Israel jails massacre hero on gun charge as Muslims use automatic rifle in deadly Jerusalem shooting

Eliyahu Tulshinski

November 30, 2023

Shlomi Cardi, who was praised for saving dozens of lives at the musical festival attacked by Hamas in the October massacre, has been jailed on gun possession charges. Cardi escaped the massacre with other party goers but, after bringing them to safety, returned with his vehicle, again and again, to rescue additional people, some already injured from Hamas attacks.

Days after the massacre, police found a gun in Cardi's yard. Unable to obtain a gun license due to an earlier weapons charge, he was imprisoned and is being held without bail.

Facebook campaign

Cardi's friends have initiated a social media campaign asking the people he saved to record their stories in an effort to persuade authorities to release Cardi. They point to the fact that Hamas fighters were still roaming the area outside Gaza, where Cardi lives, at the time of his arrest, making his desire to be able to defend himself more understandable:

Instead of a certificate of courage, a recognition of his heroism, he is detained in jail until trial.

Let this sink in; a man saved dozens from certain deaths, rescued wounded . . . , assisted security forces in fighting the cursed terrorists (. . . using binoculars to direct the forces towards terrorist snipers), saw the threatening displays we were all exposed to in the videos (only he saw them live), returned the injured to their doorsteps!!! . . .

All the other victims from the nature party receive psychological/psychiatric treatment, assistance and mental support and only our Shlomi, the hero, is behind bars.

A weapon was found in the yard of Shlomi's house after a few days and he was arrested for that. It is clear to all of us that anyone else would have done the same and not rushed to return weapons after the massacre and the trauma he saw, the threat of infiltration by terrorists who are still roaming freely in the southern region (where Shlomi lives).

But Shlomi has a problem, because somewhere in 2005 he was arrested for the crime of weapons possession - he served his full sentence and since he was released he turned for the good, worked for a living and behaved like an ordinary citizen, until that cursed day when he had to fight for his life and the lives of others.

He must not be allowed to sit one more day in prison!!!

Please help us reach more people whom Shlomi helped, saved . . . [Emphases added].

Entire communities disarmed

Cardi was not charged with harming another individual, but with a possession crime. He is not alone in being denied a defensive weapon. The very communities most at risk from a Hamas invasion “banged on the table” for more protection but not only saw IDF forces removed from the area around Gaza, they had the automatic weapons used by their local security patrols taken away in the last two years:

The IDF Took Away Weapons From Gaza Border Communities in Recent Years . . .

The Israeli army believed that the chance of terrorist incursion after the erection of the border fence was 'close to nil.' They removed forces from the area, leaving local security as the last line of defense. 'As much as we banged on the table, it didn’t help,' says one local security coordinator . . .

The main turning point . . . is the erection of the fence along the border with the Gaza Strip. Since it was completed two years ago, and in fact even after only segments were completed, the IDF changed its attitude toward the defense of the locales – and toward who was supposed to be their first line of defense. The locales closest to the fence had the weapons taken from the homes of the members of the security details and put in a vault. . . .

[L]ocales at a distance of four to seven kilometers from the fence had their weapons taken, leaving the locales with only two rifles apiece. [Emphases added].

Nation disarmed

Frontline News has reported that, contrary to popular belief, most Israelis are not, in fact, armed. Israel has extremely restrictive gun control laws and no analogue to the Second Amendment, ranking just 81^st among nations for firearms per capita, at 0.073. The U.S. has the highest rate in the world.

Israel's strict gun laws were detailed in the New York Post, which bar the kind of automatic weapons needed to combat a Hamas invasion:

Israel exists under constant threat of attack — and requires citizens to serve in the military — but still has much stricter gun laws than the United States. . . .

Even those Israelis who pass through extensive hoops to get a firearm permit can only own one gun. And that’s a handgun — not a semi-automatic rifle capable of rapid fire. There are also limits on ammunition. . . .

Israel limits gun permits to people who meet strict requirements of residency, occupation, or army rank. For instance, security workers, jewelers, hunters and West Bank residents are eligible for permits. . . .

The Israeli government has even restricted firearm access to current Israeli soldiers when off-duty on weekends. [Emphases added].

Even a slight easing of gun regulations instituted during the current war has not changed the picture, as reported by The Federalist:

Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir announced Sunday in Hebrew an emergency declaration that will “allow as many citizens as possible to arm themselves.” Currently, a mere 1.5 percent of the civilian population has a license to own a gun.

[Nonetheless, t]he laws that require proving “a need” to own and carry a gun have not changed.

Ominously, Israel's first gun control act, in 1949, was adopted under socialist Prime Minister David Ben Gurion, who eulogized Vladimir Lenin as "a man of iron will who does not spare human life and the blood of innocent children for the revolution.” [Emphases added].

Unequal enforcement

While Israeli Jews are going through hoops to obtain a hand gun, Arab cities and villages in Israel are rife with automatic weapons. Much like no-go zones in Europe, Israeli police are reluctant to enter Arab areas to confiscate illegal weapons unless they have specific information of planned attacks. While police found time to search Cardi's yard, they failed to conduct a weapons check on two Hamas convicts who served time on terrorism charges and were living in Jerusalem, close to police headquarters. They used an illegal hand gun and automatic rifle (pictured below) in a deadly assault.

Intelligence disarmed

Frontline News covered the failure of Israel's intelligence leaders to take warnings from the field seriously:

The observers reported . . . “training, anomalies and preparations” they had witnessed to their commanders but were snubbed. When one observer went to a senior commander with her concerns, she was told, “I don't want to hear about this nonsense again. If you bother with these things again, you will stand trial.”

Not only was the intelligence ignored, it was prevented, as the equipment that the IDF had provided for years to civilian hacker Rafael Hayun, to monitor Hamas communications, was seized from him five months before the massacre. That was just as Hayun began sending the government reports on the increasing intensity of Hamas training to penetrate the security fence at multiple points, invade Israel, take over communities and commit mass murder and kidnapping.

Five months before the assault, his colleagues in the IDF were ordered to seize all of his and stop working with him. Around the same time, the IDF’s Intelligence Directorate Unit 8200 signals intelligence unit also stopped monitoring Hamas’s communications.

Hayun said that his military colleagues told him the order to cut him off came from “senior leadership,” and they had no explanation for the decision. Hayun told reporters he is convinced that if he had been listening in the weeks before Oct. 7, the invasion would have been prevented.

See our additional coverage of the Middle East: