Israel, Hamas, and the defense of the general public
In a tweet posted on the 8th of October, a day after Hamas launched an attack on the State of Israel, setting off a war that threatens to expand into a regional conflict, Itamar Ben-Gvir, Minister of National Security, a post that corresponds more or less in U.S. terms to the heads of the F.B.I. and the Department of Homeland Security, declared that there would be a relaxation of Israel’s gun control laws to “allow as many citizens as possible to arm themselves.” The new regulations would permit more people—specifically, residents in settlements, officers in the Israel Defense Force, and emergency responders such as firefighters—to be able to carry firearms legally, while also allowing licensees to purchase a hundred rounds of ammunition and speeding up approvals for licenses or the returning weapons to owners who had not completed the required training.
In other words, those Israelis who survived the initial assault might be able to acquire firearms—in fact, only handguns—in however long the new processing time turns out to be, at which point they can then buy not really enough cartridges to check that the guns work reliably and not nearly enough to learn and maintain shooting skills in the hopes that they can defend themselves for another attack, though by that point, the Israeli military may very well have brought this latest war to an end.
Gun control advocates will look at Israeli gun laws with envy and cite the nation’s homicide rate that is less than a third of that in the United States as an illustration of what strict regulation can achieve. Many supporters of gun rights in this country are already telling the world that the attacks of the 7th of October would have gone quite differently had they been carried out against armed Americans. And round and round the usual interpretations go.
In theory, had the updates to Israeli gun laws been in place prior to the attacks, homeowners may have had a chance against however many of the some one thousand Hamas fighters who crossed over from the Gaza Strip were attacking each location, as would favored people going about their routine business. Attendees at the Re’im music festival would have been unlikely to be armed, if Israeli practice is anything like that in the United States, and, of course, personal weapons would have done nothing to stop the more than three thousand rockets fired into Israeli territory.
Were I to find myself in the midst of an attack, I would certainly like to be armed, as I am during the ordinary and peaceful course of my day. Personal weapons, as I explain over and over to gun control advocates, are not guarantees of survival. We Muggles, mundanes, or the like do not have access to magical circles of protection—though those generally have some weakness. The function of a carry gun is to improve the odds that the person in possession of it will be alive by the end of the fight by terminating immediate lethal threats to one’s own person or to other innocents that the armed good guy is willing or able to aid. Perhaps in cases such as are found in the wars that Ukraine or Israel are fighting at the moment, ordinary citizens who are not at the moment serving in the military might find themselves being asked to assist members of the police or the army, something that the Swiss contemplated if their nation had ever been invaded during the European conflicts of the twentieth century, though Israel does not yet seem willing to allow ordinary persons to have rifles for that purpose. Many American gun owners have made a different choice.
But as I have been told from various sources, the less time we spend in a gunfight, the lower our chances of getting shot. In the current situation in the Middle East, reducing the chances of Israelis getting shot or stabbed or blown up involves reaching a peace agreement with the Palestinians.
Yes, I realize that this is difficult. Both Israel and the various Palestinian factions will have to give up something, especially with regard to the absolutist aspirations of the extremes on either side. Israel is not going to cease to exist as a Jewish state, and Palestine must be allowed soon to join the list of sovereign nations, with perhaps the West Bank and the Gaza Strip going the way of Pakistan and Bangladesh as things sort themselves out. Making Jerusalem an open city under the jurisdiction of the United Nations could help all parties feel that they had been treated badly, if that would help. The United States and Saudi Arabia could exert considerable pressure to get a deal done, but the reality is that unless outsiders are willing to send in a peacemaking force—one that the nuclear-armed power in the conflict would accept—peace is not going to happen until the Israelis and Palestinians sufficiently want it.
And no matter how heavily armed a given person in the conflict zone manages to be until then, survival for even the most skilled will still be due to a large measure of chance.