Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Me, My Knives and I in Israel

Me, My Knives and I in Israel


If you hang around gun people much you’ll often hear them say nearly every other person in Israel is carrying a gun and that most likely, that gun will be an assault rifle (I mean a real, selective-fire assault rifle and not a semi-auto rifle). While that may be true, it’s only because nearly every other person in Israel is in the military and generally, they and the police are the only ones allowed to carry weapons. For the most part, unless the soldier is on duty, the weapon is carried unloaded with the magazine either attached to the rifle or some place on their body where it’s easy to access. There are exceptions for people who have a “good” reason to be armed. Personally, I think living in a Country that’s surrounded by Arab crackpots who want to wipe you off the face of the earth and aren’t beyond attacking civilians to achieve that goal seems like a good reason to be armed to me.

I was recently in Israel again, this time volunteering on an Israeli Defense Force (IDF) base. During my trip several years ago, I was with a tour group and would keep my knives (My Spyderco Endura and Delica) on the tour bus when we went to one of the secured areas, otherwise I always had them with me. Being with the tour group, it was unlikely I would come into negative contact with law enforcement (and those guys are scary-looking).

Prior to this most recent trip, I did a little searching online for Israel’s knife laws. I was a bit surprised to find it appears that most knives are illegal to carry there. One online article I read said one could get into trouble if they carried a knife for defense that actually looks like a defense knife. How gay is that???

I figured that with being on a military base, knives would be more acceptable with people walking around with actual firearms. I work on a military base and you’ll rarely see a male soldier without a folder of some kind clipped inside his pocket. For some reason, I have yet to see a female soldier with a knife. One would think there would be fewer sexual assaults of female soldiers if more of them carried knives, but that’s a topic for another post.

On my first work day at the base, we were in a warehouse doing inventory. We were opening boxes and counting the items inside. I was carrying my green-handled (to go with our uniforms) Endura with the 4” blade. One of our IDF supervisors (one of (too) many) happened to be standing by when I took it out to open a box. He didn’t actually gasp, but he seemed to come close and said “what is that!”. I think had he seen the original Dirty Harry movie, he would have said, “My, that’s a big one”. (If you haven’t seen the first two Dirty Harry movies, you’re missing a couple of classics, but I digress)

One of my fellow volunteers, Chris also carried a knife, a Gerber of some type, clipped to the outside (?) of his pocket. From that day on, I decided to carry the smaller and less scary-looking Delica and use the blade of a multi-tool to open boxes.

When the weekend came around, the volunteers had to leave the base and we stayed in a soldier’s hostel, sort of a boarding house/kibbutz in Tel Aviv. While there I carried my Delica, thinking if the wrong person saw it, it would just be confiscated rather than me being sent to an Israeli prison. (The bathrooms on the IDF base were pretty disgusting and I’m afraid to see what a bathroom in an Israeli prison would look like)

Another one of the volunteers and I took a walk to the bus station/shopping mall in search of the military surplus store and IDF dog tag covers. When we got to the entrance of the mall, there was a security guard with a handheld metal detector. Crap, there goes my knife. I told the guard (who apparently didn’t speak English) that I had a knife. He didn’t respond and touched both of my front pockets with the detector. For some reason, it wasn’t even on and I passed through with no problems.

Within less than 30 feet from the entrance was a display stand containing various knives. They all seemed to be of cheap quality and I continued on to the surplus store. Once inside the store I saw more knives displayed. These were better quality knives there and I even saw a few butterfly knives. I asked the clerk if the butterfly knives were legal and he told me no and that once you buy one, you’re on your own. I assume it’s like the switchblade knife law in California. If you have one, but keep it in your home, you’re safe.

Later, during the trip when I was staying in an apartment, my friend and I went to a grocery store and there again, was another security guard with a metal detector. He glanced at us as we entered but didn’t check either of us with the detector. I guess we didn’t fit the profile of who he was watching out for.

Basically, I wrote this rant of just to say it can be risky carrying a knife for defense in Israel. I would suggest that if you have to use it to protect yourself, your best bet is to hightail it to the American embassy. The Israeli police may or may not be understanding.

Robot
831-241-4767


2 Comments:

Blogger boromax said...

Great 'piece', Robot! Seems like you've got the skinny on random metal detectors in the Land.

16:20  
Blogger Aliah sucker said...

The rudimentry reality is that Israel is a POLICE STATE. It is permeated with fear & police capitalise on that to enhance their authority to whatever extent possible. THERE ARE NO succinct legislation regarding the matter beyond forbiding the carrying of locked blades more than 100mm long!

11:45  

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