Trigger-happy critics
You might think Israel has all its own problems solved, considering the vigor of its finger-wagging at a mourning US over its gun control policy
Joshua Davidovich is The Times of Israel's Deputy Editor
A day after what is being called the deadliest shooting in US history, it’s little surprise that the attack in Las Vegas that left 59 dead and over 500 injured dominates the Israeli news agenda. What is possibly surprising is the focus the Israeli papers and their columnists put on lax gun control laws in America, lending the coverage a snotty tone of “Won’t they ever learn.”
No matter where one stands on the debate over the Second Amendment, which seems more and more outmoded with each passing massacre, nobody likes being told what to do, especially not by those who have no skin in the game, after a deeply painful and wounding incident like the Las Vegas shooting.
Even if the US does need to have a debate about its guns, that seems like it would be a conversation for Americans to have. But Israelis are not exactly known for keeping their opinions to themselves. With the attack apparently not involving international jihadi groups, though, Israeli pundits have little to do but wade into the morass across the ocean, disregarding whether it’s their place to do so or not.
Definitely out of place is a headline from Yedioth Ahronoth reading “American roulette,” which alludes both to Sin City’s favorite sin and possibly the fact that’s playing a deadly game by continuing to allow near-unfettered access to guns. (Even I think there’s a time and a place for puns.)
“It was only a matter of time,” the paper’s correspondent in Las Vegas quotes a tourist saying, though the tourist is not actually talking about gun control, but the city’s attraction as a soft target. “Las Vegas is an ideal place for a terror attack. You can hit many people in one go. I’m just surprised it took this long.”
Columnist Orly Azulay, though, dives headfirst into finger-wagging at America for its firearms policy and lack of ability to make any changes.
“After the dead are buried, the voices calling for gun control will also be buried, as it was in the past after other insane acts of people taking lives in a crazy dance with Kalashnikov rifles in school, church and a movie theater,” she writes.
In the same paper columnist Yoav Fromer also has little hope that Americans will do anything about gun reform, but to his credit, he does try to break down the political and social reasons behind why it’s so hard to legislate against guns, with a little help from pop sociology.
“The unique geographical, cultural and economic conditions that formed the development of the US are also those that put gun culture in the American ethos — and turned it into an inseparable part of the national identity. From a geographic perspective, many areas of the US, like Nevada, remain frontier areas,” he says. “And today, as 226 years ago, when the Second Amendment was legislated to enshrine the right to bear arms, there are millions of Americans who don’t forget that: the pioneer experience by which you needed to deal with enemies at every corner — foreign armies, Indians, bandits and bears — created the violent national ethos. Show me your heroes and I’ll tell you who you are: And so, many American heroes are those same pistol-packers like Daniel Boone, Jessie James and Billy the Kid, who won praise for their gun skills and the number of bodies they racked up.”
In Haaretz as well, columnist Chemi Shalev expresses little hope that things will get better, and broadcasts the utter bewilderment around the globe over the fact that America can keep allowing things like this to happen.
“The world cannot comprehend how a supposedly enlightened nation such as the United States clings so resolutely to gun laws that seem more appropriate to the Wild West than to a modern 21st-century country. How it fails to see the clear link between the 100 or so Americans who are killed by bullets each and every day, and the guns that are so readily available to fire those bullets,” he writes. “How weapons of mass killing that in other countries are restricted to the battlefield and military personnel are sold over the counter to anyone with a driver’s license. Why repeated gun massacres and mass shooting fail to change anyone’s mind. And why an entire wing of American politics has embraced free gun ownership as its cherished ideal, its defining principle, its do-or-die ideal from which it will never retreat.”
The one paper where it might have been more appropriate to have the debate is Israel Hayom, with the paper mostly translating articles from the Las Vegas Review-Journal, also owned by published Sheldon Adelson. But with Adelson being a big backer of US President Donald Trump, it’s little surprise that it, like the White House, also feels now is not the time for that type of debate.
While the paper notes that US officials don’t believe gunman Stephen Paddock had any connection to the Islamic State group, it still repeats the fact that IS claimed the attack more than once, and also seemingly attempts to link the shooting spree to Islamic terror by comparing it to the Bataclan attack in Paris and noting that IS members celebrated the killings
What little original content the paper has on the shooting involves talking to Israelis who were nearby at the time (no Israelis appear to have been hurt at the country music festival, go figure).
“People are running all around in shock, with bloodstains on their clothes,” the paper quotes one Israeli at the nearby Excalibur Hotel saying right after the shooting. “We realize something terrible has happened. The Israeli mind fears this is a terror attack. That’s how we were taught.”
In Yedioth, Uri Zakhour tells of going for a walk down the Strip when the attack happened and being caught up in people fleeing. After finding shelter with a bunch of other people at a hotel, he writes, the old Israeli game of spot the terrorist kicked in thanks to the chaos.
“The escapees had another real fear: that the shooter was in the crowd and had escaped with us. Every started whispering and looking around suspiciously at other people, mostly those who had bags, were wearing large shirts and just plain looked threatening,” he writes.
It’s not only Americans who don’t want to give up their guns. Hamas too, is signaling that it won’t totally disarm, even amid a reconciliation attempt with Fatah in Gaza that also garners real estate in the newspapers.
“The group won’t transfer control of its ‘blue police’ force in Gaza to the Palestinian government,” Israel Hayom reports
In Haaretz, though. Amos Harel notes that the fact that Hamas is even talking about reconciliation is a sign that the group is in some dire straits.
“It’s possible that the organization is still recovering from the war damage of three years ago, and it seems its leaders also understand that it’s hard to go to war when Egypt maintains an alliance of interests with Israel and Qatar, Hamas’s other possible patron, which has its own problems with Saudi Arabia in the Gulf,” he writes. “Although the Iranian aid to Hamas’ military wing has been restored, it’s doubtful that it can give Hamas enough breathing space.”
