Thomas Wictor

Every day brings new knife attacks by Palestinians. And if you search the Internet, you can find the most horrifying videos and photos that depict actual death in war, on roads, in stores, and in homes. The images have lost their power to shock. However, there’s a very efficient way to show the murderously violent that what they plan on carrying out isn’t a computer game. I’ll get to that in a moment.

But first, let me give you my take on how violence is presented in art. I hated the film Saving Private Ryan. It’s childish, anti-American, histrionic, confusing, and full of continuity errors.

What made the film famous was its graphic depictions of violence, such as this scene. Keep in mind that nobody got hurt in what you’re about to watch.

First, an American soldier tries to blow up a German tank with a “sticky bomb.” They used a robotic mannequin and computer-graphic imagery (CGI) to depict the catastrophic failure of this attempt.

After blowing off the tank tread with sticky bombs, the Americans swarm the vehicle, trying to get at the crew. A German 20mm autocannon is brought up and opens fire at close range, exploding several of the Americans into pieces. Again, a combination of mannequins and CGI is used.

Our movies now contain violence that’s indistinguishable from the real thing. There are videos from Syria that show everything you see above, including one notorious clip of a rebel losing his entire face. The man was hit by a fragment from an exploding tank shell. It struck with such speed that he didn’t even react. He simply stood there, with nothing but empty space from chin to forehead. It’s a profile shot, surreal in the extreme. His head looks like a crescent moon.

People have used that clip as the avatar for their social media accounts. That’s how little impact video and photos of actual death have in our present-day world. Some cultures use film of murder as religious icons, while others use it as entertainment. Neither side cares that actual human beings were killed in front of the camera.

Movies like Saving Private Ryan desensitize people to graphic violence. The alleged reason for showing such gore is to drive home what the soldiers experienced, but that’s bunk. One of the greatest war movies of all time is Battleground (1949), about American airborne troops in the Battle of the Bulge.

It has two utterly chilling combat scenes in it. One takes place in heavy fog, and in the other, all the action is obscured by trees, vehicles, or hummocks. The only thing that indicates violence is the sound. Believe me, you’ll never forget these scenes. They’ll stay with you forever.

And this is how to deter the murderously violent. It does no good to show the aftermath of their crimes. Muslim suicide bombers have been told that they’ll feel no pain but will simply pop softly, like soap bubbles.

However, a hospital emergency-room doctor once said to me that every single street thug brought in with a gunshot wound was shocked at how painful it was. These criminals screamed and cried, wondering why it hurt so much. They’d grown up watching films in which people take a bullet to the arm and simply shrug it off. Well, in real life, there’s no such thing as a “flesh wound.” When a bullet goes through your arm, it destroys muscle, tendons, and nerves. It hurts like hell.

Here’s a video of a home invader shot after he kicked down the door in Pocatello, Idaho. The criminal was armed with a machete and knew his intended victims. He was shot three times in the chest. You’ll see nothing gruesome in the video, but I want you to listen closely to the criminal after he was shot.

He was quite the brave man when he thought that his victims wouldn’t fight back.

“Oh, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts! You killed me!” the criminal whines. He spent nine months in the hospital before being tried for and convicted of attempted murder and aggravated assault.

This was the second time he’d broken down the neighbor’s door, the first assault having prompted the victim to buy the gun. Though the criminal was given a maximum of twenty years in prison by the kindhearted judge—who said there was hope for him—it’s likely that being shot three times made more of an impression than anything he’d ever experienced.

Israelis need to release audio recordings of terrorists after they’re shot while trying to stab people to death. Photos won’t do it. Palestinians tell me that this shows a great victory.

It doesn’t matter that the terrorist was shot dead, or that all normal human beings run for their lives, or that anybody can ambush anybody else. No, the terrorist completely overcame the armed might of the entire Israeli Defense Forces, which surrendered out of fear and has now been defeated.

This is what many Palestinians believe. They can’t be reached, since they’re not rational. The knife-intifada is based on a stupid social-media lie, that Israel plans to demolish the al-Aqsa Mosque. Palestinians who attack Israelis are insane time travelers from the Dark Ages. Since they revel in butchery, showing their bullet-riddled bodies will do nothing except turn them on.

The only solution is to record the writhing, moaning, screeching primitives after they’ve been shot, and then release the tapes.

Here’s an Islamic State position in Syria hit by artillery. Again, there’s no gore; just listen. The rounds are fired at 0:04, but the idiots don’t know enough to take cover.

They used proximity fuses that exploded the rounds above the men’s heads.

Those thousands of razor-sharp fragments are what’s known as “steel rain.” The propagandist and camera crew were shredded alive, which is why they’re making those unearthly noises.

Still want to go to Syria, boys?

Although I study war, I hate it. The reason I’ve immersed myself in military issues for over forty years is that I accept that some people must be removed from this plane of reality. They can’t be saved. My study of war is a quest for a better world.

Israel needs to entirely change the way it thinks about Palestinian terrorists. Deterrence is the only effective means of protecting Israelis from deluded, infantile maniacs who haven’t had to face reality. I hope that Israeli authorities will begin to show the same ruthlessness as the owners of a mall in Australia. Teenagers were loitering there all day, making messes and intimidating the customers. After much thought, the mall owners installed special lights that made acne look far worse than it was, and they began playing nothing but Frank Sinatra music. Within days, the teenagers had fled. And they never returned.