Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 12:59:43 -0400 To: Matthew Gaylor <freematt@coil.com> From: Matthew Gaylor <freematt@coil.com> Subject: From The Archives: Israel's Answer To Eliminating Terrorism Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed"At 10:19 PM -0400 5/5/99, Matthew Gaylor wrote: >ISRAEL'S ANSWER TO ELIMINATING SCHOOL TERRORISM
>Copyright by By Dr. David Th. Schiller
>P.O. Box 1363, D-56373, Nassau, Germany
>E-Mail: visier@paulparey.de
>
>The name is Dr. David Th. Schiller, currently residing in the little
>town of Nassau, 70 km northwest of Frankfurt. I work as
>editor-in-chief of VISIER, a 168-pages strong general interest gun
>magazine which I started eleven years ago in Stuttgart and which has
>now grown to be the most influential and best selling gun magazine in
>all of Europe. Of course with a gun magazine published in Germany,
>politics are at the forefront of our editorial work, and we have an
>eye toward the past.
>
>I was born in (West) Berlin in '52 in Germany, moved to Israel in '72
>and served in the Israel Defense Force's Airborne, which means I am
>now a veteran of the '73 war, the Lebanese war, and a number of
>border raids and actions in the occupied territories. Wounded in 1973
>on Suez canal, I later studied political science at West Berlin's
>Free University and mastered with a thesis on the origins of the
>Civil War in Lebanon and a Ph.D. in '82 with a work on the
>Palestinians' "love affair" with terrorism and paramilitary activity.
>When I returned to Germany in '74-'75 for studies I was called upon
>by the Berlin Police department to consult and teach their SWAT team,
>which just came into being after the Munich massacre during the
>Munich Olympics. Over the years this extended into a whole series of
>work obligations with various police departments in Germany and other
>places in the world. Due to my work in the Israel Defense Force (IDF)
>as a drill instructor and weapons specialist and through my academic
>interest, I had something to teach to these people. I also worked
>some years for the terrorism research department of Santa Monica's
>RAND Corporation, and have continued my academic pursuits.
>
>Over the years I published a number of books on shooting, police,
>terrorism, military history etc., most of these under the pseudonym
>of "Jan Boger". You probably might find a photographic journal of
>mine in English on the IDF, called "To Live in the Fire...",
>published in 1977 by the John Olson Publishing Co. in New Jersey.
>
>As you can see, I experienced violence and gun control from both ends
>of the barrel, one might say. And of course, I grew up to be a strong
>believer in the personal right to self defense, especially as I spent
>my childhood in the Berlin equivalent of the Bronx.
>
>Now for Colorado and the US gun control laws in regard to schools:
>
>Way back in 1973 - '74 I lived in a Kibbutz in Northern Israel,
>called Ramat Yochanan. During Passover week in '74 we in Galilee
>experienced the first of a number of specific PLO attacks targeting
>specifically schools and children houses, kindergartens, school buses
>and the like. It started with an infiltration in Quiriat Schmoneh on
>the Passover weekend, where the perpetrators found the school empty
>and locked (of course during the holidays!) and took over a nearby
>residential building, shooting people and in the end blowing
>themselves up. A few weeks later the worst of this series of
>incidents took place in Maalot on May 15th: Three PLO gunmen, after
>making their way through the border fence, first shot up a van load
>full of workers returning from a tobacco factory (incidentally these
>people happened to be Galilee Arabs, not Jews), then they entered the
>school compound of Maalot. First they murdered the housekeeper, his
>wife and one of their kids, then they took a whole group of nearly
>100 kids and their teachers hostage. These were staying overnight at
>the school, as they were on a hiking trip. In the end, the deadline
>ran out, and the army's special unit assaulted the building. During
>the rescue attempt, the gunmen blew their explosive charges and
>sprayed the kids with machine-gun fire. 25 people died, 66 wounded.
>
>After this a controversial debate erupted in Israel in regards to
>guns, self defense etc. We heard of course the same dumb arguments by
>some good people, you always hear on these occasions like " We do not
>live in the Wild West here!" Or: "Guns don't solve problems!" or
>similar silly things.
>
>With the help of some smart people, not the least the then
>Commander-in-Chief, Northern Command Paratroop General Raful Eytan,
>all the reservists on the settlements were issued their personal
>weapons, and whoever had a clean track record could get a concealed
>weapons permit. I for instance had and still have one.
>
>Teachers and kindergarten nurses now started to carry guns, schools
>were protected by parents (and often grandpas) guarding them in
>voluntary shifts. No school group went on a hike or trip without
>armed guards. The Police involved the citizens in a voluntary civil
>guard project "Mishmar Esrachi", which even had its own sniper teams.
>The Army's Youth Group program, "Gadna", trained 15 - 16 year old
>kids in gun safety and guard procedures and the older high schoolboys
>got involved with the Mishmar Esrachi. During one noted incident, the
>"Herzliyah Bus massacre" (March '78, hijacking of a bus, 37 dead, 76
>wounded), these youngsters were involved in the overall security
>measures in which the whole area between North Tel Aviv and the
>resort town of Herzlyiah was blocked off, manning roadblocks with the
>police, guarding schools kindergartens etc.
>
>No problems with gun safety there, as most kids in Israel grow up
>used to seeing guns on the street (in the hands of army personnel on
>leave, every soldier takes his/her gun home when on leave!). When the
>message got around to the PLO groups and a couple infiltration
>attempts failed, the attacks against schools ceased. Too much of a
>risk here: Terrorists and other evildoers don't like risks.
>
>But what does all that teach us?
>
>(A) schools/kindergartens make for very attractive targets for
> the deranged gunman as well as for the profit-oriented
> hostage gangsters or terrorist group, because:
>
>(1) everybody sane will cave in to the demands of the evildoers
> (even somebody as hard-nosed as Golda Meir, may she rest in
> peace, said during the Maalot incident, that one does not
> make politics on the backs of one's children). Nobody wants
> to play the principles-game when kids are involved. Kidnapping
> has thus often resulted in the paying of ransom demands.
>
>(2) if you crave media attention, as for instance the PLO did
> in the 70's, nothing will catch the headlines better than
> an attack on a school-full of kids.
>
>(B) Now THAT is the underlying "reason" behind each and every
> incident that involved killing sprees in schools... from
> Maalot to Dunblane to Jonesboro. Only recently the French
> had a hostage/barricade incident in a kindergarten: the
> guy wanted money, and the French authorities solved that
> problem very neatly with a stealth-type approach by one
> of their special teams and a .357 bullet in the head of
> the perpetrator, when he refused to surrender. No follow
> up imitations occurred in France.
>
>So you do not have to be a prophet to foresee, that we will see more
>school-shooting incidents in the U.S. or other western nations, where
>media attention is focused on these things and where every incident
>is replayed second by second umpteen times on the tube, thereby
>creating in the minds of certain viewers examples to follow...
>
>Now, can we stop the media from playing out these scenarios in full
>color and gruesome details for hours and hours, again and again?
>Certainly not. We in the terrorism research field have argued for
>decades that it was exactly the media coverage that spurred more and
>each time more violent and extreme terrorist incidents. Could we stop
>the media from advertising the terrorist message? Certainly not.
>
>That is apparently one price we have to pay living in a worldwide
>infotainment society. The airplane hijackings in the 70's and 80's
>are a case in point.
>
>The only thing we can do is protect possible victims...And laws
>written in some books will not achieve that. Never have, never
>will...Enough said. I rest my case.
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