Thomas Wictor

It’s seems that every day now, there’s another Palestinian knife attack. For those of you who have to go out and mix with Palestinians, watch their hands. Don’t look at their faces or any other parts of their bodies.

If someone is going to do you harm, they’ll have to use their hands. Keeping your eyes locked on their hands will give you vital seconds to protect yourself.

Every video I’ve seen shows that Palestinian terrorists have not been trained. They all use an overhand stabbing motion.

They consider it more macho. However, it only works if your victim is unsuspecting. The Israeli terrorist who murdered sixteen-year-old Shira Banki and stabbed five others on July 30, 2015, also used the same overhand motion.

Now, I’m not in any way criticizing the cringing woman in the brightly colored dress on the right. But the bag-of-bones terrorist was knocked down and disarmed by police. They charged him.

If somebody comes at you with his arm raised, don’t cringe. Charge him. Put up your arms like this.

Smash into his chest, throat, or chin as hard as you can. Even a small woman can topple a large man if she hits him with enough force.

That’s only if he still has the knife over his head. If he’s bringing it down, raise your arms like this.

Keep your fingers straight; that will bring all of your arm muscles into play and make you much stronger. If you can block a knife blow coming down toward you, then you may have enough time to kick him in the groin. Or someone else may jump on him.

The point is NEVER CLOSE YOUR EYES. NEVER PANIC.

Though I spend almost all of my time alone or with my brother Tim, the few moments that I mingle with the crowd often result in some kind of attack on me. It’s my fate. I was raised to be a victim, and predators sense that. On September 13, 2013, I was at a gas station. It was an impulse-stop; I had enough gas to last me several days, but I figured that as long as I was in the area, and since I rarely go out, I’d better buy gas.

As I filled my tank, I noticed a beautiful young Latina standing on the grass-covered parkway behind the bus stop. She wore skin-tight jeans, a pink tank top, and a backpack. No more than four seconds after I saw her, a metallic-gray Honda Civic sped into the gas station parking lot and screeched to a halt beside her. A young Latino man was behind the wheel. His window and the front passenger window were down. He shouted at the girl. I couldn’t understand what he said, even though they were only about twenty feet away.

The girl spoke to the boy through the open front-passenger window; she seemed resigned. They were both college aged, I think, though I suppose they could’ve been seniors in high school. When she opened the front passenger door, the boy lunged at her and yanked her by the arm down into the car so that she sat on the floor in front of the seat. She grasped at her wrenched shoulder and started crying while he screamed at her. I just stood there, watching.

Then the young man appeared to begin masturbating violently. His left arm pumped up and down, and his head began whipping around like something from Jacob’s Ladder.

I have no idea what he was really doing. It was some form of histrionic convulsion to show how upset he was with her. The girl saw me and obviously warned the boy. He looked in my direction, ceased convulsing, and leaned back in his seat, staring at the ceiling of the car interior. The girl cried and appealed to him. He shook his head. Then he grabbed a handful of her hair and pulled her down. She slapped at his hands until he let her go.

As I knew would happen, he turned to me. “You got a problem?” he shouted. “Whatta you lookin’ at?”

I didn’t react at all. What I do in these situations is simply stand stock still and wait. This is how I was dressed and how I presented myself.

The hat isn’t a fashion statement; it’s just that I was gifted with the largest individual head of our species. They don’t make caps big enough for it. My father found me the only baseball cap that ever fit, and I wore it for a decade, getting every last second of use out of it.

My current hat fits perfectly. I bought two of them.

So as the young man screamed at me, I just stood there, looking like I do in that photo. The girl rubbed the young man’s arm and gingerly got out of the car; he turned away from me and spoke to her. They exchanged a few words, then he threw open his door, raced around to the other side of the car where she stood, and folded his arms, his head down like a five-year-old sulking. For some reason he’d remembered to bring his cell phone. He was very muscular and wore giant shorts. I’m guessing he was a football player, since he had no tattoos and gave off that athlete-frat-boy vibe.

The girl stroked his arm, trying to soothe him. He suddenly ran back to the driver’s side of the car and tossed his cell phone into the open door.

“What the f*ck you lookin’ at, motherf*cker?” he screamed at me, his arms by his sides, rigid as boards. His balled fists reminded me of sledgehammer heads.

I stood and watched.

He pointed to his own eyes with both hands. “You like lookin’?” he shouted. “You like that, motherf*cker? What the f*ck’s your problem?”

I stood and watched.

He took a few steps toward me; the girl ran around the car to restrain him. He let her take him by the wrists and pull him back.

“Just stop it, David!” she sniveled. “Let’s go!”

David vaulted through the open car door into the driver’s seat, and the girl got into the front passenger’s seat. As he started the car, David yelled at me, “Take a good look, motherf*cker. Yeah, you like watchin’, don’t you?” He floored it, heading toward the exit.

I came out from behind my car to note his license-plate number, which I wrote down a couple of minutes later. When David saw in his rear-view mirror that I’d finally moved, he slammed on the brakes, jumped out, and screamed, “Yeah, get my plate number, motherf*cker! That’s right!”

He ran at me, a flat-out sprint, baring his clenched teeth. The veins in his neck and forehead were like purple worms.

Inside the car, the girl wailed, “David! Don’t!”

I stood motionless and watched.

Fifteen feet away David stopped, went back to his car, slammed the roof with both sledgehammer-fists so hard that he left a massive dent, got in, and roared out of the parking lot and down the street. I sat in my car for ten minutes—since there was nobody behind me—and when I was sure that the coast was clear, I drove home.

The reason I watched David and his inamorata was that I had to be ready in case he pulled a gun and started spraying bullets in some tawdry murder-suicide. Standing stock still and not responding works very well. Animals need cues for how to react. When I give an animal nothing whatsoever, it doesn’t know what to do. Generally, it’ll back off because it thinks I’ve got something up my sleeve.

And you know what? I do. As David approached me, I was mentally going over the series of three actions that would render him harmless. So far I haven’t had to do that. But I’m never going to be victimized again. I don’t believe in a “proportional response.” Anyone who comes at me in a way that makes me feel endangered is going to receive what Harry Truman called “massive retaliation.” It’ll be a preemptive strike, the kind that deeply offends the world community. An attacker will get everything in my arsenal, instantly. There will be no ratcheting up, no escalation, and no ritualized male posturing.

Watch my hands, David. They’ll be the last things you ever see.