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0

n a normal day, Ron
Gertner would kiss his wife
and twins goodbye at 6
a.m. in Modi'in Israel. He'd
travel the half hour to work, then
return around 9 p.m. after a day of
crime fighting.
But the days are seldom normal
anymore, he said. After more than
two years of war — and make no
mistake, to Gertner it's not an intifa-
da (uprising), it's war — his main job
is protecting civilians from
Palestinian terror attacks.
He spoke about his work during an
interview in Detroit last week. He
and 14 other police
officers and Israel
Defense Forces sol-
diers were part of
"Operation
Maccabee," an
eight-day informa-
tion and fund-rais-
ing mission for
Israel Bonds.
Gertner recalls
that during his 1
1 /2-year stint as
police chief of
Rosh-Ha'ain, just
west of Petach
Tikvah, he once
heard the sounds of
a nearby bombing
Maj. Ron Gertner
while at his police
station.
Now he's even more in the thick of
things. Recently promoted to chief
operations officer in charge of five
police stations, Gertner serves a dis-
trict from Netanya south to Petach
Tikvah and east to the West Bank.
"In the Palestinian territories, the
Israel Defense Forces does the job,"
he said. "West of the Green Line,
there's no army treatment, just police
work. If terrorists want to go to Tel
Aviv, they have to go through us."
No small task when 1,200 police
officers are responsible for 1.2 million
civilians in his district the size of
Washington, D.C.
Nationally, the IDF and the police
force claim a 70-80 percent success
rate in capturing terrorists who want

to come to Israel. Police departments
around the country file about 6.3
million tips a year, about "suspicious
people," he said.
"Every day in Israel, between 5-15
members of terror groups are arrested
in Judea: or the Samaria area or the
Gaza Strip," he said, citing intelli-
gence sharing among police and the
IDF. "If you want to win the war,
you have to cooperate with every-
body. We are working together, we all
have the same purpose."

Grisly Scenes

Gertner is 33 years old and baby-
faced, but his deep-set eyes have seen
too much.

His presentation included a CD
filled with grisly police video images
of terrorist attacks before they've been
cleaned up for television.
At the Moment Cafe bombing in
Jerusalem in March 2002, for exam-
ple, the bodies of three women lie on
the floor. A cell phone on the table is
ringing.
Gertner refers to suicide bombers as
smart bombs."
"If you put a bomb in a car and
leave, you don't know how many peo-
ple it will hurt and what damage it
will cause," he said. "When you send
a suicide bomber, he chooses the tar-
get. He looks at the women and the
children and walks over to them. You
can see the results."

"

