Among the major Israeli national narratives that have been fractured by Hamas terrorist attacks and months of war and violence is the notion that Israel's firearms ethic differs from that of the United States.
Both countries can be characterized as gun-centric democracies, but according to the Israeli narrative, the United States is a land with too many guns and too few laws, while the Israelis “Trust your status and do not fear each other.A common refrain emphasizes that in Israel, bearing arms is not a right, it is a privilege.
After October 7, in a surprisingly rapid shift, that privilege became, if not a right, then an imperative. By changing Israel's relationship with firearms, Benjamin Netanyahu's government is also changing the nation in ways that could have profound and lasting implications.
I have spent more than a decade collaborating with Israeli public health academics and security activists to better understand how a heavily armed country might view just a fraction of American civilian deaths from firearms.
Couple shootings, homicides, gun suicides, accidental shootings and mass shootings have been remarkably low in Israel, in part because the government banned assault rifles to private citizens and issued permits to carry firearms. fire only after an extensive investigation process.
Effective gun laws reinforced social cohesion. If Americans carry guns based on individualized notions of self-protection, Israelis view gun ownership as a shared responsibility, and when gun policy arises, they will explicitly say that they “don't want to be like the United States.”
But like many national narratives, Israel's gun scripts are partly a myth. Armed settlers in the West Bank have recklessly They intimidated and harassed Palestinians.. A robust market for smuggled weapons flourished in the smaller towns, and the victims of those weapons were overwhelmingly Arab citizens of Israel.
Still, American researchers like me might view Israeli gun safety efforts as a model of successful public policy.
Now that model is at risk. Hamas's kidnapping and massacre of Israelis represents a catastrophic failure of state protection. It has tapped into deep national fears about being Jewish, vulnerable and exposed.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, a Jewish supremacist arsonist who was once expelled from military service because of his radicalism, has seized the moment. Before the Hamas attacks, he attempted to weaken gun permit regulations and ease carry rights, but his arguments failed to gain traction. Now, however, he and his allies have managed to expedite legislation that has led to an unprecedented increase in armed Jewish civilians.
“Carrying a gun is a lifesaver: Ben-Gvir and his wife boast of a dramatic expansion among Israelis carrying weapons,” read a headline in Haaretz on October 22.
Inside a week after the attackthe Netanyahu government was buying and distributing Thousands of firearms. The contentious Knesset oversight committee meetings detailed how dozens of unqualified people, including Ben Gvir's personal appointees, had been given temporary authority to approve gun license applications. In March, according to HaaretzBen-Gvir celebrated the granting of 100,000 new permits in five months.
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It is understandable that arms sales to civilians increase in times of danger. Guns provide real protection in some cases and the promise of protection in others. And yet, gun safety and security are never as simple as the NRA’s “good guys” versus “bad guys” binary makes it seem. Armed civilians rarely prevent crimes like mass shootings. The potential security benefits of arming civilians are often offset by the increasedgram Everyday injuries and deaths related to firearms.
Gun ownership can make people distrust governments and regulations, and gun policy can also be tribalizing, divisive, and even undemocratic.
After the death of George Floyd and amid the 2020 pandemic, people's fears, sometimes fueled by conspiracy theories, drove gun sales to record levels. Gun sellers could exploit white anxiety about black violence and also the anxieties of black and Latino populations. Meanwhile, pro-gun courts in the United States have been striking down gun safety laws implemented by state or local legislatures and voters.
The Middle East represents a profoundly different context. But Netanyahu's government is doing more than responding to the traumatic chaos of Hamas attacks by adopting American gun laws: Ben Gvir's gun policies paper over security failures, weaken trust in democratic institutions, exacerbate divisions and They will do little to make anyone safer.
For example, Israeli The data shows that surprisingly few terrorist attacks They are detained by armed civilians and yet the government insists otherwise. Armed civilians, Netanyahu said, “save lives.” He initially ignored an incident in which an armed civilian “hero,” who had actually stopped a deadly terrorist attack, was later shot dead amid the chaos. “We may have to pay prices,” Netanyahu said, “but that's life.”
A disproportionate number of the newly distributed weapons are likely to end up in the hands of supporters of Netanyahu's conservative-religious coalition. Armed Jewish security squads have been formed in mixed cities where Jewish and Palestinian Israeli citizens live. Violence against Palestinians has increased in the West Bank, where members of Jewish settler groups have long been allowed to carry weapons, while Palestinians have not.
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What does it mean for Israel to so quickly embrace American-style armed individualism?
In conversations last fall, Israeli and Palestinian doctors, journalists, gun safety advocates, and academics told me that they had been devastated by the Hamas attack and the plight of the hostages. They understood their countrymen's desire for firearms. At the same time, no one could believe how many weapons were arriving.
“People we never imagined are lining up for permits and carrying guns,” one activist said during a group conversation on Zoom. Others on the call chimed in: “My husband.” “My shopkeeper.” “My father in law.” “Me.”
Being “like the United States” emerged as a source of concern. An activist who lives in a Tel Aviv suburb spoke as sirens sounded in the background. How long will it be after the Gaza war ends, he wondered, “until we see our first American-style mass shooting?”
An emergency room doctor told a story about neighbors arguing and holding guns in the middle of an argument. He asked a question that months earlier would have been unimaginable: “Do you think American gun safety groups might be willing to champion our cause?”
The “arms campaign is bypassing democratic procedures,” said one prominent peace activist, with “growing authoritarianism” and “a track record of increasingly violent police responses against anti-war protesters.”
Later, as the human catastrophe in Gaza escalated, another activist asked: “What violence is being carried out in our name?”
By In January, with anti-war protests accelerating, one journalist wondered whether disarmament would be possible, with Israelis “under siege, not only by our enemies but also by the supposedly liberal and modern people of the West whom we thought we belonged to.” part”. Would it be possible to imagine or “make peace”?
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Israel's arms proliferation, which began in response to an external threat, has become a focus of expansive internal agendas. “I really don't think Ben-Gvir wants Israelis to feel safe,” explained one Palestinian-Israeli lawyer. “He wants the settlers and the crazy people to intimidate the others.”
The gun safety movement is mobilized in opposition, but regardless of how its efforts evolve, the decisions Israel has already made about guns could go a long way toward shaping the nation's future.
Perhaps the country will repeal Ben-Gvir's disastrous gun policies and begin the hard work of countering their polarizing effects on health, society, and politics. Such an approach would require regional stability and the renewal of what Haaretz calls “the contract between state and citizen.”
Or Israel could remain a fortress, and its people would adopt self-defense measures to “stand firm” and arm themselves with increasing anticipation of real and speculative threats.
If I have learned anything from studying gun policy in the United States, it is that an armed and internally divided nation is less capable of negotiating, legislating effectively, or reaching meaningful agreements.
Jonathan M. Metzl (@jonathanmetzl) heads the department of medicine, health and society at Vanderbilt University and is the author, most recently, of “What we have become: living and dying in a country of weapons.” This article was prepared in collaboration with Zócalo Public Square.
