October 7, 2023: Israel rediscovers ancient realities

There are some understandings universal to human nature. Perhaps the most ingrained is the will to live, which can prevail only if individuals have the ability, and means, of self-defense. Innumerable traditions around the world were inspired by this survival imperative, leading to the English tradition and common law, and ultimately, to the American Bill of Rights and its Second Amendment.

It’s unique among nations–the Second Amendment–not only because it acknowledges, but does not create, an individual right to keep and bear arms, but because no other nation has such a guarantee of the unalienable, natural right, securing the means to exercise that right. What’s truly unique, however, is that while the Second Amendment is arguably based primarily in the right to self-defense, the Founders also found compelling the individual and collective right of every American to rise up, armed as they please and might be, to overthrow a tyrannical government, like the one they had just overthrown.

Contemporary democrats/Socialists/Communists are driven indignantly mad by that historical truth and any that dare utter it. Why, that’s treason talk!  That’s an affront to “our democracy!”  They virtually never characterize America as what it is: a constitutional representative republic, which forbids the tyranny of the majority they envision and stealthily intend when they defend “our democracy.”

Yet an iconic Democrat of an earlier time, a man who unquestionably loved America and didn’t warp history, Hubert Humphrey, thought, and spoke, differently:  

Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of the citizens to keep and bear arms. This is not to say that firearms should not be carefully used and that definite safety rules of precaution should not be taught and enforced. But the right of the citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government and one more safeguard against a tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible.

Hard times produce hard men and women, and even alter tradition. Israel is a parliamentary democracy. It has no Second Amendment. Its martial tradition was birthed of necessity, and it’s not uncommon to see reserve and active-duty, off-duty, soldiers, male and female, carrying their issued arms in public. From those common images, Americans, as we tend to do, assume Israel too had widespread civilian armament. If not a Second Amendment, surely their laws allowed average Israelis, under constant threat of terrorist attack, to be armed?

Image: Israeli Defense Forces-Sparse Shade. wikimedia commons.org.

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By October 8, 2023, we learned in this too, we were imposing American assumptions on the cultures of others. Israeli law made it very difficult for Israelis to own or carry arms of any kind, and the few citizens allowed weapons were limited to 50 rounds of ammo at a time, all of which had to be strictly accounted for. A wanton, barbaric slaughter of greater than 9-11 proportions tends to have a sobering effect: 

Five hundred to six hundred Israelis apply for a gun license every day in hopes of being prepared to defend themselves should Hamas attack again.

“Between October 7 and December 25,” according to The Times of Israel, “274,279 Israelis … filed for a handgun license.”

Contrast that period with the whole of 2022, when just “42,170 Israelis requested a handgun license.”

Breitbart News noted that private gun ownership was low in Israel at the time of the October 7, 2023, Hamas terror attack.

Israelis learned to their horror and sorrow the police and army could not protect them. When seconds mattered and stretched into minutes, their protectors were hours away. Communities that had arms survived. Those that didn’t, were massacred. They learned, in less than a day, what the founders and rational Americans have always known: no one is responsible for your life, and the lives of those you love, but you. Even Israeli “peace activists”—those that survived—virtual allies of Hamas savages, have begun to see reality.

Following the October 7, 2023, Hamas terror attack, Israeli leaders pushed even harder to speed up the process by which Israelis could obtain guns. As a result, the number of gun license applications reached upwards of 3,000 a day in early December.

The Times of Israel quoted Israeli Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who said, “When the war started, we knew that we were right when we said that every place that has a weapon can save a life.”

These numbers may sound small, but Israel’s population is under 10 million, a fraction of ours. Perhaps a change in tradition has already occurred; perhaps a change in law will follow. What’s certain is some realities birth new realizations, and with them other realities, in this case, an ancient, God-given, reality that preserves life.

Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor and retired police officer and high school and college English teacher.  His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.