Dark days, darker humor

The wave of killings and attacks has sent some Israelis into states of panic, fear, and depression.

And then there are those who respond to black times with black humor.

Early this week, the mood lightened briefly as Israelis fought off their attackers.

On Monday, in the fourth attack in Jerusalem that day, a 22-year-old from the West Bank who was taking the 185 bus in Jerusalem suddenly stabbed a soldier and tried to take his weapon.

Passengers managed to stop the attacker. And passerby Yair Ben-Shabat boarded the bus — with his nunchucks. (Nunchucks are Japanese weapons made of two sticks joined by a chain. A quick Internet search shows that it is not clear whether they are legal in New Jersey, but they can do a great deal of damage.) “I jumped onto the bus and helped them fight the terrorist,” Mr. Ben-Shabat told Yediot Aharonot. “I took nunchucks out and hit him where I had to for them to be able to pry loose the weapon he held.”

He was hailed as a hero.

He was recast on TV comedy show Eretz Acheret’s Facebook page as a Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtle.

But he was criticized by comedian Yoav Rabinovitz.

“For 39 years we’re been trying to teach the Jewish Zionist fighting values called Krav Maga and in one post-Zionist Japanese nunchuck moment it went down the drain,” Mr. Rabinovitz complained. “Two thousand years of exile so we could fight like the Japanese? What have we done?”

On Tuesday, in Ra’anana, a real estate agent Michael Rehavi heard a knifing victim scream. He ran out of his office, grabbing an umbrella, which he used to “neutralize” the terrorist, though by the end the umbrella “pretty much broke apart and disintegrated,” he told Haaretz.

In Jerusalem, a bystander told a television reporter that he rushed to take on a terrorist with a selfie stick — helping to save not only the day, but the reputation of the much maligned smartphone accessory.

All of which led Eretz Acheret to design a logo for a new “Neutralization Force” — which is not really ridiculous as the country faces a terror war being fought with knives on the home front.