A few days ago Abir Kopty found a November episode of a Ukrainian game show where an Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) soldier nonchalantly discussed killing Palestinian children. Dual Ukrainian and Israeli citizen Elena Zakusilo explains, while sitting in an oversized chair with her feet dangling above the ground, that her enemies in the combat field were toddlers. “Barely walking” toddlers:
[We] had to fire, had to kill, because it was either they [get] us, or we – them. I can’t say I’m proud of that. It’s scary, especially when children run with Molotov cocktails, and they send children, to turn the attention to them, little kid, barely walking, 3-4 years old.
While on “Lie Detectors,” Zakusilo sat across from her mother and two sisters answering questions that according to the show’s format, are supposed to be embarrassing. She recounts training IDF attack dogs affixed with cameras and microphones that are sent into Palestinian villages as spies. “You give a command, it runs into an Arab village, runs around there like a normal dog, and films what the terrorists are doing.” And when the show asks her if she has ever killed anyone, her family’s take on it is blasé. “Not someone, apparently those she was fighting with,” said the soldier’s mother. Then Zakusilo continues, describing firing at Palestinian, but is careful to note, “it’s normal for them” to die young, because, she affirms, the children are taught to do so by their parents.
Here’s the corresponding excerpt from the video:
Q: [2:54] Did you kill people?
A: Yes.
DETECTOR: TRUE
The first time it was a big stress, I remember like now, I threw away the gun and said I won’t go anywhere. {Eventually} I did go.
Q to mother: did you know that your daughter killed people?
A of the mother: I know that she served during the war with Lebanon, and she was in the military, and of course, how can you be in the military without {killing}…
Host: someone…
A of the mother: not someone, apparently those she was fighting with, I think. Let her explain, whom she killed.
Q: The day when Yasef [Yaser] Arafat died, there was a massive riot by Arabs. They were shooting at the unit, I saw that there were hits, I saw ..head.. . They always told us to shoot in the air, at the feet, and […] the soldiers understand that if you keep shooting like that, you will be gone. So we had to fire, had to kill, because it was either they [get] us, or we – them. I can’t say I’m proud of that. It’s scary, especially when children run with Molotov cocktails, and they send children, to turn the attention to them, little kid, barely walking, 3-4 years old…
Q: But children are too…
A: Explode…? {Completes his sentence} They, suicide bombers explode in the trains… They, the terrorists, have a known tariff, an adult terrorist worth 30,000 dollars, a child – 50,000. The Hamasniks paid to the Arabs. And mothers say – so what, we can give birth to five more.
Q: Wait, so the mother sent her child…?
A: For them it’s normal, for them it’s normal, yes.
It seems the intention was for viewers to find her responses funny or appealingly personal. But everything Zakusilo details sounds either illegal or a war crime, and it is doubly horrifying because as a viewer we understand someone thought this would be good television. Yet there’s no war glory here, only a young woman who is a career soldier because she said she doesn’t want to live with her parents—or in the Ukraine. And so she will kill for the IDF, she will kill children for the IDF. Good TV, right?
Read the full transcript posted by Kopty here.
Updated March 7, 2022: The video is no longer available at the links previously included with this article and they have been removed.
Sending 3 and 4 year olds as suicide bombers and throwing molotov cocktails?
Is there evidence of this?
And if a Palestinian claimed on TV that she’d been killing jewish kids, I wonder if the TV station would ever air it. Or if she would leave the TV studios a free woman and not in handcuffs.
A little further down, this woman explicitly admits shooting at children:
Q [6:22]: Did you happen to shoot at children?
A: Yes.
As shocking as this is, her general attitude toward “Arabs” reflects the kind of indoctrination young Israelis go through to dehumanize the “enemy.” They learn that Palestinians as young as three or four are sent on terrorist missions, whether throwing Molotov cocktails or exploding suicide vests; mothers are indifferent to the violent deaths of their children, because their wombs can provide a steady stream of replacements. These impressions about “Arabs” are widespread in Israel and make it much easier to kill such sub-human vermin. Is there any wonder that the infamous “one shot two kills” tee shirts depicting a pregnant Palestinian woman in a rifle’s crosshairs became popular among IDF soldiers until they caused a modicum of public embarrassment? http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2009/03/24/1-shot-2-kills-army-t-shirts/
Whew good thing for her it was only Palestinian children. Else she would be considered a terrorist and subject to a drone attack…
Doesn’t the fact that this is a “gameshow” called “Lie Detectors” suggest that the purpose is to tell a story and have people guess whether it’s true or not?
This sounds like a patchwork of memes – Palestinians not loving their children, toddlers with Molotov cocktails – that have been repeated so often that they could be combined into a narrative that might sound plausible enough to win whatever you win if you pass the “Lie Detectors” test. I mean, I don’t know the game show at all, but doesn’t it sound as if the purpose might be to make up a story, have people believe it’s true, win a prize?