Against Murder Tears Don't Protect

Daniel Greenfield..
Sultan Knish..
12 August '12..

After serving a few years in prison for his role in the Munich Massacre, Willi Pohl moved to Beirut. The brief sentence was a slap in the wrist, but Pohl had still served more time in prison than the Muslim gunmen who had murdered eleven Israeli athletes and coaches during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. Mohammed Safady and the Al-Gashey cousins were released after a few months by the German authorities. They went back to Lebanon and so did he.

A decade after the attack, Willi Pohl had begun making a name for himself as a crime novelist. His first novel, written as Willi Woss, was Tränen Schützen Nicht vor Mord or Tears Do Not Protect Against Murder.

While Pohl was penning crime novels, Israeli operatives had already absorbed the lessons of his first title. Tears, whether in 1939 or 1972, had not done anything to prevent the murder of Jews. Bullets were another matter.

The head of Black September in Rome was the first to die, followed by a string of PLO leaders across Europe. Those attacks were followed by raids on the mansions and apartments of top Fatah officials in the same city where Pohl had found temporary refuge. By the time his first book was published, hundreds of PLO terrorists and many of its top officials were dead.

Western law enforcement had failed to hold responsible even the actual perpetrators of the Munich Massacre, never mind the representatives of the PLO who openly mingled with red radicals in Europe's capitals. Israeli operatives did what the German judicial system had failed to do, putting down Safady and one of the Al-Gasheys, while the other one hid out as a frightened guest of Colonel Gaddafi in Libya.

The Israeli raid on the PLO terrorists in Beirut's Muslim Quarter missed one important target. Arafat. And so, on another September day, some 19 years later, September 13, 1993, Israeli Prime Minister Rabin shook hands with Arafat and proclaimed, "Enough of blood and tears! Enough!" But the blood and tears had only begun, as a PLO on its last legs was revived by that handshake and built its terrorist infrastructure inside Israel's borders.

On the Anniversary of Entebbe, Malkah is Home on the Range at Calibur 3

Malkah Fleisher..
jewishpress.com..
04 July '12..

So I’m staring down the barrel of Israel’s lethal new state-of-the-art Tavor assault rifle. Feet planted firmly, I can hear my breath and the wind blowing small rocks around the hem of my skirt. It’s me and the ruthless terrorist just meters away, and as I carefully squeeze the trigger, I’ve got him! Right in the stomach! Malkah, ruthless Jewish warrioress, has protected her clan, saved the country, and is now headed back to the benches where she will distribute juice and snacks she brought from the car.

Because it’s shooting range day with the staff of The Jewish Press online.

Part team building exercise, part reward for all the hard work we put into sharing news and views with you fine readers, we made the journey to the Caliber 3 training facility and firing range in the hills of Judea.

And though we expected to learn how to handle weapons and hone self-defense skills with some awesome Chuck Norris lookalikes, we did not anticipate receiving the touch which would place the mantle of the heroism of Israel on our own shoulders. And I did not expect to have one of the most moving days of my life.

The day began simply enough – a little bit of ‘petel’ (think bug juice from camp), some sun screen, and a range all to ourselves with Shai Ish-Shalom, one of the expert trainers at Caliber 3.

On Holocaust Remembrance Day, M-16s, and A New Respect for Veterans

West Bank Mama
11 April '10

I wrote this post in the spring of 2006, looking back at a very symbolic way that I spent Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2002, and the lessons that I learned from it.

In 2002, during the intermediate days of Passover, a terrorist broke into the Gavish home in Elon Moreh and killed four members of the family. After analyzing the details of the incident, the army came to the conclusion that it would be a good idea to train women to use the weapons that were issued to their husbands. Soon after Passover the first training session was on offer in our yishuv.

I grew up in a liberal Jewish household in America, and one of the ingrained messages that I received was that GUNS WERE BAD. As children we weren’t even allowed a squirt gun (pity my poor brother). Consequently I developed an aversion to the M16 that my husband uses when he performs guard duty on our settlement. If I needed to handle it at all, I would touch it gingerly – as if I was holding a dirty dead thing that I wanted as little physical contact with as possible. So westbankpappa thought that he would have a hard time convincing me to agree to a training session. Imagine his surprise when I told him that I was one of the first women to sign up.

Not long after the terrorist attack some of the details of what happened came out. One particularly harrowing fact was that the wife and daughter-in-law of those killed saved her life and that of her child by hiding under the kitchen table with her hand over her baby’s mouth, as she watched the terrorist walk through the kitchen stalking his prey. This searing image was enough to trump whatever aversion I had to guns many times over, so on the appointed day I took the M16 and showed up to learn how to use it.

The day chosen for our first round of training was Yom HaShoah – Holocaust Remembrance Day, which is the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The symbolic significance of the day, commemorating another group of Jewish civilians who were forced to take up arms in order to defend themselves, was not lost on any of the twenty women gathered a bit nervously in an empty classroom.

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