As a soldier in Unit 8200, I collected information on people accused of either attacking Israelis, trying to attack Israelis, desiring to harm Israelis, and considering attacking Israelis. I also collected information on people who were completely innocent, and whose only crime was that they interested the Israeli security system for various reasons. For reasons they had absolutely no way of knowing. All Palestinians are exposed to non-stop monitoring without any legal protection. Junior soldiers can decide when someone is a target for the collection of information. There is no procedure in place to determine whether the violation of the individual’s rights is necessarily justifiable. The notion of rights for Palestinians does not exist at all. Not even as an idea to be disregarded. Any Palestinian may be targeted and may suffer from sanctions such as the denial of permits, harassment, extortion, or even direct physical injury. Such instances might occur if the individual is of any interest to the system for any reason. Be it indirect relations with hostile individuals, physical proximity to intelligence targets, or connections to topics that interest 8200 as a technological unit. Any information that might enable extortion of an individual is considered relevant information. Whether said individual is of a certain sexual orientation, cheating on his wife, or in need of treatment in Israel or the West Bank – he is a target for blackmail. Throughout the duration of my service no one in my unit ever asked, at least not out loud, if there is anything wrong with this well-oiled system – whether the transformation of any individual into a target is a legitimate act. When I joined Unit 8200 I was highly motivated. I passed a course and became an Arabic translator. There were things that I felt uncomfortable with in the work framework, though the importance of my role and our missions within the unit in which I served overshadowed these feelings. One of those moments in which things began to change occurred during the first war in Gaza, Operation Cast Lead. I was then at the peak of my service, as an experienced translator in a base which was responsible for the Palestinian arena. Upon the start of the operation something seemed wrong to me. Instead of attacking rocket and weapons caches in the Gaza Strip, as a preparatory defence measure for the campaign against Hamas, the Israeli Air Force attacked a parade of police officers. The assault killed 89 policemen. I was a simple soldier, but I wanted to pass my opinion up the chain of command that this action was morally unsound and problematic. Not only as regards the attack on the police officers. Those were precious hours in which we should have been doing our jobs preventing the launching of rockets against Israeli civilians, and this did not serve that purpose. The home front was exposed to volleys of rockets without taking care of them in advance, as should have been done, and as we were told that should happen. The officer in charge agreed to pass on my remarks, but I never received an answer. Throughout the operation I accompanied different teams engaged in collecting and translating intelligence on targets in the Gaza Strip – on both weapons and humans. I remember the overwhelming silence in the rooms from which we worked, seconds after the air force bombed those targets. A tense silence, hopeful of causing harm. When an attack was identified or executed, cheering and applause filled the room. X’s were marked on headsets. X’s were marked on the facial composite sketches that adorned the walls of the rooms. No one asked about “collateral damage”. I felt bad – it was very difficult to realise that no one was interested in who else had been hit. Throughout the campaign, hundreds of civilians were killed – men, women, and children, collateral damage. No one stopped to ask whether the targets we collect for the air force justify the destruction of the lives of about one and a half million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip.