The title of this blog is my translation of a quote from the book of Genesis, 9:6. The context is an appended condition on the the blessing bestowed on Noah after the trauma of the flood, after God had pushed the restart button on mankind and said metaphorically "OK lets try that again.". We have been exposed to those words, one way or the other so many times that many of us take them for granted, at least I did until now. Once you think about it the implications of those words, they are not less than earth shattering. They mean that sometimes killing is right and sometimes it is wrong. Sometimes it is correct and sometimes it is incorrect. Perhaps I should reword that to say - sometimes it is the lesser of two inescapable evils, and sometimes it is pure evil.
Now don't get me wrong. I grew up in the 60's. I grew up with the conviction that love and peace must conquer all. If you had told me as a 20 year old that I would ever own a gun or shoot a gun, I would have laughed in your face. My heart was shouting support for all those draft evaders of the 70's. Spiritually, I bled with the victims of the Kent State riots. However, yesterday I found myself in a four hour course with four other people at a local shooting range trying to absorb instructions on how to defend myself and those around me in the event of a terrorist attack. My colleagues in crime included two young thirty something men. One was a businessman with a young family who had served in the IDF in his early 20's. He was in excellent physical shape, as he demonstrated for us in a lull in the action by competing with our instructor and performing about 15 pull ups with ease. The other was a psychologist by trade also with a young family who made use of a lively sense of humor at times to dissipate the inevitable tension . The other two were women in their 50-60's who had purchased small pistols that they could carry around in their purse or on their person in the event that they were faced with a terrorist attacker. One was a practicing psychiatrist and the other a housewife. Actually, the young man, who was in great shape had also just purchased a smallish handgun because it would be easier to carry around on a regular basis. All of us had permits for our weapons, but all of us felt that, given the prevailing circumstances here in Israel, we needed some instruction about how to conduct ourselves in the face of a terrorist attack.
What did we learn? Well, a large part of our instruction centered around safety, reviewing and practicing habits that would prevent us from inadvertently harming ourselves or others around us. In addition to that we practiced drawing and arming and rearming our guns in a timely fashion. We discussed when to shoot and when not to shoot. When to shoot to kill and when to shoot to maim or frighten. We practiced shooting at targets in various scenarios. What happens when you are attacked from two sides? What happens when there are innocent bystanders nearby? What do you do once the attacker is down and you need to approach them or him or her to make sure that the danger has indeed been neutralized. Our very capable instructor walked us through all those scenarios and more. We shot at cardboard targets multiple times, standing, crouching, in sets of tens and sets of fives and sets of three. Believe it or not, it turns out I am not at all a bad shot. We came away with a much higher level of confidence in our ability to deal with an emergency situation. Our instructor warned us that in the panic and adrenaline rush of a real terrorist attack we would be lucky to remember 10% of what we had learned but 10% was much better than nothing. I think he was exaggerating but who am I to say.
The odd thing is that at the strangest times I find myself daydreaming and imagining myself in the middle of an attack. I walk myself through the possible events and imagine myself doing things I never thought I could be capable of doing. Will I keep my wits about me? Will I remember what to do? Will I have the guts to shoot to kill if the situation called for it? Would I get so carried away with the excitement of the moment that I would lose all self restraint and kick the bastard while he was down? I don't really have the answer to any of those questions, but I will say this. I am better prepared to face them today than I was two day ago.
Before you judge me, please take a moment and reflect on the attacks that have permeated the news in Israel over the past several weeks. For the life of me I cannot fathom what the perpetrators are thinking. I cannot fathom the unmitigated cowardice of Imams and Islamic activists, and terrorist masterminds that indoctrinate their teenage boys and young women with hatred and send them out to try to kill innocent people. Have they no pride. Have they no courage. Today two 13 year old boys attacked an adult Jewish man on the light rail train in Jerusalem. The other day, a young woman attacked an armed guard at the entrance into Beitar. These are but 2 of many examples. Watch the videos on the internet, even the Palestinian versions of the videos. Conveniently, there always seems to be a compatriot with a smart phone ready to film Israeli wrong doings at such events. What other people besides the Israelis would on the whole show such self restraint in the face of such attacks. Think what would happen to an Israeli 13 year old who attacked another Palestinian 13 year old in an Arab village. Where are the 30 and 40 and 50 year old Palestinian men? Why are they not willing to perpetrate attacks? Are they so jaded and blind that they cannot see the essential evil in what they are doing? If they feel so strongly about their convictions why don't they set out on their own suicide missions. It is no secret that they would have more success at it (from their point of view) than the 13 year old boys and 20 year old women they are sending out to get themselves killed. The facts speak for themselves. And yet, there remain those that refuse to see the truth and insist on perpetuating the myths that only serve to aggravate the conflict and ensure that it continues for several more generations.
Our enemies have inflicted on us the choice between two horrendously indescribable evils. I choose the lesser..........
Less I mislead you, allow me to add one additional observation. For the most part, life all over Israel goes on as normal. True there are many more private citizens like me walking around armed. True, I have the inconvenience of a firearm jabbing into my side as I drive from place to place. The other truth is that the damage that this violence has managed to cause is relatively minuscule when compared to the violence experienced by other countries in their major cities and even when compared to the number of casualties caused by Israeli traffic accidents. Despite all the heart wrenching and soul searching and the tragedies, life goes on as normal.
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