Thoughts of an IDF Sniper

While on the subject of military matters, I thought that the following extracts from a Ma’ariv interview with an Israel sniper would be of interest. I found them to be riveting.

The solider in question has killed thirty-one terrorists to date through his sniper’s scope. The following are some of the most interesting extracts in which he relates his thoughts about his job, how he copes with it, his methods and how he feels about killing people through his sniper’s scope. Translation by yours truly.

“I was nine when I got my first rifle. It was an air-rifle which my parents gave to me and I would practice with it the whole time, standing up matches and shooting them down or shooting out the flame of a candle from a distance of thirty or forty metres.

“Two days after I finished my five-week sniper’s course I was sent on my first mission. The whole night before hand I felt unbelievable pressure. I lay on my bed and couldn’t stop thinking about all the responsibility on my shoulders. The adrenalin was flowing through my veins but I was not required to fire during the mission.

“The first time I fired my sniper’s rifle was on a mission which started out as a simple mission into Gaza during the night. I was lying out in a field when I saw two suspicious figures in the dark. I felt unbelievable stress. I was lying in a bunch of thorns and rocks but couldn’t feel a thing. I was completely focused on the two images and because of the pressure I forgot everything I had been taught. However, I received the order to shoot, I shot and one of the figures dropped to the floor and ceased to move. I think because this mission was at night and I only saw him fall through the sniper’s scope it was less frightening. I didn’t see him die in front of my eyes, it was in the dark and through the scope. When we returned to the base I couldn’t get to sleep the whole night. I began to think about the man I killed and his life but then I understood that if he had remained alive he would have hurt one of us. At this point I decided to never think about the fact that I had killed a man but the opposite: that I had saved other people.

“With time you begin to become accustomed to these missions and then you are able to relax. When I take up a position in house we’ve taken control of I find a corner and disengage from everything around me. I sit and wait patiently, sweating like crazy in the summer and suffering the cold in the winter, but I wait in silence. Sometimes we wait for hours, my personal record is eighteen hours straight. I just sat and waited with my finger on the trigger and my eyes scanning the territory in front of me.

“When I get to a certain area and begin to work I begin to understand the surroundings, who lives in which building and with who; how many people are in this or that family; who lives in which room and who he hangs out with..

“If I see an armed terrorist I don’t open fire immediately, I give him time to feel secure. One time I identified four combatants armed with RPGs and I took down just one of them and not the whole group in order not to be discovered. I heard stories about snipers that got too excited and took out a whole group of terrorists but then got an anti-tank missile into the house where they were hiding and that was the end of the story. Because of this it’s important to be patient.

“One time the opposite happened. I once watched a terrorist enter his house then leave it again, look right and left and then lifted something up which had been concealed under his legs. I already had my finger on the trigger and I nearly squeezed it when I saw he was lifting up a baby.

“In general terms it’s preferable to shoot the target in the head or the heart, depending on the distance. You aim, breathe lightly and rhythmically and then...boom! You hear the noise, the smell of gunpowder burning in your nostrils and the combatant falls.

“When we’re in these people’s [Palestinians] houses we’re pretty orderly. Sometimes we give sweets to the kids, sometimes the family offers us food. We are also always very strict to put the house in back in order once we leave.

“I don’t scratch x’s into my gun to mark my kills like other snipers because I don’t want to graffiti on the weapon and also it means I get fewer questions. My friends and family also don’t ask too many questions. It’s a little hard to explain to them what I do and the situation I’ve been in now for such a long time.

“I think that after all my missions as a sniper I have really become accustomed to what I do. A short time ago, while on a mission, I was woken up in the middle of the night and told I’ve got just a couple minutes to identify the target and take him down . I got up, stretched, identified the target, took him down and went back to sleep and in the morning they told me what it had been about. It seemed to me that what had taken place that night happened almost in my sleep.

“In four months I’ll be finished in the army. I don’t think it will trouble me afterwards. When you’re on a mission you don’t think about anything, you’re just adrenalin. When you’re outside, you understand that it’s preferable not to think about it too much. This was my work, that’s it. It was either me or them and I preferred it to be them”.