Two Simple & Universal Truths
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Precedented
At 6:30am on October 7th, just two days before her twenty-sixth birthday, Inbal Rabin-Lieberman woke to air-raid sirens.
Residents of the Nir-Am Kibbutz, which borders the Gaza Strip, immediately began moving their families into nearby bomb shelters. They were prepared, simply and unfortunately, because rocket attacks from Gaza are an all-too-common occurrence.
But to Inbal, who was at the time serving as the volunteer security coordinator for the community, something about this attack felt different. The sounds outside the Kibbutz were unusual, and someone on her team had received a report that the Palestinian agricultural workers who worked in the Kibbutz’s orange grove were being shot at.
Inbal had a feeling that something far worse than a rocket attack was underway.
Trusting her intuition, she raced to the secured armory where weapons were kept in case of emergency and quickly called for the twelve residents who made up the “quick response group” for the community. Inbal distributed rifles to the group, and then strategically positioned them in small teams to provide security for the Kibbutz.
Moments later, they came under attack by dozens of heavily armed Hamas terrorists, who we now know were on a mission to murder, rape, torture, and kidnap as many civilians in the Kibbutz as possible—just like the 1,500 other terrorists who’d infiltrated southern Israel that morning, in a stunningly well planned and executed attack intentionally targeting residential communities.
But the Hamas attackers did not anticipate such a ready and coordinated response from Inbal’s Kibbutz.
During the ensuing close-quarter fighting, Inbal and her team beat back the terrorists, killing twenty-five, without suffering a single casualty on her team or to her residents. Inbal herself killed five terrorists in close combat during the attack.
As heroic and incredible as Inbal’s actions were on that horrific day, her and her team’s success is not surprising to me.
Their actions affirmed a pair of simple, universal truths:
Just like mass shooters or serial killers, terrorists always target the innocent, and
Those who target the innocent tend to crumble when faced with people who are both willing and able to defend themselves.
Willingness Is a State of Mind. Ability Is a Statement of Fact.
Inbal and the Nir-Am security volunteers were both willing and able to fight back.
They had the right skillsets and tools to make a difference, yes, but just as importantly, they had the right mindset. Even when faced with a fanatical, mission-driven enemy—an enemy that was much more heavily armed than they were and that had the advantage of surprise and considerable numerical superiority—a group of security volunteers (mostly farmers!) were able to prevail.
Why?
Because no matter how sophisticated, coordinated, violent, or homicidal a group of terrorists proves itself to be, they suffer from an important, fundamental disadvantage—one that anyone willing and able to defend themselves can take advantage of.
At the Core of Every Terrorist Is a Cowardly, Brittle Psychology
They are willing to kill, yes, but they simply cannot succeed in their mission unless the target is either unwilling or unable to fight back.
Yes, terrorists, school shooters, and workplace shooters are dangerous. Unfortunately, Inbal and Nir-Am were the exception on that terrible day. Much like 9/11, the attack on Israel was remarkably successful from the terrorist perspective, and it will bring with it long-term ramifications.
But we are largely thinking about the danger that these people pose through the wrong lens.
In truth, they are dangerous in the same way that a virus or cancer is dangerous to an organism. If you don’t fight back, they will continue to multiply, mutate, and eventually destroy the host organism. If we hope to turn the tide against terrorist attacks such as these—if we’re going to defeat the cancer that is terrorism—then we must commit to a fundamental reshaping of the way we think about these people and the harm they are attempting to commit.
And that reshaping starts on the individual level, with each of us learning the tools and skills we need to be willing and able to defend ourselves.
A New Occurrence of an Old Atrocity
In the weeks since the initial attack on Israel by Hamas, the news has been flooded by three specific aspects of this horrendous situation:
The realities of the atrocities Hamas terrorists inflicted upon women, children, and the innocent of southern Israel;
The resulting Israeli declaration of war and military response; and
The pro-Palestine/anti-Israel demonstrations seen across the globe.
All the while, the word “unprecedented” has been used repeatedly.
To hear it told, this particular attack by Hamas on Israel was unlike anything that has ever happened before. This is, of course, not exactly true.
Over the course of human history, we can observe one unfortunate constant: violence.
From ancient tribes fighting over land and resources, to virtually every empire and culture that has inflicted horrific violence on those they consider the “others,” or on those they wish to subjugate for profit, power, or pleasure. From ancient Egypt to Babylon; the Vikings to Rome; from the Mongols to China to Japan; from the Arab empires to the Crusades; Nazi Germany to Stalin’s Russia; Mao to Pol Pot; Al-Qaeda to ISIS to Hamas to Hezbollah.
Every generation has repeated this endless cycle.
As utterly evil, depraved, and unthinkable as the violence Hamas deliberately executed, it is most certainly not unprecedented.
So as common as these occurrences are, the question becomes, what can we learn from this latest iteration?
The TIME-Line of Violence
The core message of my book Live Ready: A Guide to Protecting Yourself in an Uncertain World is that personal security is a universal human need, but ultimately, an individual responsibility.
The book is expressly designed to provide both the necessary mindset and skillset for people to truly own this responsibility—to become a protector, not just for themselves, but for their families and their organizations as well. It teaches you how to:
Recognize danger,
Deter those threats from manifesting into violence, and
Defend yourself if you’re ever face to face with someone intent on doing you harm, even in the most extreme circumstances.
The book explains the nature and mindset of those who commit mass homicide, with a key principle being that even terrorist organizations like Hamas reflect an observable and predictable four-stage process that all Bad Guys, from terrorists to mass shooters to serial rapists to back-alley muggers, go through as they prepare and then commit a violent attack.
Like Inbal Rabin-Lieberman and the other volunteer security personnel of the Nir-Am Kibbutz demonstrated, if you can spot the warning signs in advance, you will ultimately have the upper hand, even if you find yourself faced with the unthinkable.
The TIME-line of Violence we can observe from the Hamas attack follows an identifiable pattern:
T – Target Selection
Hamas specifically, and methodically chose to target civilian populations (specific villages, buildings, and buses) because the citizens in these locations would be less likely to be prepared against attack. These locations would also present a large number of vulnerable people to exploit, as evidenced by how the terrorist organization held women, children, and senior citizens hostage after the initial assault.I – Intelligence Gathering
Some reports have twisted the Hamas attack into something akin to otherwise peaceable people “walking out of their open-air prison,” but this is simply not what happened. October 7th was the tip of the spear on an incredibly sophisticated, well-planned, calculated, and targeted attack by a terrorist organization. This operation was carefully planned, and methodically prepared for, likely for years.M – Method of Attack
In this case, the Method is now quite clear. Hamas used mostly military-grade small arms (like fully automatic weapons and hand grenades) to target populations that were largely unable to resist. Wherever they ran into any kind of organized or armed resistance, as they did in the Nir-Am Kibbutz, they lost.E – Escape/Exploitation
In the final stage of the TIME-line, the perpetrator of violence attempts to either Escape the situation, Exploit the victim (or society at large), or both. In this case, it was clearly not a suicide mission—at least not in the immediate. Escape was planned for, with the Exploitation of the event being the initial taking of women, children, and seniors as hostages.
To help illustrate how everyday people are not helpless in the face of even a horrific attack by an organized terrorist group, there is one point on the TIME-line I’d like to focus on.
The I of TIME
If we’re talking about a mugger or a pickpocket, this is the point where they are scanning the crowd in search of a soft target to victimize.
If you know what to look for, as Live Ready teaches, then this is the point where you can take action to successfully deter the attack before it can even start.
From the perspective of the Hamas attack, it is alarming that Israeli intelligence apparently did not notice the great deal of planning that was occurring—that they were unable to deter that attack during the I of TIME. But as I outline in my book, even in cases where the government’s intelligence apparatus is as skilled as Mossad, it is ultimately up to the individual to protect themselves from harm.
The intelligence community clearly cannot stop every attack; it is up to more of us to be like Inbal Rabin-Lieberman and her team, ready to defend ourselves in the event that deterrence is not possible.
Anyone can do this—and in any setting.
How do you develop the capacity to spot the indicators that a Bad Guy is considering whether to victimize you?
If you don’t spot these indicators soon enough, and the Bad Guy enters the M of the TIME-line, do you have the skills, and when necessary, the tools to fight back and win?
These kinds of Bad Guys are very dangerous people, of course, but they are not infallible. They are not impossible to stop. Doing so requires us all to be willing and able to take individual responsibility for our own safety and thereby contribute to the safety of everyone.
It’s good to have a lifeguard, but it’s better to know how to swim.