A Moment of Silence
Martin Brian & O’Keeffe, 1979

November, 1965

The khaki jeep approached the gate of the fort – an old Teggart, the kind the British built to keep out Arab and Jewish `terrorists' in Mandate days, now used in Israel as police stations. The hum of a monotonous song could be heard through the gate from within.
I got out of the jeep, hauled my kitbag down with me. The driver led me to the gate. `Before we go on,' he said, `you have to remember that what you see and hear in here stays locked up in your head.'
It seemed I was to get my money's worth at last. After the mysterious jeep ride from the base camp to this unknown destination the Intelligence Corps badge on my cap would have some meaning.
The song was louder now, repetitive, going round and round. We passed through the gate. There were about fifty men in the courtyard. They were walking in a circle, each man's hand on the shoulder of the man before him. They wore faded shapeless khaki overalls and no shoelaces on their boots, causing them to shuffle clumsily. Black hoods, pointed at the top lice Ku Klux Klan masks, covered their heads to the shoulders.
They sang, over and over again:

Your eyes shine with a green light,
Your eyes are like two precious stones,
My heart thirsts for a moment of silence,
You are going far far away.

As the song continued, the men trudged round and round the yard. It was difficult to tell whether their accents were Israeli or Arab, but they were obviously prisoners of some sort. A guard, wearing the uniform and white belt of the military police, pushed one of the circling men who seemed to be slacking. The man stumbled. The guard slapped him, he staggered and fell. The guard kicked him to his feet.
`This is nothing,' the driver said, `You should have seen them on the first day, when they made them piss on the ground and then crawl through it.'
As this was Intelligence business I asked no questions, and no one volunteered any answers, except the cook in the kitchen, who dropped a vague hint of `deserters'. Deserters? But why then the circle and the song?
I was supposed to be here as a night guard, to sleep by day and spend six hours at night sitting in an alcove near the main gate with an Uzzi sub-machine gun. But why such a job, in this place, should be entrusted to a novice barely three months in the army, awaiting posting to an army film unit, was beyond me.
I carried out my six hour vigil in the alcove. The prisoners did not sleep. They spent the night in what appeared to be a row of stone stables, standing up most of the time, the hoods always covering their faces. Every now and again a guard would bark out an order, and one hooded group would straighten up and sing out a nonsensical phrase: `President de Gaulle was a great man, ha ha ha l' There was some sort of radio amplifier hidden in the stable wall, and a weird cacophony of electronic squeaks and whistles, mixed incongruously with Arab music, was piped loudly into the `prisoners' ears. Once in a while they were allowed to sit, but at any time a guard could bark out `Number five!' or `Number three!' and the appropriate group would jerk to their feet and sing out `President de Gaulle was a great man, ha ha ha!'
Two military police officers joined me in the `bunker'. They brought with them a little device, like an electronic mixer for a tape recorder, with a couple of dials and a needle. Two wires, electrodes, led from it, each ending in a steel clip. This, the two officers cheerfully explained, was an electric shock machine. Later they took it away into the stark dark mass of the main building, and at intervals during the night some of the `prisoners' were led off there one by one by the guards. Occasionally I could hear a scream. It was clear this was no ordinary prison set up, but my curiosity was overcome by an acute desire not to know anything further about it.
The military police officer's name was Lieutenant Death, or so his Sergeant told me. He was a small, genial man of Moroccan or Iraqui origin. The Sergeant was a big blonde dumb fellow of kibbutz stock, who routed me out of my niche at two in the morning to patrol around the outer walls of the fort.
There was a wide field of low dry bushes between the walls and the trees lining the main road, about five hundred yards away. We must poke away behind each bush, the Sergeant insisted. The Fatah might be anywhere. Spies and terrorists would love to know what's going on in here, he said, and if you climbed the eucalyptus tree in front of the main gate you could photograph with your tiny infrared camera anyone coming in or out of this place. That, the Sergeant hinted, would uncover some of the most secret personnel of the nation. So the Sergeant beamed his torch behind each clump of thorns while I prodded each thicket with his bayonet, till, satisfied that all was secure, he signalled a return within the gate.
Daybreak brought new faces. The team in charge of the fort (prison?) put in an appearance. Apart from the driver and the army cooks, there was an army Captain-large, stocky, Russian type, round face deeply lined and desert tanned, and a civilian with immense saucer-round eyes, the hypnotist in charge of interrogations. There was a little middle aged clearly civilian, who, I was told, was the mastermind behind the whole brainwashing process of the cacophonies and songs.
For clearly it was brainwashing. The men in hoods had neither night nor day; the hoods, drawn tight around their shoulders, were of thick black cloth, so not even the noonday sun could penetrate them. They were brought to their feet, made to sing, circle round, trudge back to the stables, stand and declaim the nonsense phrases, off and on, day and night, the maddening sounds enveloping them for hours on end. During the meaningless circling in the yard they were often pushed, punched and kicked by the white-belted guards, constantly shouted and sworn at. And sporadically men were taken off one by one to the main building, Lieutenant Death fading off in their wake with his beloved electric shock machine.
Once I caught a glimpse of a prisoner without his hood. He was being led off quietly, a blanket over his arm, head bent, feet shuffling. One of the cooks murmured in my ear: `They'll send him away, he didn't make it…'
During the day I tried to sleep in the fort's turret, while in the courtyard the circle went on and on
Your eyes shine with a green light, Your eyes are like two precious stones, My heart thirsts for a moment of silence, You are going far far away.
The song seemed designed to buzz in the head forever, crowding out all capacity for thought, scrambling your brains. I felt I lacked only the hood to be one with the men below. At times the guards themselves grew bored with the circling, and introduced an alternative method. Ten men were placed in a row, five facing one way and five the other. They were given a heavy log to hold, and had to carry the log forward, thus pushing the whole row round its axis like a treadmill, while the nonsense chant continued.
It was clear by the third day from talk in the kitchen, which doubled as dining room for the staff (I had not seen the `prisoners' fed, though they must have been served with slops at some time) that the circling men were not in fact deserters. Scraps of sentences, overheard when the clerk and the saucereyed hypnotists whispered over their pudding, mentioned a test of some sort, due to end that same day. The man who was led off with a blanket had failed. The test had lasted five days. I leaned forward to hear more but the cooks' talk of football drowned out all the rest.
Anticipation was in the air. The men were silent in their stables. A long table with wooden benches was set out in the centre of the yard. The cooks placed a row of tin mugs, plates, tin bowls with bread and fruit, along it. Some big shot had arrived at the gate-the hypnotists and the clerk were with him, heads huddled together.
The hooded men were led out, stood in front of the table, facing away from it, the backs of their knees almost touching the benches. Most of them were trembling, exhaustion evident despite the hoods. There was an air of finality as the cooks, the MPs, guards, officers and mystery men all came forward into the courtyard.
The Captain barked an order. The hooded men backed up, their legs touched the benches, they staggered and sat down in unison. The Captain barked `Hoods off!' and hesitatingly, each man fumbled and slowly peeled off his hood.
Suddenly, the faces were familiar. Even though the voices had sung out in Hebrew, I subconsciously expected an alien, probably Arab, visage. We are not used to equating the victim with ourselves, we are always above, not below. But the men were all Israelis, mostly kibbutz looking Sabra types, though many had faces deeply lined and desert tanned, hard faces even in relief. They stared with dawning comprehension at the mugs and plates, the bowls of bread and fruit.
The Captain spoke:
`We must congratulate you all,' he said. `You have completed this ordeal with honour. It is an honour few soldiers in the Israel Defence Forces can claim, to have passed such a test as you have passed. You are among the few chosen units whose training includes this difficult and arduous course. But this is the only method that can give men such as yourselves, volunteers for the toughest and most glorious tasks, the training necessary to fulfill your missions to the utmost.
`We have set a record here,' said the Captain, `you came without a rest from a strenuous three months in the field and the long starvation march that followed. You did not know how long this final test would last, for all you knew there would be weeks of this ordeal, not just five days. But you have passed with flying colours. Only one among you broke down and requested to drop out of the test, thus forfeiting his place in this unit. This is a record. I can reveal to you that the Naval Commandos never passed with this ratio, and the only Air Force unit to try it had a fifty per cent fall out. You may be justly proud of your achievements here.
`Soldiers, I want to present to you now a man whose experience as a Prisoner of the Enemy was invaluable in developing this course; one of the originators of the plan. I refer of course to Lieutenant-Colonel Binyamin Nachtnebel, whom you all know well,'
Lt-Colonel Nachtnebel was a middle aged thick set man, tall, jowly, in civilian clothes. He turned to face the row of tired faces slumped before him.
`Friends,' he said, `this course has been set for those chosen units, those chosen few, whose missions for the Israel Defence Forces take them into Enemy Territory, and who run the risk at each and every mission of being taken prisoner by the Enemy.
`Everyone talks under torture,' he went on. `Your task, if you are captured, is not to maintain silence for ever, but to hold out for those vital 24 hours after which military information given to the Enemy in the field is no longer useful. I was captured and tortured by the Enemy, and I talked, but I succeeded in buying time, those vital 24 hours. That and only that is our goal. We must thank you all for volunteering and passing this test. We should also thank the team which devised this courseour friends from the Psychology Branch,' the saucer eyed hypnotist and the little clerk inclined their heads, `and the personnel of the military police. They too are volunteers for this mission. They did not enjoy the methods they had to employ to simulate Enemy POW interrogation, but they fulfilled their objective to the best of their abilities. It is thanks to their dedication that this operation has been successfully accomplished.'
The hooded men clapped the military police. Lieutenant Death and his men nodded and smiled. They joined the trainees on the benches. Relaxation. A buzz of conversation; hands stretched out to the bread and fruit.
I packed my kitbag for the return to the transit base camp. Two more weeks there, I was told, and I could leave for the film unit at General Headquarters, Tel Aviv. The base Sergeant Major complimented me on my return. He had heard that I had fulfilled my three day mission to the best of my abilities. Leave would certainly be awarded the following weekend.

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