There is No Why
BY MOSHE KATZ 
CEO
ISRAELI KRAV INTERNATIONAL

May 27, 2026, King David Lounge, Airport, Israel

I look at a photo, a stone, with a name and a date. Nearby is a photo of a young Israel, Jewish woman. She was 18 years old. She was murdered at this spot. The stone with her name on it marks the spot where the terrorist threw her bloody body, on the side of the road. Her mother describes the phone call, coming to the spot, being told "Don't look". 

And I am angry. And people ask "Why?!"

But there is no why, and there is no point in trying to understand. Yes, we must study crime, and yes, we must enter the mind of the criminal, the terrorist, in order to learn how best to deal with this sort of violence. We must understand their evil mind in order to best defend against it, but the ultimate question of why? no, that is pointless, it is just a given. Accept it. 

The Israeli/Polish writer Yehiel Feiner, Di-nur, Ka-Tsetnik 135633 (sometimes "K. Tzetnik"), quoted the great Jewish Italian writer and Holocaust witness/survivor Primo Levi. "Here There Is No Why"

But the quote was not from mind of Levi but from a Nazi guard. 

In his first book, the memoir If This Is a Man (1947), Primo Levi describes his arrival at Auschwitz in February 1944. After the number 174517 is tattooed on his left forearm, he and other Italian deportees are shut into an empty barrack. “Driven by thirst, I eyed a fine icicle outside the window, within reach of my hand,” Levi writes.

"I opened the window and broke off the icicle, but at once a large, heavy guard prowling outside brutally snatched it away. “Warum?” (Why?) I asked in my poor German. “Hier ist kein warum” (Here there is no why), he replied, shoving me back inside." (Primo Levi)

Levi was born in Turin in 1919, to a family that had settled in the Piedmont region after the expulsion of Jews from Spain four centuries earlier. We are known by many stereotypes, one is "The Wandering Jew". When I was a child living in Savyon, Israel I recall plant, that "wandered", spread out. My mom, may she rest in peace, said that plant is called "The Wandering Jew". At the time I did not understand, but later it became clear. We have been kicked out of so many lands,

Neighborhood bully been driven out of every land
He's wandered the earth an exiled man
Seen his family scattered, people hounded and torn
He's always on trial for just being born
He's the neighborhood bully.  (Robert Zimmerman, Shabtai Zisl ben Avraham, Bob Dylan) 

Despite the Race Laws, enacted in 1938, Levi graduated with a degree in chemistry from the University of Turin, though his diploma identified him as “of the Jewish race.” When the Nazis came, he was deported to Auschwitz where he learned not to ask questions. “Hier ist kein warum”.

I watched a documentary report about "pious" Arab Muslim women who gave up their family life in order to become Suicide Bombers, a term they find offensive, they prefer Martyrs to Allah. They truly believe that it is the will of God to go and kill people of other faiths. In some cases "God spoke to them in a dream and highlighted a number, say 40" indicating that they will be blessed by killing this number of people when they martyr themselves, or for regular people in plain English, when they blow themselvs up in a crowed place filled with innocent people. And we ask Why? But the answer remains the same, Here, there is no why. Do not ask why I smash the piece of ice out of the hand of a thirsty man, there is why, there are no answers and there are no point in questions.

I look at the beautiful Israeli girl, imagine her bloody body on the side of the road, I think of a remark of a government official about "acceptable losses", and I ask a different question: Why are you not training?

You, the average person, do you not love your daughter? Are not worried about that phone call that will lead you to the side of the road to see a bloody lifeless body? Why are you not training?

And the question remains unanswered. 

Moshe2021

Moshe Katz, 7th dan Black Belt, Israeli Krav Maga. Certified by Wingate Institute. Member Black Belt hall of fame, USA and Europe.

Understand the Israeli Fighting Mentality - Israel a Nation of Warriors by Moshe Katz

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What is the cultural background of Krav Maga?  What makes it unique? What makes the Israeli military so effective? Why are Israeli security systems used all over the world?

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