1/Jacob, grew up in Ohio, served in the Paratroopers: Growing up in American Jewish life, my pride in Israel was impenetrable. I encountered endless stories from camp and youth movement friends, many of whom enlisted in the IDF. For me, joining the IDF was the obvious choice. 
2/ First time I was in the west bank I didn’t meet any Palestinians because I was securing a road that was permitted to use only for Israelis. So even though it was in the middle of a Palestinian city, Hebron, I don't remember seeing any Palestinians until the next mission>>
3/Where I also began to understand the meaning of being a soldier in the Occupied territories. It was during the summer of 2014 and we we’re part of a big operation that was launched after the kidnap and murder of 3 Israeli teenagers. We we're sent to search. Anything. Everywhere
4/On the first night, we geared up for our mission and entered a non-suspect Palestinian home. The house was chosen because it was non-suspect. We knew it would be easy base to work from and the family would inflict little to no danger onto us.
5/We gave them no prior announcements of our arrival. We just got there in the middle of the night, woke up the whole family, and in a few minutes we made the house ready for our use for the next few days, turning it into our base of operations to search nearby homes, one by one
6/We took shifts between guarding the head of the household who was trying to guard his own house. Every few days the head of the family came to us asking us when we were planning to leave, and when he’d be able to use his house again. I didn’t know what to tell him.
7/We guarded every move they made in their own home, including when food was brought to them at the end of their Ramadan fast – we even looked through the food before we let them eat it. After a few nights we finished our searches there – and moved on to the next house.
8/ In the second house it took the house holder too long to come down and open the door for us – so we broke his door window to get in and again did the entire home takeover procedure over once again, using it as a base to enter and search the homes around it, one by one...
