The name of the woman being led into captivity in this picture is Naama Levy. The photo was taken to celebrate her capture.
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Sorry, nothing to see here, except a bit of ‘social justice’. It’s quite telling that this is the first time I have seen this poor lady named in any media, after 5 months of war.
Her fate is an inconvenient truth.
“Social justice” bears absolutely no relationship to true justice. It’s a fraud perpetrated by the left.
Get used to it, is all I’ve got to say. This is going to happen more and more, in the coming years.
Why? Because the yammering dumbf*cks have disarmed and emasculated everyone from resisting this kind of thing. Think about it… How many Israelis were armed and ready to deal with this, effectively? Did they? Or, were they hoodwinked by their own government into willing victimhood? How many armed Israelis were there, on that border with Hamas? Who, in their right f*cking mind would live next to those savages, without taking prudent cautions and preparations?
October 7th was like observing those same idiots who ventured into India, and the woman got gang-raped in front of her partner, who was beaten. WTF? Do you not read the newspapers? Indian women aren’t safe in India; why would you be? Why would you go there, knowing the risks, and take zero preventive measures? Like, avoiding the hell out of those areas that even Indians avoid…
If you lived within the distance the average victim of October 7th did, and you weren’t armed, and had a safe place to fight back from? You’re really a bit too much of a victim, TBH. I would love to know what the likely response would have been, had those degenerates of Hamas tried pulling something similar in a Swiss region. I suspect that it would not have gone well, for them. The Swiss militia would have likely suffered a moment of disbelief, and then gotten right to work.
Living right next door to Hamas as if you were in some liberal enclave outside a major Western community is what was insane on October 7th. It struck me then, and still does, that the insouciant way the victims led their lives was rather as if you lived next door to a volcano, and just ignored the fact and did nothing to cope with potential for lava erupting near your front door… Or, living on the coast, in a tsunami zone, and bitching to the local government about the ugliness of the evacuation route signs and that ugly tower with the warning siren…
The whole situation was nuts, to my way of thinking. You live right there, next to Hamas? WTF are you thinking? That’s like living next door to the predator cages in the local zoo, and hanging steaks off the kids… While demanding a vegetarian diet for all those big cats from their keepers.
ANY form of “justice” is an oxymoron as soon as you apply an adjective. (“Climate Justice” wins the prize for being the most oxymoronic.) Even the non-adjectivized “justice” has frequent failings. But telling me I’m an Islamophobe — dayum, being an islamophobe theses days is just common sense. Therefore, it must be punished.
Indeed. FA Hayek called “social” a weasel word.
Kirk:
I agree, the Israelis who lived in the kibbutzes near Gaza tended to be peacenik types, and often employed agricultural workers from Gaza. They no doubt thought that this would encourage peaceful coexistence, which it would, if you were dealing with reasonable people. Which they weren’t.
People tend to think of Israel as being a heavily armed society, but it is not. It is true that settlers on the West Bank are issued small arms by the army, but most of the rest of Israel is unarmed. The gun laws derived from those of the British Mandate, and of course the ethos of any colonial gun law is to keep arms out of the hands of the natives. That is of course now applied at home in Britain.
It is my understanding that these laws have since been overhauled, and that armed self-defence is now a thing, but it is still subject to the usual bureaucracy of a modern administrative state. Still, it’s an improvement, and any kibbutznik who decides not to avail himself of the ability to be armed strikes me as a very stupid person indeed.
I’m somewhat-confused. When I visited Israel in the late 70’s, private small-arms were everywhere, even in suburban areas. It was completely-unremarkable to see a holstered pistol, or a rifle (often an AR or M16) slung across someone’s shoulder. Out in the country, I’d say one was never out of sight of someone who was visibly armed. And of course, one saw uniformed military with weapons everywhere and all the time – on the street, on the bus, in the bar, men and women, they were a constant.
Yet on 10/7, it sounds as though virtually-nobody in the areas that were attacked had access to arms, and indeed, I would not have thought that even the most suicidal fanatics would have thought that such a bizarre attack – ultralights and scooters? Really? – would get very far against residents who could easily reach for a rifle. What changed in Israel? Was it the laws, or the people? I can’t seem to find any meaningful description of how such an attack could progress very far against a population that I saw previously as being heavily-armed?
llater,
llamas
I second Llamas’ question. I too was baffled to discover the settlements near Gaza were not inhabited by armed militias comprising close to 100% of the adult population.
You don’t have to go to the Gaza border to see the juxtaposition of sheep and wolf. Trot over to the edge of your city’s public housing.
If the armed, violent, poor and “oppressed” demographic ever decides to stop killing each other for nothing and start in on the helpless, peaceful, rich “masters” in New York, D. C., or Chicago it will make October 7 look like a picnic.
London or Paris, too, for that matter.
We are sending a bad domestic message by trying to impede the Israelis, even feebly.
Here in the US I wouldn’t want to place any large bets in either direction as to whether the urban poor or the urban rich are relatively better armed. I do feel confident about saying that both groups are poorly armed compared to people in the outer suburban and rural areas here in the US.
Private citizens here in the US are incredibly, even absurdly well-armed, overall. It’s uncharted social territory. It’s had an effect on our wannabe overlords and masters – not as large an effect as I would like, but a much greater one than those wannabe overlords and masters wish it did.
It’s hard to measure just how well armed we are, as we’re wary about admitting to owning guns (jokes about “tragic boating accidents” aside). But it’s worth noting that private purchases of ammunition are several billion rounds per year. (Billion with a B, ten-to-the-ninth.) Now about half of that is .22LR, but still…
“An armed society is a polite society” – but a society doesn’t count as armed unless the old men and young women have guns too. That isn’t the case in the violent urban areas – but its different in the rural and outer suburban US.
llamas said:
I dare say you did not talk to those visibly-armed Israelis, back during the 1970s. If you had, you’d have been informed that all such people were reservists on duty, but in civilian clothes. Wandering around as an armed “normal citizen” just did not happen; it was not tolerated, from what I’ve been told by Israelis who lived there, then. There was, it was true, a lot more small arms out in the population, but those were all reservist weapons, which they had to carry at all times because there wasn’t safe storage for them where they lived.
There isn’t a tradition of armed civilians in Israel. The Israeli government has always been uncomfortable with that idea, and so has the population. Mostly, because they associate all that with the crazy types they see settling the West Bank, and they did not want them to have easy access to arms. As well, if the Jewish Israelis wanted to carry guns on their own, then the Arab Israelis would have to be granted the same rights and opportunities, so in order to prevent that, they had to clamp down on the Jews having weapons as well…
Israel is not really a Western country as we understand it in Anglo-Saxon terms. It is an heir of the Socialist/control-freak Continental European nations, the ones that want control over their people than to grant them liberty, because they fear they’ll abuse it. This feature explains the general ambivalence towards privately-armed civilians in Israel.
Odds are pretty good that if something like October 7th happened here in the US? Given the prevalence of arms in a lot of the nation’s regions?
Say, for example, that a visibly different minority experienced having visibly similar sorts of people attempt a Mumbai- or October 7-style attack.
What do you suppose happens next, spontaneously?
Doesn’t really bear thinking about, TBH. Which is why I think we made a huge mistake with not having that “well-regulated militia” thing in being, such that any impulse towards “doing something” got channeled into something that might actually reinforce public order instead of tearing it down. I guarantee you that were there to be something like October 7 here in the US, it quite possibly might go full-bore kinetic into something like the original Sand Creek Massacre.
But, on a much, much larger scale. Imagine the Indians at Sand Creek being run down by heavily-armed civilians outside of any sort of organized authority on quad-runners… The whole thing looking very much like an impromptu Mad Max situation.
They don’t put pre-positioned social controls on something like that, well… Yeah. To neglect that sort of thing is to ensure it happens; every armed American ought to have a place in the local militia/disaster response organization, and been well-trained. That way, hopefully, instead of going out hunting for whatever variety of “sand-n****r” they see as responsible, they’ll be under discipline and authority before that gets out of control.
What’ll likely happen, to my mind? You’ll have a mass public response, one that will likely spin out of control, and it’ll wind up looking a lot like Rwanda with real small arms instead of just machetes.
My advice for anyone dwelling here in the US without actual legal immigration documents, and who looks even vaguely alien? Get out, and get out now. When all this finally plays out, the US is going to have a black eye that makes the one worn by Germany look pale by comparison. People are getting very, very angry. Also, frustrated, and if there’s one thing I would suggest, you don’t want to be the object of said “rural rage”. Or, the urban equivalent; I don’t think the gang-bangers are going to be very nice when it starts looking like someone is going after the blacks to them.
I don’t even think the Irish illegals working in all the resort-area bars are going to be safe, TBH. Got papers? Look like a member of the majority in the community? You may be safe; anyone else? LOL… You’re going to wish you’d stayed home.
Not to say that any of that it is automatic, just that it’s a definite possibility. All depends on how things break out, when the moment comes.
Laird – as Mr Ed (and others – such as Jonathan Pearce) have often pointed out, Social Justice does have a connection to Justice.
“Social Justice” (or, as Ellen points out, any of these words around Justice – such as “Climate Justice”, “Racial Justice” or “Gender Justice”. or “Justice as Fairness”) is the negation, the destroyer, of Justice. It is the opposite of Justice – it is injustice.
As for the October 7th attacks – socialists, such as George Galloway of the Workers Party, or even the Marxist atheists of the Socialist Worker Party and other groups, make no mistake when they support Hamas and other such Islamic groups – they all support Social Justice – i.e. plundering, rape and murder.
Neil Oliver of GB News denied that the people on the Hate Marches in London (which he denies are Hate Marches) supported the plundering and mass rape and murder of October 7th, “no – the marches are against what is happening in Gaza” said Neil Oliver – not explaining why the marches started BEFORE the Jews counter attacked. The marches clearly are in support of plundering, mass rape and mass murder (the people on the marches are Social Justice people – and this is what Social Justice means) – but Neil Oliver denied this, but then he had Mr George Galloway on his show, for a friendly interview, and the confusion was over – Neil Oliver has made his choice (in spite of his denials). He has chosen the side of socialists such as Mr George Galloway.
The Metropolitan (London) Police do not arrest people for shouting their support for the extermination of the Jews (“from the river to the sea” and pro Hamas chants), but they do arrest (sometimes quite brutally) brave individuals who try and protest AGAINST Hamas.
The police, or rather those who control them, have also made their choice.
@Kirk – regarding firearms ownership in Israel, remember that I was talking about the situation that I saw there almost 50 years ago. And I did explore what was going on. Some of the people I saw going armed were surely active duty or reserve military on their way to and from duty. But many were not. As it was explained to me at the time, there was strict gun control, in the sense of a carefully-controlled permit process, but permits were easy to get for law-abiding citizens. There was no distinction between owning a weapon and carrying it, if one had a permit, one could carry (with location restrictions) either open or concealed. Many Israelis at that time (I was told) specifically chose to open-carry both handguns and long guns as a directed political, cultural and religious statement in the aftermath of the 1960s and 1970s conflicts, which were still very much top of mind in those days. It should also be remembered that, in those days, there was a more-or-less continual low level of sabre-rattling and general provocation by Arab nations, added to by such incidents as Munich and the steady stream of hijackings centred on the Arab-Israeli conflicts.
This wayback description from the USDOJ from 1992 pretty-well describes the situation as I saw it then.
https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/israel-has-successful-gun-control-policy-gun-control-p-248-251-1992
I think what you are describing is what has been the norm in Israel for the last 5 or 10 years, where there has been a gradual increase in restrictions on permits and open- and concealed-carry. But that was what I was asking about. You just made me go and research it for myself. Whether or not that has been a good direction for the safety of the general population is the next topic for discussion.
Your comment about how there ‘isn’t a tradition of armed civilians in Israel’ is – how shall I say – open to debate? Certainly in the early days of the state of Israel, it would seem that the majority of the civilian population was either armed directly or had immediate access to arms.
Regarding Deep Lurker’s assertion that many Americans are ‘absurdly well-armed’ – I realize you were being facetious, but I wonder – when Palestinian rapists and murderers were running amok in Israeli villages, I wonder whether the potential victims would have considered the access to arms of vast numbers of Americans to be as ‘absurd’ as all that? I suspect that, were I in that position, there’s no amount of arms and ammunition at my disposal that I would consider to be even excessive, never mind absurd.
llater,
llamas
Kirk:
I am sure you are right, the people with M16s back then would surely have been reservists.
Llamas:
The Israeli gun laws you cite are very similar to the British blueprint enacted in 1920. This was carried over to most parts of the Empire. The design was to prevent Communists at home being armed, and to prevent native populations in the Empire from being armed too. But the laws are flexible. If the authorities decide to be liberal in their interpretation, the need to show “good reason” to own arms need not be an impediment. But if not, the same requirement can be used to stifle civilian arms ownership. That is how it is done in Britain now, and, I think, in Israel in recent years. I have been reading posts from a resident of Sderot, who reckons it was not possible to get a permit to own a gun for self-defence before October 7th. I believe that has now changed.
As far as I know, the settlers in the West Bank are issued arms by the army, they do not have to apply for permits to own them.
@llamas… I dunno… My information source was an Israeli and his girlfriend that I met through another soldier, an American Jew who’d done time in the IDF. The Israelis may have had an agenda, now that I think about it, and were highly critical of the availability of arms here in the US. I had pointed out the prevalence of arms in images from Israel, and they “refuted” my point by making those statements I repeated about reservists.
Truth may lie somewhere in between; I’ve never actually seen the laws, nor have I lived in Israel.
@ Kirk – fair enough. I don’t pretend to detailed knowledge, but I was there and I saw, what I saw, and I asked about it.
Regarding the weapons being carried and by whom, active-duty Israeli soldiers would have been carrying the Galil rifle. M16A1’s were carried by reservists. As it woukd take an expert in the history and development of the M16 to distinguish a selective-fire M16 (military) from a semi-auto AR-15 (civilian), from more than a few feet away, I can’t say with certainty what proportion of the rifles I saw were being carried by military vs civilian users. But in a place where all adult males and many adult females below a certain age were reservists who had been in the military, it seems to me that such distinctions are kind-of blurred anyway.
Your sources suggesting that there was no tradition of firearms ownership by Israeli civilians is kind-of ironic in view of the fact that the IDF, the foundation-stone of the Israeli state, was formed by the consolidation and nationalization of a number of civilian paramilitaries – Haganah, Palmach, Irgun, Lehi and no doubt others I have forgot – some of which had been around for 40 years or more and all of which held and used much-heavier weapons than rifles and pistols. IIRC, the Brits estimated that at the time of independence, about 1 Israeli male in 5 was associated with one of these groups, and they were importing surplus WW2 arms by the boat-load.
llater,
llamas
Random observations:
Israel was founded by Labor socialists who moved quickly to disarm other factions that fought for Israel’s independence.
There is no Israeli constitution, hence no constitutional right to bear arms.
You must demonstrate need/justification – that is, petition the government – to get a permit.
Most visitors are taken aback by the number of rifles and soldiers they see here – we have a citizens’ army with active reserves, most 1st world countries don’t have the same level of participation/visibility that we do.
In addition to soldiers and reservists, there are other tiers of security personnel with short rifles:
Are your kids’ field trips accompanied by a rifle-bearing teenager?
Ours are.
Remember how you-all tear your hair when a gunman enters your “gun free zone” church/school/hospital and mows people down?
That doesn’t happen here because we have armed guards at the school entrance, and checking bags at the mall, etc.
That’s a lotta arms on view in public.
We captured a lotta territory in 1967 and fought another war in 1973. If you visited around then, you saw a lot of people with firearms… even to tour in Jerusalem and other newly liberated Jewish sites.
The Oslo-era army and gubmint severely limited the issuance of gun permits that would have allowed Jewish settlers to defend themselves… this goes together with their long-term program to demonize the settlers and starve them out.
One of newly elected MK Ben-Gvir’s post-October 7 directives that caused the Lefties to squawk was the adoption of US-style “will issue” language. The gubmint must now demonstrate a reason to deny the permit. It’s no accident that he comes from the settler movement and also draws inspiration from Rabbi Meir Kahane – who counseled Jews in New York to arm themselves when they were attacked by “asian youths”.
Since October 7 the Ministry’s been flooded with applications…
October 7th? It was not a failure of materiel but of imagination…
The venue was chosen because it was perceived as safe and “the middle of nowhere”. A safe place to rave and partake of mind-altering substances…
So why bring your gun? I am sure there were some reservists among the partygoers, but they probably left their guns home or stashed them in the car. Many of the revelers were probably Left-leaning conscientious objectors… certainly the kibbutzim that were hit hardest have always identified as hard left… which means they ignored security for decades. Did not even perceive a threat.
In the army base that was overrun – soldiers were armed, but caught sleeping.
@Ben David,
Yeah, it’s always amazing how these things are always “by surprise”… I read somewhere that there were IDF reservists tasked with monitoring the activities in Gaza who warned that something was up, and that there were unusual exercises going on. They were, of course, made to shut up about it.
Here’s the thing I’ve observed about “Intelligence”: It does not work, because the majority of the problem, as you rightfully point out, stems from a failure of imagination in the actual leadership. Every single one of the “unprecedented” terrorist coups in the last century were foreseen, many were observed in preparation, and… Nothing was done. Why? ‘Cos, the bright lights in charge of things didn’t want to believe the reports. Look at Pearl Harbor… All those planes, lined up wingtip-to-wingtip, because of anti-saboteur measures. Brilliant, that.
I don’t know what you do when the leadership elite is as dumb and unimaginative as ours is. I’ve been railing for years about how dumb it is to have our center of drone operations down at Nellis AFB, just outside of Las Vegas. Which just happens to be probably the hardest-to-secure city against foreign terrorism in the United States. The traffic in and out of there for potential attackers is insane, but where do we have most of our drone operations working out of? Yep; you got it. If you were to put those at, say… Mountain Home AFB, in Idaho? LOL… Yeah, just about anything in the way of a foreign terrorist cell would stand out like a sore thumb. Make security a lot easier, but… Do we do it? Oh, no… You’re crazy, Sergeant K; nobody would ever do something like that…
I was warning idiots in my chain of command about “social media risk”, and things like those freakin’ FitBit trackers. I was told that there was no way that the commander was going to give up his Garmin tracker for his runs, so just toddle along… Yeah.
Ain’t none of this crap unforeseeable or “can’t defend against it”. You can… You just have to first admit that it’s all too possible, and then actually get off your ass to do something about it. Like, do what needs to be done, to defend yourself.
I knew a former Israeli awhile back, who I’m reasonably sure was someone of position within the IDF. As in, one of the varied Sayaret units, and I’ve no idea which. He was no longer living in Israel because he’d had a bit of a falling out over something with his bosses, and because of that, he could not carry weapons and was denied ownership of any as a civilian. This was why he was in the United States, and even though he still thought he was at risk if the right people learned where he was, he still preferred to do his own security, which meant that he’d have to be in a country that allowed civilian arms.
Interesting guy, to talk about these things with. He said he’d had an epiphany, after they’d pulled his weapons and denied him ownership of any as a civilian, and that was that he could not live in or work for a country that denied him that basic right to arms. I shudder to think what he’d have said about October 7; I’m pretty sure he’d have stroked out, if he were told about it.