Amichay Ben Saadon is not alone. There are thousands just like him in Israel. Attacked, usually by Arabs, tried to defend themselves with the weapons the State of Israel authorized them to use for precisely such a situation. As Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said just a few weeks ago, "Whoever has a license to carry a weapon, this is the time to carry it."
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While the diplomatic echelon has encouraged civilians to defend themselves, the Israel Police has done the exact opposite. It has systematically punished those facing attacks and constantly backed up the attackers. It is hard to believe, but this is the twisted approach.
I personally know of dozens of cases in which the Jews who were attacked were taken into custody and their weapons were seized for a prolonged period of time. This is because when both sides filed a complaint, the Israel Police chose to adopt the Arabs' version of events. When the law enforcement system automatically believes an abused woman but not an abused man, it will also prefer the Arab attacker's version to that of the Jewish victim.
This policy has been adopted because progressive jurists have deeply instilled the perception that every Arab is a member of a supposedly weakened minority. As they see it, as a member of the oppressive majority, the Jew's version should be questioned. The fact that in reality, the opposite is true, and the Jew in most cases is the victim while the Arab is the attacker, as the Jew is legally armed while the Arab carries their weapon without a license, escapes authorities' attention.
This outrageous method has been in use for years. The public was only exposed to it after the man who took out the Beersheba terrorist had his weapons confiscated. In that instance, Israel Police Commissioner Yaakov Shabtai was forced to order the civilian's weapon returned that same day following media pressure. That directive was the exception: The procedure is to seize the legal weapon of an attacked Jew, regardless of whether they served in the Israel Defense Forces' elite Sayeret Matkal unit, are a member of the IDF reserves, or are just decent citizens with no criminal background. Ask residents of the mixed Jewish-Arab city of Lod who were attacked during the IDF's Operation Guardian of the Walls. The victims' legal weapons were taken from them for many months. The attackers' illegal weapons remain scattered throughout the city to this day.
Talk of an "uncompromising war on terror" will not help unless it is accompanied by practical action on the ground. If the cabinet is genuinely interested in stopping the wave of terror, this is the first directive that should be issued to Public Security Minister Omer Bar-Lev at the meeting today: Cancel the seizure of weapons of civilians who were attacked, including the ridiculous excuse they are carrying out ballistic inspections of weapons.
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