Archives for February 2017

So, this happened:

Terrorist opens fire in Petah Tikva, is subdued with sewing machine

At least five people were lightly wounded when a Palestinian man opened fire at a bus and stabbed someone near an outdoor market in the central Israeli city of Petah Tikva on Thursday evening, officials said.

Police officers later arrested the West Bank man, who was still in possession of the gun used in the attack, a police spokesperson said.

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The Palestinian teenager used a Carlo-style submachine gun, a comparatively cheap improvised firearm, which is prevalent in the West Bank. Carlos, which are often cobbled together from water pipes and spare parts, are notoriously unreliable, and the weapon used in the attack apparently jammed multiple times.

What is normally an automatic weapon was only able to fire a shot every few seconds, according to videos from the scene. An eyewitness told Walla news that the gunmen also entered a shop and tried to open fire, but his gun wouldn’t work at all.

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After shooting at the bus, the suspect continued on foot towards Hovevei Tziyon Street, running through the city’s alleyways, before he was cornered by a group of civilians outside a sewing machine repair shop, according to police officer Ami Ben-David.

The Ynet news site reported that one of the civilians used one of the shop’s sewing machines to take down the attacker. An eyewitness told Channel 2 news that he used a wood plank to hit the man as well, and said the suspect yelled in Arabic as he was tackled.

The Krav Maga lesson in this terrible story is to know your environment. A sewing machine, a wood plank, a fire extinguisher…you’d be surprised what can be weaponized in a life-or-death emergency. In one twisted Roald Dahl short story, a woman clubs her husband to death with a frozen leg of lamb, only later to serve it to the unsuspecting detectives who arrive to investigate. That is a literary recommendation, I hasten to add, not sanctioned Krav Maga curriculum.