Catdownunder, in her blog post today, talks about the brain and our lack of knowledge of it. She ends her post:
And perhaps that is one reason why living things are so interesting and why we have so many people interested in trying to find out more. It is because we do not know – and that can be the most interesting thing of all.
In Israel, today, a lot of people want to understand how a man can walk into a bank and kill four innocent people and injure others – all because he couldn’t withdraw money from his account, which was 6,000 shekels overdrawn – not much at all.
Clearly, there was more to it than that. It seems he’d sunk into depression since being dismissed from his job as security officer ten years ago. He was dismissed because of poor relations with his colleagues (but, surprisingly, allowed to keep his gun). Neighbours described him as a loner. Of course.
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I have to file this post under “Everyday life in Israel.” I started that category because I wanted to write about everyday life rather than the violence you hear about on the news. But this crime is far from usual. It’s the sort of crime we hear about in the US or elsewhere. Not here in Israel. We don’t do that sort of thing.
And that’s why ordinary people in Israel are shocked today. To think that even here there are people who are capable of shooting innocent bystanders for such an apparently trivial “reason,” or for any reason at all.
One more thing I have to say: There are many loners in the world. There are many people who suffer from depression. Very, very few of them could even contemplate committing a crime like this.
Miriam Drori, Author 
10 replies on “Why, Oh Why?”
If only we could say why then we could prevent these awful things from happening. So sad to hear it’s happening there too.
I think we could single out those at risk. But we wouldn’t because that would be an invasion of privacy. So I don’t think there can ever be a solution.
it is a sad thing to occur anywhere. Sorry to hear that happened. It’s so hard to predict and prevent when some person, whatever state of mind they are in, will do something so…terrible. It feels like a transference of pain, from them to others, unfair and irresponsible.
So true.
I’m afraid we’ll never be able to understand random loss of life like that. Those families will be in my thoughts today.
They’re in my thoughts, too. Soon, they’ll fade from my thoughts while the families continue to remember.
Nothing like that makes sense Miriam – and I think that makes it even more frightening. Hugs!
Thanks, Cat.
It’s amazing and sad what folk will do when they can’t get what they want. Of course, something much deeper was going on with this guy. Had to be.
Yes. And I don’t think he just happened to have a gun in his pocket when he walked into the bank. Thanks for commenting and leading me to your awesome blog.