Six Jews from Lod have had their licensed personal sidearms confiscated by police recently, for no clear reason, according to a report in Makor Rishon.
The citizens were asked to come down to the police station to deposit their guns and were told the guns would remain there for around a month. After inquiring, some of them were told it was part of a murder investigation.
The residents said they hope this isn’t the beginning of a quiet attempt by police to disarm the Jewish citizens of Lod, or was based on false accusations by their Arab neighbors.
“We do not know if this is a blood libel of the Arabs against us as a continuation of the riots, or if the police just want to show that it works and that there is symmetry,” one of the Lod residents said. “We hope that there is no quiet plan here to collect weapons from Jews. We do not want to wake up to a situation where, God forbid, [Arab] riots arise again in the city, and people here are incapable of defending themselves, their children and their neighbors.”
Lod was recently the scene of Arab pogroms against Jews, in which Jews were attacked and murdered, and cars, homes and synagogues were torched.
One of the citizens told Makor Rishon that he knows that when the police confiscate guns, it often take months and lawyers to get the gun returned.
Most of the citizens live in the Ramat Eshkol neighborhood, which suffered from the worst of the Arab pogroms.
In response to the report, the police stated the confiscation is part of an investigation and they can’t provide any more details.
MK Bezalel Smotrich tweeted in response, “Once again, the Israeli police have abandoned the residents of Lod and are preventing them from defending themselves against riots and nationalist violence like the one we saw only three months ago. It is not a matter of luxury – the weapon is completely legal, and is in their hands according to law. immediately!”
MK Ophir Sofer tweeted in response: “The Israeli police simply take good law-abiding citizens and abandon them, their families and their personal security to a group of rioters who did not hesitate to lynch, throw stones, burn and destroy houses and vehicles. Minister Bar-Lev and the police commissioner must recalculate the route and understand who is good and who is bad, at the moment their path is very dangerous for the good.”
The chairman of Im Tirtzu, Matan Peleg, responded: “The Minister of Internal Security [Bar-Lev] continues to work for rioters and against the citizens of Israel for whom he is in charge. The current move by the police under his leadership is literally abandoning the Jewish residents of Lod to their deaths. Instead of immediately ordering the police to step up enforcement in Lod against the Arab rioters, the Palestinian Defense Minister [referring to Bar-Lev] claimed that the violence was caused as a result of inequality and even said that some of the Arab families who own [illegal] weapons are ‘normative’. If he is unable to ensure the security of the citizens of Israel, he should resign immediately.
MK Itamar Ben Gvir, responded: “We have reached the height of the absurdity of the failure and laxity police. The police have failed to protect the residents of Lod and now also want to take from them the last line of defense left to protect their lives. This is instead of confiscating the tens of thousands of illegal weapons that roam the area. The commissioner responsible for failure and default must lay down the keys and go home before there is any discrimination here.”
