While in Israel it is common to see men and women—usually, but not always, in uniform—walking through the streets or riding buses while carrying military-issue rifles, the actual rate of gun ownership is a fraction of what it is in the U.S. But since October 7, over 300,000 Israelis have applied for gun permits, potentially tripling the number of citizens who own firearms. Matti Friedman, a resident of Jerusalem who recently got a pistol of his own, explains why:
For years, we have suffered regular episodes in which Palestinian men go berserk in public places with knives or guns, killing people until they themselves are shot and killed by security forces or an armed civilian. (The most recent instance occurred last week, when a Palestinian stabbed three people at a mall.) But this never translated into gun ownership, certainly not among people I know. We seemed to expect someone else to be on hand to protect us.
This was obviously going to have to change as we absorbed two lessons of the Hamas attack. . . . [E]ven in the weeks of my work on this essay, an Israeli with a handgun managed to kill a terrorist, another Palestinian from Jerusalem, who was shooting innocent people on a road in southern Israel, two of whom died. That was on February 16. On March 14, a noncommissioned officer waiting in line at an Aroma café didn’t notice the Palestinian kid in a black sweatshirt who lunged at his neck with a knife—but did manage to draw his handgun and shoot the assailant, preventing more fatalities, before he bled to death.
A friend from America told me recently that every Jewish person he knows has a contingency plan, sometimes secret or scarcely admitted even to themselves, for where to hide or escape if things get really bad in the diaspora. . . . Mulling this, I asked friends here in Israel if they had a similar plan. No one did. Zionism has clearly failed to change everything in the Jewish condition, but it seems to have changed that, for what it’s worth. I don’t know anyone preparing a hideout. But I do know a remarkable number of people with a new Glock.
Read more on Free Press: https://www.thefp.com/p/matti-friedman-why-i-got-a-gun