for the question.
As an experienced armchair NCO I am uniquely qualified to analyze the situation
and offer solutions
.
With that and a bucket of salt, here are my 20agorot:
First off:
Egoz have nothing to do there and should not be deployed in such situations.
It is probably better for Egoz, the IDF and Israel if the unit is off doing other things,
and there are other and probably better units to take care of demonstrations.
The Situation
A weekly demonstration.
A lot of cameras.
The same place every week.
Demonstrators trying to provoke the soldiers and the other way around.
Stone throwing, bad mouthing, nasty attitude.
The goals
1. Keep the road block secure.
2. No soldiers wounded.
3. Try and catch some stone throwers.
Demonstrations and stone throwing are standard stuff for the last 20+ years.
Cameras are on scene for 10 years at least, so none of this is new.
All in all palestinians want to protest (mildly violently) and everyone wants to go home.
From the
לצפייה במקור באתר Facebook,
לחצו כאן. and
clip2 (posted above) the soldiers are doing the usual things.
Tear gas (which seems to work), Ruger or rubber bullets. Running after stone throwers.
From the clips the demonstration is unable to get to to the road block.
If that was all, we would not be discussing this.
So up to that point I see no problem.
There are two things in the clips that are of interest or are wrong.
The first and serious is that a lone soldier without a vest or helmet is surrounded by civilians.
It is just pure luck that he was not stabbed.
The second thing is that the soldier went after a boy with a broken arm (or not broken does not matter).
What to do
Remember the goals. This demonstration will happen again next week, it will continue
after your reserve time is up. Keep safe, no need for taking risks.
Add one goal:
Do not look bad on camera.
Looking bad or good on camera can have real effect up to national level. See david Nahlawi, Hebron dancing soldiers and more.
What does
not look bad mean?
1. Not going after women, the disabled and children below 14-15 unless you have to.
Women: It's a cultural thing. Touch a woman and the situation gets stressful and noisy. Fuck that shit.
Disabled: Wheel chair, broken arm, etc. Nothing to win here, even if the demonstrator is an asshole.
Children: The little shits* will squeel, scream and bite and you would look and feel like an idiot**.
Again, very little to win.
Most important, you may be in risk like the soldier we discuss.
4. A training program for handling such demonstrations, including:
Filming soldiers, and letting them see themselves react to demonstrations and violent protests. For NCO \ officers - Identifying provocations and learning when to react and when to ignore.
The soldier above showed impressive calm that most soldiers would not. I sure wouldn't. Much respect.
If such demonstrations are big enough part of how the the Israeli - Palestinian conflict look like these days the IDF should have training for it.
(We should be pleased that it looks like this, because it used to look much much worse).
There are all kinds of psychologycal \ socio \ tech tricks that can be done as well.
Those can help but have less effect after a time.
* They are, any dad knows.
** Happens to every dad.