It’s hard to turn one’s eyes away from the six-and-a-half-minute video clip that has been running around social media in recent days. This time, it doesn’t show the liquidation in lukewarm blood of a dying terrorist by a combat medic in Hebron. Instead, it shows soldiers from some unknown unit at 1:30 A.M. on some night paying a “visit” to the house of some Palestinian family for the sake of “showing a presence” of some kind in some village in the West Bank.

It’s hard to turn our gaze away from this clip, because this “gaze” is part it: The clip was filmed by the father of the family, who used his camera to document the incident from beginning to end, and the soldier who’s the protagonist of the film is aware of the camera’s presence; he actually speaks to it – that is, to us, the viewers. And as in any reality show, the viewers are the judges.

And therefore, dear Israel Defense Forces solider, you sweet, disciplined, funny, silly, polite, nice, sensitive little boy – you’ve lost.

Contrary to what has been implied in comments on social media, your behavior isn’t an example of the banality of evil or a display of sadistic mastery (not even when you told them you were there because they had thrown stones at “our roads,” when you were talking about a road that belongs to them). It’s clear there’s not a drop of evil in you. Your mother can be proud of you; you look like a delightful young man.

Throughout the entire video, you spoke politely to the family members. You apologized for disturbing them. You preserved the women’s dignity. You tried not to frighten the children. You didn’t yell, you didn’t curse, you didn’t threaten, you didn’t raise a hand.

You didn’t take one unnecessary step in that house. You didn’t touch, you didn’t break, you didn’t destroy. You said with a smile that you hoped for peace. (“We want peace.”) You tried throughout to maintain your sense of humor and reduce the tension of the situation.

You respected (with patent cynicism) the father’s statement that he wouldn’t turn his son in even if he did throw stones. You sportingly accepted the smart-aleck answers by family members who, when you asked whether there were knives in the house, responded that they had numerous knives, forks and spoons in the kitchen. Nor did you take advantage of the fact that in their living room, you found empty IDF shell casings (which were there because the army had thrown them into the house).

You kept your cool even when the father of the family mocked you by suggesting that you take home a book on the IDF produced by B’Tselem. You said the book shows “how we are defending our people.”

You agreed with the photographer that the camera is indeed a weapon. “It’s a good weapon,” you murmured, with the touching frankness of someone who knows that no weapon in the world can defend Israel against it. You didn’t seek a confrontation. You didn’t humiliate them; you didn’t make a single moral slip.

And nevertheless, you lost.

How could it be that despite it all, you lost? Because you know you shouldn’t have been there; we can see it in you. You lost in advance. You entered a situation from which you never had any chance of emerging in a good light.

The camera shows what you know: It doesn’t matter how polite you are at 1:30 A.M. in a Palestinian house in the occupied territories; you shouldn’t be there at all. It doesn’t matter how hard IDF soldiers try to treat the civilian population respectfully and be nice to Palestinian children; the IDF shouldn’t be there. Israel shouldn’t be there.

And they got the better of you. All of them. The father, the mother, the children. The mother asked whether you were afraid. You responded that you weren’t afraid, but she refused to accept your answer. “I like order,” you replied. She was fighting for justice and you were fighting for order; therefore, you lost.

And it wasn’t just you who lost; the IDF lost. Israel lost to the Palestinians. That’s what the viewer sees in this video clip.