>Discharged members of the Israeli Defense Forces, who served as snipers on the border with the Gaza Strip, have revealed shocking details related to their postings.
One of the six snipers interviewed, identified by the name Eden, discussed his time in the Golani infantry brigade with Israeli newspaper Haaretz, and claims to remember exactly how many knees he's hit.
>"I kept the casing of every round I fired," he told the newspaper.
>"I have them in my room. So I don't have to make an estimate – I know: 52 definite hits."
Eden was instructed to "repel" Palestinian demonstrators who approached the Gaza border fence. Gaza's protesters have taken to the border area every week for months on end as part of the "Great March of Return".
The sniper said he had the most hits in his battalion and that he was referred to as the "killer".
>"When I came back from the field, they would ask, 'Well, how many today?'"
>"You have to understand that before we showed up, knees were the hardest thing to rack up. There was a story about one sniper who had 11 knees all told, and people thought no one could outdo him. And then I brought in seven-eight knees in one day."
Eden told the newspaper he broke the "knee record" during the demonstration on May 14, 2008, the day the US embassy in Jerusalem was inaugurated.
>"On that day, our pair had the largest number of hits, 42 in all. My locator wasn't supposed to shoot, but I gave him a break, because we were getting close to the end of our stint, and he didn't have knees," Eden said.
>"In the end you want to leave with the feeling that you did something, that you weren’t a sniper during exercises only. So, after I had a few hits, I suggested to him that we switch. He got around 28 knees there, I'd say," he added.
