TABLET MAG
by Liel Leibovitz
February 20, 2015

European Jews are soft targets for jihadists who want to kill them. They need guns.

Ever since I heard the horrible news from Copenhagen this weekend I’ve been haunted by one persistent thought. I was thinking about Dan Uzan, the 37-year-old volunteer who was shot in the head as he stood outside his local synagogue on a frigid night to make sure that inside a young girl and her family could celebrate the girl’s bat mitzvah in peace. I tried to imagine what his last moments might’ve looked like as he saw Omar Abdel Hamid El-Hussein, the alleged gunman, approaching. And then I had one more thought, more urgent than the others: What if Uzan had been armed? What if he at least had a chance, as he stared down the barrel of a gun, to draw his own and shoot first? What if the shoppers in Paris’ kosher supermarket packed heat when Amedy Coulibaly walked in? If Ilan Halimi had a pistol, would we know his name today? READ MORE