As bad as the job of a privite security guard is here in the USA, imagine working as a security guard in Israel.
Imagine your job is to stop suicide bombers for about $4 an hour.
****** After you read this amazing article, be sure to check out the photo link at the end of the article. ******
The photo is of a female who looks to be only 17 or 18 years old, working as an Israeli security guard, carrying an Uzi!
http://www.msnbc.com/news/919782.asp#BODY
Dangerous Days
Working as a security guard is one of Israel’s most dangerous—and poorly paid—jobs. But for many immigrants, the only other option is unemployment
By Dan Ephron
NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE
May 29 — It was Kiril Shremko’s first day on the job. The 23-year-old Russian immigrant had completed his army service a few weeks earlier and found work as a security guard at a shopping mall in the hardscrabble town of Afula.
SHREMKO WAS ALONE in Israel. He’d left his parents behind in Neftekamsk, a Russian town near the Ural Mountains, studied Hebrew on a kibbutz and then enlisted as a tank driver. When his two-year military service ended, he tried getting work behind the wheel of a truck or a tractor. But with Israel’s economy on the skids, all he could get was a minimum-wage job as a security guard. Standing at the entrance to the mall last week, Shremko waved his “wandâ€â€”a handheld metal detector—at shoppers filing in and peered into their bags. “He told me how happy he was to be working, that he didn’t have money for food†before he took the job, says Tzvika Levy, a friend who saw Shremko at the mall that day.
But his luck ran out quickly. While checking a woman in jeans and a T shirt, Shremko’s wand began screaming. He turned to his partner, a female security guard with all of a week’s experience, and asked for help. The partner, Hadar Gitlin, had only enough time to take two steps toward the shopper before the 10-pound bomb she was carrying in her bag exploded. The force of the blast crushed all of Shremko’s internal organs and killed him instantly. Gitlin was rushed to the hospital in critical condition. “She blinked at us for a moment and went back into a coma,†Gitlin’s father, Meir, said last week. “We didn’t want her to take this job.â€
The aftermath of the May 19 suicide bombing at Afula
It’s not hard to understand why. With Israel reeling from a fresh spasm of Palestinian violence—five suicide attacks in a 48-hour clip last week including the Afula bombing—private security has become the country’s most dangerous line of work. Three more security guards injured in recent bombings are currently fighting for their lives. Posted at the entrance to almost every restaurant, shopping mall and public building, the security guards are expected to do the unthinkable—place their bodies between the bombers and the crowds bent on having a good time. “We’re like human shields,†says one guard, standing outside a trendy Jerusalem cafe.
Most of the guards are under 30. Many are students and a growing number are women. But there are also men in their 50s, single mothers and discharged soldiers. Most are immigrants; more than 70 percent are believed to be from the former Soviet Union. And they all have this in common: they work for a pittance. While security firms are part of the only growth sector in Israel’s economy, the guards they employ earn around four dollars an hour—barely minimum wage. Why take the risk? Because unemployment hit 11 percent this quarter and Israel’s immigrant population stands out as the most economically vulnerable. “Open the want ads, and the only jobs you see are in security,†says Michael Sarkisov, who wrestled with a suicide bomber seven months ago and lived to tell about it.
The suicide assault on Israel is almost unprecedented in scope. Since Israelis and Palestinians resumed their fighting 32 months ago, 200 bombers have tried to stage attacks—almost two a week on average—and about 100 succeeded (the others were killed or arrested en route), according to a senior security official. Israeli authorities believe the latest surge is part of a power struggle between Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat and his recently appointed prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, though both men deny it.
But while Israelis stayed away from public places early on in the fighting, they have learned to endure. Laws now require large restaurants and shops to post security guards at their entrances. Smaller cafes have taken their own initiative. “We get several calls a day for security guards,†says Jacob Halperin, who runs Hashmira, Israel’s largest security firm. He says security companies have expanded their staff by almost 50 percent in the past three years and private-sector guards now amount to an astonishing 4 percent of the work force.
But the industry suffers from congestion—Halperin says Israel has 370 security firms all providing the same service—and a lack of regulation. Dozens of companies compete for each job, driving down prices and profit margins. Israel’s economic woes haven’t helped either, he says. Restaurants want guards but they can’t afford to pay much.
Hanna Zohar, who runs a workers’ hotline called Kav La-Oved, says the security guards themselves are the ones who get squeezed. Zohar gets about 15 complaints a week from guards who say they’ve been denied overtime, severance pay and other basic benefits. “When a security guard complains, his employer says: ‘There are thousands waiting in line for this job. If you don’t like it you can go’,†Zohar says. Most end up agreeing to work long shifts in bad conditions.
Sarkisov is a good example. He immigrated to Israel two years ago from Turkmenistan, where he served as an officer in a police unit. Weeks after he arrived with his wife and child, Sarkisov got a job with a security company as a guard at a Tel Aviv restaurant, sometimes working 15-hour shifts. “Israelis don’t like working a lot of hours, but Russians need the money,†he said in his crowded apartment south of Tel Aviv. He was also moonlighting at a warehouse, but still couldn’t afford to move out of a mobile home parked at the security company’s headquarters.
That changed after he went eyeball to eyeball with a suicide bomber last October at the Tayelet restaurant along Tel Aviv’s beachfront promenade. Sarkisov was working the night shift when a bomber tried to push his way through the entrance, setting off his hand-held metal detector. The 30-year-old immigrant put a hand on the militant’s chest and felt the bomb belt. “His eyes were moving back and forth very rapidly. I think he was at least as scared as I was,†says Sarkisov. Thinking quickly, he pulled the bomber’s hand from his pocket and forced him to drop his cell phone—the device Sarkisov believes would have been used to detonate the explosives. When the bomber turned and ran, Sarkisov gave chase.
At the entrance to the U.S. Embassy two doors down, Sarkisov and an American guard knocked the bomber to the ground and kept him pinned down until the bomb squad arrived. Sarkisov’s bravery paid off. Israeli officials responded by assigning him and his family a low-rent apartment in a public housing complex. A certificate of honor he received from the U.S. ambassador hangs in his living room. But Sarkisov, who now works as a supervisor at the same security company, says other guards commit brave acts just by conquering their fear and going to work every day. “Bravery doesn’t put food on the table,†he says.
In fact, many guards readily admit to being scared. Alex Drapkin, who stands outside a popular restaurant in Jerusalem, says he’s not sure what he would do if confronted by a bomber. He says he wants to work for another month to make money for his studies and quit before his number comes up. Samuel Asabi, who guards a Sbarro pizzeria that was twice targeted by bombers, says he’s so conscious of the threat around him, he even checks baby carriages. “I leave the house in the morning not knowing what might happen. My wife keeps screaming at me to leave this job.â€
Other guards talk about the professional pride of not letting an attacker get past them. Aviv Tabib, who was on duty when a bomber killed three people last month at Mike’s Place, a pub in Tel Aviv, says he remembers little from the attack in which he suffered severe wounds. Tabib, who has a black belt in karate and worked for years as a bouncer in Miami, now sits in the backyard of a friend’s house wheezing through a conversation with guests (the blast punctured one of his lungs). He says the first thing he asked people in the hospital when he woke up from his coma was: “Did I prevent the bomber from getting inside?†To his great relief, the answer was yes. “I don’t think anyone who works as a guard could go on living with himself knowing that he failed to stop the attacker and someone inside died.â€
Tabib believes guarding is more about saving lives than earning money. But to others, weighing the hazards of the job against the prospects of unemployment is a dreadful calculus. With the casualties among security guards rising, some Israeli lawmakers now suggest setting wage standards and providing benefits to the families of those wounded or killed. “The security guards these days have become our frontline warriors,†says Parliament member Eitan Cabel. Cabel is working on a bill requiring security companies to furnish the guards with standard equipment, including bulletproof vests.
But even if such legislation gets past the Treasury’s austerity program, it wouldn’t provide much comfort for the parents of Hadar Gitlin, who sat at their daughter’s bedside last week waiting for her to wake up. The Gitlins have been through it before. Their older daughter was badly wounded in a suicide attack at Beit Lid seven years ago. This time, they heard a mistaken report on Israeli radio that a woman guard had been killed in the Afula bombing. “For hours, we thought Hadar was dead,†says her father, Meir Gitlin. When he showed up at Ha’emek hospital in Afula that night, a nurse told him one unidentified survivor was still in surgery and showed him a ring doctors had pulled from her finger. “It was blackened and crushed but I recognized it immediately as my daughter’s.â€
Kiril Shremko’s parents weren’t as lucky. When Israeli officials reached his mother in Russia, she asked that the funeral be delayed long enough for her to attend. Anita Katz, who had looked after Shremko while he lived on Kibbutz Ramat David in northern Israel, said he could have stayed at the kibbutz after his army service but preferred to live on his own. “He wanted to be independent,†Katz said last week. “He knew guarding work wasn’t much money, but he neededthe job.†Shremko probably helped save lives on his first day of work at the shopping mall last week. But like other security guards who are now heroes in Israel, he couldn’t save his own.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
With Joanna Chen in Jerusalem
© 2003 Newsweek, Inc.
Imagine your job is to stop suicide bombers for about $4 an hour.
****** After you read this amazing article, be sure to check out the photo link at the end of the article. ******
The photo is of a female who looks to be only 17 or 18 years old, working as an Israeli security guard, carrying an Uzi!
http://www.msnbc.com/news/919782.asp#BODY
Dangerous Days
Working as a security guard is one of Israel’s most dangerous—and poorly paid—jobs. But for many immigrants, the only other option is unemployment
By Dan Ephron
NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE
May 29 — It was Kiril Shremko’s first day on the job. The 23-year-old Russian immigrant had completed his army service a few weeks earlier and found work as a security guard at a shopping mall in the hardscrabble town of Afula.
SHREMKO WAS ALONE in Israel. He’d left his parents behind in Neftekamsk, a Russian town near the Ural Mountains, studied Hebrew on a kibbutz and then enlisted as a tank driver. When his two-year military service ended, he tried getting work behind the wheel of a truck or a tractor. But with Israel’s economy on the skids, all he could get was a minimum-wage job as a security guard. Standing at the entrance to the mall last week, Shremko waved his “wandâ€â€”a handheld metal detector—at shoppers filing in and peered into their bags. “He told me how happy he was to be working, that he didn’t have money for food†before he took the job, says Tzvika Levy, a friend who saw Shremko at the mall that day.
But his luck ran out quickly. While checking a woman in jeans and a T shirt, Shremko’s wand began screaming. He turned to his partner, a female security guard with all of a week’s experience, and asked for help. The partner, Hadar Gitlin, had only enough time to take two steps toward the shopper before the 10-pound bomb she was carrying in her bag exploded. The force of the blast crushed all of Shremko’s internal organs and killed him instantly. Gitlin was rushed to the hospital in critical condition. “She blinked at us for a moment and went back into a coma,†Gitlin’s father, Meir, said last week. “We didn’t want her to take this job.â€
The aftermath of the May 19 suicide bombing at Afula
It’s not hard to understand why. With Israel reeling from a fresh spasm of Palestinian violence—five suicide attacks in a 48-hour clip last week including the Afula bombing—private security has become the country’s most dangerous line of work. Three more security guards injured in recent bombings are currently fighting for their lives. Posted at the entrance to almost every restaurant, shopping mall and public building, the security guards are expected to do the unthinkable—place their bodies between the bombers and the crowds bent on having a good time. “We’re like human shields,†says one guard, standing outside a trendy Jerusalem cafe.
Most of the guards are under 30. Many are students and a growing number are women. But there are also men in their 50s, single mothers and discharged soldiers. Most are immigrants; more than 70 percent are believed to be from the former Soviet Union. And they all have this in common: they work for a pittance. While security firms are part of the only growth sector in Israel’s economy, the guards they employ earn around four dollars an hour—barely minimum wage. Why take the risk? Because unemployment hit 11 percent this quarter and Israel’s immigrant population stands out as the most economically vulnerable. “Open the want ads, and the only jobs you see are in security,†says Michael Sarkisov, who wrestled with a suicide bomber seven months ago and lived to tell about it.
The suicide assault on Israel is almost unprecedented in scope. Since Israelis and Palestinians resumed their fighting 32 months ago, 200 bombers have tried to stage attacks—almost two a week on average—and about 100 succeeded (the others were killed or arrested en route), according to a senior security official. Israeli authorities believe the latest surge is part of a power struggle between Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat and his recently appointed prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, though both men deny it.
But while Israelis stayed away from public places early on in the fighting, they have learned to endure. Laws now require large restaurants and shops to post security guards at their entrances. Smaller cafes have taken their own initiative. “We get several calls a day for security guards,†says Jacob Halperin, who runs Hashmira, Israel’s largest security firm. He says security companies have expanded their staff by almost 50 percent in the past three years and private-sector guards now amount to an astonishing 4 percent of the work force.
But the industry suffers from congestion—Halperin says Israel has 370 security firms all providing the same service—and a lack of regulation. Dozens of companies compete for each job, driving down prices and profit margins. Israel’s economic woes haven’t helped either, he says. Restaurants want guards but they can’t afford to pay much.
Hanna Zohar, who runs a workers’ hotline called Kav La-Oved, says the security guards themselves are the ones who get squeezed. Zohar gets about 15 complaints a week from guards who say they’ve been denied overtime, severance pay and other basic benefits. “When a security guard complains, his employer says: ‘There are thousands waiting in line for this job. If you don’t like it you can go’,†Zohar says. Most end up agreeing to work long shifts in bad conditions.
Sarkisov is a good example. He immigrated to Israel two years ago from Turkmenistan, where he served as an officer in a police unit. Weeks after he arrived with his wife and child, Sarkisov got a job with a security company as a guard at a Tel Aviv restaurant, sometimes working 15-hour shifts. “Israelis don’t like working a lot of hours, but Russians need the money,†he said in his crowded apartment south of Tel Aviv. He was also moonlighting at a warehouse, but still couldn’t afford to move out of a mobile home parked at the security company’s headquarters.
That changed after he went eyeball to eyeball with a suicide bomber last October at the Tayelet restaurant along Tel Aviv’s beachfront promenade. Sarkisov was working the night shift when a bomber tried to push his way through the entrance, setting off his hand-held metal detector. The 30-year-old immigrant put a hand on the militant’s chest and felt the bomb belt. “His eyes were moving back and forth very rapidly. I think he was at least as scared as I was,†says Sarkisov. Thinking quickly, he pulled the bomber’s hand from his pocket and forced him to drop his cell phone—the device Sarkisov believes would have been used to detonate the explosives. When the bomber turned and ran, Sarkisov gave chase.
At the entrance to the U.S. Embassy two doors down, Sarkisov and an American guard knocked the bomber to the ground and kept him pinned down until the bomb squad arrived. Sarkisov’s bravery paid off. Israeli officials responded by assigning him and his family a low-rent apartment in a public housing complex. A certificate of honor he received from the U.S. ambassador hangs in his living room. But Sarkisov, who now works as a supervisor at the same security company, says other guards commit brave acts just by conquering their fear and going to work every day. “Bravery doesn’t put food on the table,†he says.
In fact, many guards readily admit to being scared. Alex Drapkin, who stands outside a popular restaurant in Jerusalem, says he’s not sure what he would do if confronted by a bomber. He says he wants to work for another month to make money for his studies and quit before his number comes up. Samuel Asabi, who guards a Sbarro pizzeria that was twice targeted by bombers, says he’s so conscious of the threat around him, he even checks baby carriages. “I leave the house in the morning not knowing what might happen. My wife keeps screaming at me to leave this job.â€
Other guards talk about the professional pride of not letting an attacker get past them. Aviv Tabib, who was on duty when a bomber killed three people last month at Mike’s Place, a pub in Tel Aviv, says he remembers little from the attack in which he suffered severe wounds. Tabib, who has a black belt in karate and worked for years as a bouncer in Miami, now sits in the backyard of a friend’s house wheezing through a conversation with guests (the blast punctured one of his lungs). He says the first thing he asked people in the hospital when he woke up from his coma was: “Did I prevent the bomber from getting inside?†To his great relief, the answer was yes. “I don’t think anyone who works as a guard could go on living with himself knowing that he failed to stop the attacker and someone inside died.â€
Tabib believes guarding is more about saving lives than earning money. But to others, weighing the hazards of the job against the prospects of unemployment is a dreadful calculus. With the casualties among security guards rising, some Israeli lawmakers now suggest setting wage standards and providing benefits to the families of those wounded or killed. “The security guards these days have become our frontline warriors,†says Parliament member Eitan Cabel. Cabel is working on a bill requiring security companies to furnish the guards with standard equipment, including bulletproof vests.
But even if such legislation gets past the Treasury’s austerity program, it wouldn’t provide much comfort for the parents of Hadar Gitlin, who sat at their daughter’s bedside last week waiting for her to wake up. The Gitlins have been through it before. Their older daughter was badly wounded in a suicide attack at Beit Lid seven years ago. This time, they heard a mistaken report on Israeli radio that a woman guard had been killed in the Afula bombing. “For hours, we thought Hadar was dead,†says her father, Meir Gitlin. When he showed up at Ha’emek hospital in Afula that night, a nurse told him one unidentified survivor was still in surgery and showed him a ring doctors had pulled from her finger. “It was blackened and crushed but I recognized it immediately as my daughter’s.â€
Kiril Shremko’s parents weren’t as lucky. When Israeli officials reached his mother in Russia, she asked that the funeral be delayed long enough for her to attend. Anita Katz, who had looked after Shremko while he lived on Kibbutz Ramat David in northern Israel, said he could have stayed at the kibbutz after his army service but preferred to live on his own. “He wanted to be independent,†Katz said last week. “He knew guarding work wasn’t much money, but he neededthe job.†Shremko probably helped save lives on his first day of work at the shopping mall last week. But like other security guards who are now heroes in Israel, he couldn’t save his own.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
With Joanna Chen in Jerusalem
© 2003 Newsweek, Inc.
