I read in this morning’s Telegraph newspaper that a Ukrainian sniper has claimed the longest ever “kill shot.” To be absolutely accurate, as his “Snipex Alligator” rifle must have been; he claimed two kill shots.
The distance was 2.5 miles or 4,000 meters.
This is remarkable when we consider that the curvature of the earth means that at sea level, the normal range of human vision is where the horizon starts to dip, 3 Miles.
Of course, he did use a telescopic sight, and apparently also had the assistance of a drone and A.I. Nevertheless, these shots redefine the fragility of a human life. If you can be seen, even at the extreme range of human vision, you can be killed. As someone wrote, this shot will be heard around the world.
It is not the first to claim that title. It originated with a very different kill shot.
The gun on that occasion was a pistol and it was fired on June 28, 1914 by a Bosnian Serb student called Gavrilo Princip. His two victims were Archduke Ferdinand and his wife, Duchess Sophie. What followed was the carnage, chaos and slaughter of the First World War.
Those two shots were not only heard around the world; they shaped and changed it forever.
Every life was touched and altered. My own grandfather found himself in the middle of the war that shot unleashed. He was a British soldier about to go “over the top” when German gas shells exploded nearby.
He was one of the lucky ones. The fact that the gas did not kill him but caused him to be invalided from the army meant he lived, and I am writing this today.
The estimated casualty figures from that conflict are around forty million.
The Talmud anticipated sounds that travel round the world and spoke about them (Yuma 20b): “There are three sounds that travel from one end of the world to the other. They are the sound of the rotation of the sun, the sound of a decree from Rome and the sound of a soul leaving a body. Another opinion offers a fourth addition; the sound of a baby being born.”
The meaning of these enigmatic trio or quartet is of course obscure but it is when a further opinion adds a fifth to the list of sounds that span the globe that it becomes truly astonishing…
“And some opinions say, also radio.”
I don’t have enough room to analyze this piece of Talmud, particularly the riddle of the word radio in depth, but all three, (or five) share a common denominator.
I think the Talmud is saying, whether it’s a massive heavenly body like the Sun, or a tiny creature, like a baby, what it does in the world, “the sound it makes” impacts everything and shapes everyone.
This Talmudic teaching both predates, and predicts the American Mathematician and Meteorologist, Edward Lorenz’s “Butterfly effect.”
He was a proponent of Chaos Theory and postulated that a butterfly flapping its wings in one location could, in theory, influence weather patterns elsewhere.
There is an account that echoes that concept I once read in a book whose title I have long ago forgotten.
Sometime after the First World War, a rabbi in Vienna invited a visitor to his synagogue, to come home with him for a meal. As the guest joined his family around the table, the hosts were discomfited to observe him sprinkling enormous amounts of salt onto his food.
The quantity of salt rendered his dish inedible, nevertheless the strange guest ate the food without registering any repulsion.
As he repeated his odd behavior at every course, the rabbi eventually asked him why he was doing it?
The man looked up and quietly explained that he had fought in the recent war in the German Army. He had been a sniper, and one night he saw the faintest movement across no-man’s land in the opposite French trench.
His expert eye peered through his telescopic sight and at the next hint of an enemy helmet crouching below the parapet, he gently squeezed the trigger. The shot cracked, and a scream showed it had found its target. The soldier stood up and shouted the words “Shema Yisrael” as he fell back dead into the trench.
The rabbi’s guest continued, “From that moment, realizing what I had done, I decided I would not allow myself any pleasure or enjoyment from the world.” And he resumed adding more salt to his plate to render his food inedible.
Chaos Theory deals with systems that are highly dependent and sensitive to initial conditions. Small variations in the starting point can lead to vastly dramatic changed outcomes. Those altered outcomes may only become apparent over time.
Of course, that German Jewish soldier did nothing wrong. Halachically, you can, and in fact should, kill someone if they are trying to kill you. The person seeking your life enters the category of a rodef and to protect your life, his becomes expendable.
I think that German Jew realized or intuited that the sound of a flapping butterfly’s wing can cause the roar of a tornado elsewhere. He understood the enormous impact the absence of the life he took might have on the man’s wife and children; those already born and those who never would be.
The woman recently arrested for planning to kill Prime Minister Netanyahu is anti-government activist and Tel Aviv resident, 73-year-old Tamar Gershuni.
She is a well-known figure in anti-Netanyahu protest circles. Gershuni allegedly planned to kill the premier after being diagnosed with terminal cancer.
She is claimed to have spoken with other anti-government protesters about acquiring weapons and information about the prime minister’s security detail.
She wanted to kill Binyamin Netanyahu with an RPG grenade launcher.
Gershuni certainly wanted to make a sound that would travel around the world.
This 73-year-old is in fact the latest in a series of Israelis arrested recently for suspicion of trying to kill Netanyahu or for having incited his murder.
The Times of Israel reports that Iran has been very busy trying to locate other anti-Netanyahu extremists who might be eager to assassinate an Israeli Prime Minister. It’s not hard to think of places to find them, just ask Tamar Gershuni.
Chaos Theory deals with systems that are highly sensitive to small variations that can lead to vastly dramatic changed outcomes.
The recent violence that has reappeared on Tel Aviv’s streets in an attempted “National Strike,” claims to be motivated by a sincere desire to return the hostages held by Hamas. As Gershuni shows, the real agenda of those like her, is the overthrow of a Democratically elected government.
Iris Haim, the mother of Yotam Haim who was kidnapped on October 7 and later killed by friendly fire, wrote. “This strike will achieve nothing except a fleeting sense of having acted. It will deepen divisions and push the country toward chaos.”
All it takes is a butterfly’s wing or a Jew killing another Jew and Chaos Theory is proven correct. After that, who can say what evil and the enormity of the suffering that might come next.
