When I Fought in the Second Intifada

The Fellowship  |  September 15, 2017

The Second Intifada, also called the Al-Aqsa Intifada, was a period of Palestinian uprising and terrorist violence that began in 2000 and lasted more than four years. Writing at The Times of Israel, IDF vet Marc Goldberg recalls his experiences defending the Jewish state during this period of conflict and terror:

The walls of the ancient Kasbah of Nablus were plastered with posters of suicide bombers back then. Each poster had a little film strip at the bottom lifted from the news showing the carnage they inflicted. These posters were interrupted only occasionally by a picture of Arafat with a heavenly light beaming down onto his face. There were so many posters you could barely see the stone behind them.

I return to that period every day of my life. Every day since my release from the army I’ve thought about the best way to tell you the story of what we did. It’s been 15 years since I joined the IDF at the height of the al Aqsa Intifada. That’s a lot of time to gain perspective and a lot of time to spend remembering. I have a family now, I have a child and another on the way. Still I think back to Nablus, to the days when I wore green and carried a rifle and hunted the enemy.

I think back to the days when we were doing line duty in Migdalim, a settlement near Nablus. We would regularly drive into a village called Kutsra just at the foot of the hill Migdalim is built on. Every time we drove in, we hoped the kids there would throw stones and glass bottles at our jeeps so that we could jump out with stun grenades and gas grenades and fight the mini rioters. Then there was that day when we drove in throwing chocolates at them instead of riot control munitions and held our own little peace process right in the center of town.

I remember being shot at. I remember being shot at quite a few times…