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The Terrorist In Your Living Room

Israeli police officer lets Tel Aviv shooter into his home, offers him water before realizing his true identity

by
Liel Leibovitz
June 09, 2016
Gil Cohen-Magen/AFP/Getty Images
Israeli passers-by light candles next to the restaurant targeted during a shooting attack the previous night at a shopping complex in Tel Aviv on June 9, 2016. Gil Cohen-Magen/AFP/Getty Images
Gil Cohen-Magen/AFP/Getty Images
Israeli passers-by light candles next to the restaurant targeted during a shooting attack the previous night at a shopping complex in Tel Aviv on June 9, 2016. Gil Cohen-Magen/AFP/Getty Images

Talk about stranger danger: Last night, an off-duty police was strolling down the street with his wife in Tel Aviv when he heard shots coming from Sarona Market, a trendy outdoors promenade with dozens of shops, restaurants, and cafés. All around him, people were running, trying to get away from the scene of the attack, so the police officer and his wife ran, too. They ran all the way to his building, a few blocks away, and stopped at the door to catch their breath. A young man in a dark suit, a white dress shirt, and a slim and fashionable tie was running right beside them, and, all out of breath, he asked if he could come up to their place and have a glass of water. The police officer was only too happy to invite the stranger up—isn’t it beautiful when people come together in moments of crisis?—and as soon as he got to his apartment, he put on his uniform and left his wife, his children, and the stranger behind, running back out to join his colleagues and see if there was anything he could do to catch the suspects or aid the victims.

When he got to the scene of the crime, he quickly learned the details: terrorist attack, two shooters, one down, the other fled. He asked to see the body of the dead terrorist. When he did, his heart sank: the dead shooter was wearing a dark suit, a white shirt, and a slim and fashionable tie, an identical outfit to that of the stranger currently sipping cold water back in his apartment with his parents and his wife.

Screaming, the police officer started running back towards his apartment, shouting for his friends to follow along. When he got home, he burst in, jumped on the terrorist, wrestled him to the ground and overpowered him, relieved to see his family was unharmed. One of his colleagues, however, was a bit overzealous, and, gun a-blazing, accidentally shot the hapless officer, wounding him slightly. We should all be so lucky.

Liel Leibovitz is editor-at-large for Tablet Magazine and a host of its weekly culture podcast Unorthodox and daily Talmud podcast Take One. He is the editor of Zionism: The Tablet Guide.