Published: 15 April 2022
Last updated: 4 March 2024
BEN LYNFIELD: Last year’s riots and recent terror attacks have pushed Jewish citizens to take security into their own hands, raising concerns about private militias
AFTER A STRING of terrorist attacks inside Israel that sparked intensive Israeli military operations in the occupied West Bank, tensions are running high again in Lod, one of several mixed Jewish-Arab cities where inter-communal violence shocked the country nearly a year ago.
But now an added element is being thrown into the mix that may make the situation in Lod even more combustible. Amid a sense that the police failed to protect them during Arab rioting last year, some Jews have organised a new security force which they say boosts police efforts but which in the view of left-wing Jews and Arabs is actually a private militia.
Its formation by right-wing religious nationalists, coincides with the emergence of a gun-toting extremist group in the southern city of Beersheba and a call by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett in the wake of a March 30 terrorist attack to bear arms in the street if you have a license.
Applications for gun licenses have spiralled amid the wave of attacks, according to Israel's Channel 12 Television, the most recent of which came last Thursday when three Israelis were shot dead in a Tel Aviv pub. The sense of rampant gunfire is also being felt by Palestinians, with a woman who was reportedly not involved in hostilities, shot dead by IDF soldiers near Bethlehem last week.
In Lod, a Jewish self-defence force has begun emerging from the local population. "Until now I haven't personally seen the need to carry a weapon but there are friends who have weapons, certainly. There is weaponry, doctors and medics," Michael Lichtenstein, who terms himself the "security coordinator" of the unnamed group, told The Jewish Independent.
If events break out all at once, my preparedness is for the first hours until the police come.
More than 50 volunteers serve in the group, based in the Ramat Elyashiv neighbourhood, a religious Zionist area with about 350 families, he said.
