Israel’s public security minister Amir Ohana claimed it is legitimate to call on armed Jews from other areas to protect Jewish citizens in the mixed city of Lod which saw violent tensions between Jewish citizens and Palestinian natives during the recent escalation in Gaza.
Ohana was responding on Monday to a letter from Joint List member of the Knesset (MK) Ofer Cassif who said last week that a Lod city council member’s call for armed Jews to protect their Jewish compatriots constitutes “incitement.”
Ohana wrote in his reply: “I disagree that it is incitement. The call to [Jewish] citizens to defend themselves against their attackers with the means of firearms for which they have a legal license among others is a legitimate call.” He signed off his letter by saying “There were times when Jews were defenseless and powerless against their attackers. Thank God those times have passed.”
Lod has been the site of violent clashes between the city’s Arab residents (indigenous) and Jewish residents (immigrants) earlier this month. Palestinians had to defend themselves and property and respond to several provocations and crimes that were initially committed by Jews with the connivance of the Israeli police.
Last Friday right-wing Lod city council member Amichai Langfeld from the Jewish Home party called on Jewish gun owners to come to the city to protect its Jewish residents. In a visit to the home of a Jewish family in the city Langfeld said “I don’t trust that the Israeli police will succeed in protecting us. Ahead of Shabbat we call on armed people just as there were here during the Shavuot holiday to come and protect us.” However Lod mayor Yair Revivo who stood next to Langfeld during the visit warned people not to take the law into their own hands.
Following Langfeld’s statements MK Cassif wrote a letter to minister Ohana warning that “there is an explicit call for armed people to take the law into their own hands and even to use live fire… all of this under the auspices of the Lod mayor who stood beside the inciter.”
Cassif added that “without immediate intervention on your part to stop the blatant incitement from escalating to violence a horrible tragedy may occur.”
In his response Ohana wrote: “Unfortunately we live in a world with limited resources and therefore the country (and any country) does not have the ability to station a police officer at every street corner and an undercover cell in every neighborhood. More than once a civilian has been forced to deal with a life-threatening event long before police forces arrived.”
Ohana noted that the law states that there are scenarios in which a civilian can fire a gun. “Do we expect that [a civilian] will wait for police to arrive even at the cost of their life or that of another? Certainly not; the law allows them to act in self-defense in their time of need.”
In turn Cassif replied: “There is no dispute as to whether someone can defend their lives or those of others. But we are not discussing self-defense as the inciting words of Amichai Langfeld are not a call for self-defense but for organized groups to come to a specific place and walk around there while carrying weapons – that is to establish illegal militias.
“In addition the events of the past weeks as well as journalistic investigations prove that a large amount of those who heeded the calls are not interested in protection but rather in attacking Arab civilians whoever and wherever they may be. That is peaceful citizens with nothing to do with acts of violence” Cassif wrote.
