I'm an IDF Soldier, and I Start Every Demolition With a Land Acknowledgment

I’m a combat engineer in the Israel Defense Forces, which our spokesperson has called the most moral army in the world more times than I can count. I’ve also done a lot of work on myself.

Last spring, I went on a speaking tour of American colleges. Every event opened with a land acknowledgment. At first I didn’t understand them. Someone would stand up, name the people whose land the building was on, thank them for their stewardship, and then everyone would carry on with the event, on the land.

By the fourth campus, I understood the practical elegance of the format: naming the people associated with a place takes less than a minute and leaves the day’s schedule intact. I brought it home and made it part of our demolition briefing.

What I say

I keep it short, because the bulldozer is already running. I take off my helmet and say:

We acknowledge that this home stands on the ancestral land of the family who has lived here since before the Ottomans, and who we gave twenty minutes. We honor their past, their present, and the key they still keep to the house they had before this one.

When I finish, I put my helmet back on and give the crew the signal to proceed. The acknowledgment adds about forty seconds to the schedule, which our supervisor has agreed to accommodate.

In the West Bank, I acknowledge the olive trees too. Some of them are four hundred years old. I say that into a megaphone, and then the settlers take it from there.

Acknowledging our partners

Acknowledgment should go both ways, so I also acknowledge where our equipment comes from.

Our D9 bulldozers are built in East Peoria, Illinois, on the ancestral land of the Peoria people, who were removed to Oklahoma. The guidance kits on our bombs are assembled in St. Charles, Missouri, on Osage land. Our American partners have been acknowledging land they took for years, and they’ve been very generous about sharing the practice with us, along with everything else.

When I explain this to American audiences, they nod along. They’re sitting on it.

Everyone is acknowledging

B’Tselem and Amnesty have also put our activities into words. The ICC issued two arrest warrants, and the UN has published several reports that I am told are very long. This growing archive should make the next briefing easier to prepare. At the colleges, the event began as soon as the acknowledgment was finished; our timetable works the same way.

Inclusion

Acknowledgment is part of a bigger commitment to inclusion in my unit. We raised the first pride flag ever flown in Gaza, on a block we had just finished. More women serve in combat roles than ever. Last month’s biggest detonation was dedicated to my girlfriend’s birthday, and she said it was the most romantic thing anyone has ever done for her.

When we did a university in January, I acknowledged the land, the faculty, and the library. That’s a lot of acknowledging for one morning, but education matters to me.

To my critics

Some people say a land acknowledgment is meaningless if you’re taking the land. I’d invite them to look at the American universities that taught me to do them. A lot of them called the police on students who camped on the lawn to talk about us. We have so much in common. We both acknowledge the land, and we both clear it.

Others ask whether I’ll ever give the land back. That’s not what an acknowledgment is. In a whole spring of acknowledgments in America, I never once saw anyone give anything back, except the microphone.

And some people want to talk about the food. Half of them say we’re keeping it out. The other half say what gets in isn’t enough. I’d invite them to pick one. It’s like the old joke: the food here is terrible, and such small portions.

I understand why some people would prefer that I skip the words and stop the bulldozer. But I learned the words from institutions that kept operating after they said them, and I intend to honor their example with equal consistency.

Paid subscribers get my acknowledgment on a laminated card that fits in a vest pocket. It comes in Hebrew, English, and Arabic, so the family can follow along.