--- title: 'Disarmers of Terror': Portraits of an Israeli Bomb Squad, 1984 description: Pictures documenting the professional and personal lives of members of a never-before-photographed Israeli bomb squad in Jerusalem in 1984. canonical: https://time.com/3881227/disarmers-of-terror-life-with-an-israeli-bomb-squad-1984/ author: Ben Cosgrove article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-10-19T18:53:30.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T05:03:35.336Z og:title: 'Disarmers of Terror': Portraits of an Israeli Bomb Squad, 1984 og:description: Pictures documenting the professional and personal lives of members of a never-before-photographed Israeli bomb squad in Jerusalem in 1984. og:url: https://time.com/3881227/disarmers-of-terror-life-with-an-israeli-bomb-squad-1984/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta51ef1061ae026ab/69884c7f524fc08883df2411/140929-bombsquad-002.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2650 og:image:height: 1491 og:image:alt: Israeli Bomb Squad, 1984 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: 'Disarmers of Terror': Portraits of an Israeli Bomb Squad, 1984 twitter:description: Pictures documenting the professional and personal lives of members of a never-before-photographed Israeli bomb squad in Jerusalem in 1984. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta51ef1061ae026ab/69884c7f524fc08883df2411/140929-bombsquad-002.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # 'Disarmers of Terror': LIFE With an Israeli Bomb Squad, 1984 > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. by [Ben Cosgrove](https://time.com/author/ben-cosgrove/) ## Ben Cosgrove Oct 19, 2014 6:53 PM UTC  Dressed in bomb-squad protective gear, Uri tries to learn how to juggle using three hand grenades on a hill above the holy city. A year ago a terrorist-planted bomb exploded in a bus carrying Jews through West Jerusalem. “I arrived two minutes after the explosion,” says Uri. “There were shoes, fingers, glasses, blood. It was hell.” During the last 12 months the team has defused 36 other such devices. \[1984\] Dressed in bomb-squad protective gear, Uri tries to learn how to juggle using three hand grenades on a hill above the holy city. A year ago a terrorist-planted bomb exploded in a bus carrying Jews through West Jerusalem. “I arrived two minutes after the explosion,” says Uri. “There were shoes, fingers, glasses, blood. It was hell.” During the last 12 months the team has defused 36 other such devices. \[1984\] J. Ross Baughman, taken originally for LIFE magazine in September 1984 by [Ben Cosgrove](https://time.com/author/ben-cosgrove/) ## Ben Cosgrove Oct 19, 2014 6:53 PM UTC In December 1984, LIFE magazine—then in its two-decade-long run as a monthly—published an article and photographs on “the busiest bomb squad in the world.” Written by David Friend and featuring pictures by [J. Ross Baughman](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J.%5FRoss%5FBaughman), the article, “Disarmers of Terror,” chronicled the professional and personal lives of a never-before-photographed Israeli bomb squad in Jerusalem. Here, 30 years later, [with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict still front and center in the headlines](http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/10/israel-sweden-palestine-recognise-recognises-20141059367478465.html), LIFE.com presents a series of Baughman’s photos from Jerusalem, many of which never ran in LIFE, as well an excerpt from his new memoir, [_Angle_](http://www.amazon.com/Angle-Fighting-Censorship-Threats-Pulitzer-ebook/dp/B00NKUI0CC/ref=sr%5F1%5F1?ie=UTF8&qid=1411667237&sr=8-1&keywords=J.+Ross+Baughman)(VisionsPress, 2014), in which he recounts the bomb squad assignment. An admirer of photographers as varied in tone, legacy and method as W. Eugene Smith, Larry Burrows and Richard Avedon (“From Avedon, I learned how to get beneath the skin of my subjects.”), Baughman told LIFE.com that, when it comes to photojournalism, he believes “the work that lasts longest will bring some question, some compelling public interest, into the sharpest possible focus. . . . Wise photojournalists must not leap at random opportunities. Instead, we must ask ourselves, and persuade editors and viewers as well, that we have been endlessly patient, and found an amazing subject that crystallizes their greatest concern. Then starts the hard part of winning the subject’s trust, becoming the story’s co-author along with them, and then turning yourself invisible.” --- \[Excerpted from [_Angle: Fighting Censorship, Death Threats, Ethical Traps and a Land Mine, While Winning a Pulitzer Along the Way_](http://www.amazon.com/Angle-Fighting-Censorship-Threats-Pulitzer-ebook/dp/B00NKUI0CC/ref=sr%5F1%5F1?ie=UTF8&qid=1411667237&sr=8-1&keywords=J.+Ross+Baughman), by Ross Baughman\] In the fall of 1984, David Friend asks me to join him in Jerusalem. He has a wonderful opportunity for us to spend time with the busiest bomb squad in the world. The level of Palestinian commando attacks is now at an all-time high. This will certainly make an interesting opposite side of the coin for my earliest proposals to . . . LIFE back in 1979\. In that proposal (which LIFE turned down) I had been invited to go along with Palestinian commandos as they took hostages somewhere in the Israeli capital. One terribly serious limitation will be that my photos cannot put the bomb squad into extra danger from assassination. Although they have agreed to let me shoot everything about their dangerous work, I must compose each shot to carefully avoid making any of their faces identifiable. . . . I must slice away enough of their faces to save these guys from death. I am literally holding their faces and their lives in my hands. The healthy tension is that I want to show as much of their faces as possible, but I must make it impossible for an assassin to hold one of my pictures and use it on the street to comb through passers-by and positively identify his victim. David and I end up staying for thirteen days of nearly round-the-clock shooting, which is all on color negative film. Picture editor [John Loengard](http://life.time.com/john-loengard/) likes the look of the ASA 400 emulsions because we can shoot under available light and all the subtle color shifts can be corrected at the TIME-LIFE lab. The magazine’s editors devote so much space to the pictures that my heart goes out to the staff reporters and writers who must craft weeks’ worth of details with incredible skill and efficiency. The text in a LIFE layout never jumps over to another page. Each thematic “beat,” to use our designers’ term of art, must be tailored word by word into the perfect fit. Here is a sample of David’s reporting: --- > “” ---  Baughman and writer David Friend were presented with silver wings--with the bomb squad unit's bomb symbol in the middle. \[Click image for larger version\] J. Ross Baughman I know I’ll have to get all my photographs cleared with the Israeli military censors before taking them out of the country. . . . I certainly don’t want to get into the act of having my negatives clipped into pieces the way the Rhodesian censors had done it, and luckily, they are very relaxed and feel like LIFE has already been embraced by the top brass. I turn over a funny little album of 3″ x 5″ prints in a small red plastic album (which is now part of the Baughman Collection on Photojournalism at the Smithsonian’s Museum of American History in Washington.) The censor has never seen such gritty compelling pictures gathered together like vacation snapshots. His fascination makes it all the easier for him to thump an official rubber stamp on the cover and send me on my way. No haggling, no magnifying loup to examine my negatives. That’s all there was to it. It turns out that Shimon Peres is on the same El Al jet \[on our flight home\], sitting up in the swollen upper deck of the 747\. When he finds out what David and I have been working on, and that we would like to add him to the story, he is totally open and gracious about asking us to join him. Because the story has this clear, front-page news quality to it, LIFE’s editors are glad to rearrange the December issue and rush it into print. . . . --- Michigan native [J. Ross Baughman](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J.%5FRoss%5FBaughman) began working in journalism in 1975, when he was hired by _The Lorain Journal_ in northern Ohio. After leaving the _Journal_ and taking a job with the Associated Press, he became the youngest professional ever awarded the Pulitzer Prize, in 1978, for his coverage of the guerrilla war in southern Africa. He was just 23. (Click on the image at left to see the full-size version.) Baughman has lectured internationally on journalism ethics and was the founder of the Visions photo agency. Besides covering wars in 11 countries, his work has appeared everywhere, from _LIFE_ to _Vanity Fair, Newsweek, Time, Stern, The New York Times Magazine_ and _Vogue_. In his work as an investigative photojournalist, he has been spit upon, shot at, stricken by encephalitis, had his arm broken by a New York drug dealer, was lined up for execution by a Neo-Nazi, had his ear drum blown out during a Palestinian mortar attack in Lebanon and was thrown into a Zambian prison for six weeks when suspected of spying. He has intentionally placed himself next to a tornado and got his leg blown apart by a land mine in El Salvador. During the Jerusalem bomb-squad assignment, Baughman wore an Israeli military uniform (Kevlar vest, khaki trousers and a specially marked royal blue t-shirt) so he could move freely through IDF security cordons and photograph the bomb squad unchallenged. He served as a senior editor, assistant to the executive editor and director of photography at _The Washington Times_ for 10 years; has advised the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Foundation on its journalism awards; and served as the education chair of The White House News Photographers’ Association. [\[See more photos and a free sample of the opening 55 pages of Baughman’s new memoir, _Angle_, at Amazon.com\]](http://www.amazon.com/Angle-Fighting-Censorship-Threats-Pulitzer-ebook/dp/B00NKUI0CC/ref=sr%5F1%5F1?ie=UTF8&qid=1411667237&sr=8-1&keywords=J.+Ross+Baughman) ---  Not published in LIFE. Traffic in downtown Jerusalem comes to a halt beside a bus stop while one disposal expert named Uri, 32, gingerly handles the apparent bomb, 1984. J. Ross Baughman, taken originally for LIFE magazine in September 1984  Dressed in bomb-squad protective gear, Uri tries to learn how to juggle using three hand grenades on a hill above the holy city. A year ago a terrorist-planted bomb exploded in a bus carrying Jews through West Jerusalem. “I arrived two minutes after the explosion,” says Uri. “There were shoes, fingers, glasses, blood. It was hell.” During the last 12 months the team has defused 36 other such devices. \[1984\] J. Ross Baughman, taken originally for LIFE magazine in September 1984  Not published in LIFE. Commander Benny Amedi, 32, jokingly offers tips on juggling three grenades to his bomb-squad officers. “I'm not worried if you show my face in the magazine. The guys I'm up against already know who I am.” J. Ross Baughman, taken originally for LIFE magazine in September 1984  Not published in LIFE. Commander Amedi oversees the test of one bomb squad member who must be able to recognize and disarm a wide variety of bombs by his sense of touch alone. The first example on his table, already successfully dismantled, was a Soviet-style Bouncing Betty, while the one that currently has his full attention is an Israeli-made IM-46 land mine big enough to blow up a truck. J. Ross Baughman, taken originally for LIFE magazine in September 1984 ![Uri, an Israeli bomb squad officer, says goodbye to his children in the morning. \[1984\]](https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4f3893da86c7484d/69884c81cd1bba1d0e6faf4e/140929-bombsquad-005.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp) Not published in LIFE. Uri, an Israeli bomb squad officer, says goodbye to his children in the morning. \[1984\] J. Ross Baughman, taken originally for LIFE magazine in September 1984  As a policeman gestures to a passerby to keep back, Uri checks under the engine of an Arab-owned Mercedes station wagon. Parked in an Orthodox Jewish section of the city, its luggage rack contains a pile of burlap sacks. J. Ross Baughman, taken originally for LIFE magazine in September 1984  Not published in LIFE. Near his next suspected bomb, Uri straps on his thick leggings made of Kevlar. J. Ross Baughman, taken originally for LIFE magazine in September 1984  Not published in LIFE. Uri watches as a shotgun-toting robot is aimed, with the aid of a remote video camera, at a possible bomb near the trash can in a Jerusalem side street. J. Ross Baughman, taken originally for LIFE magazine in September 1984  Not published in LIFE. The teacher at a school for young children apologizes for calling in a bomb alert that turned out to be nothing but some empty plastic bags. "Don't be sorry," Uri tells him. "Better to be wrong than to be dead." J. Ross Baughman, taken originally for LIFE magazine in September 1984  Not published in LIFE. Young school children gather close for a look at a flower pot that was used to disguise a small bomb. Commander Amedi warns them, "Don't touch! If something looks out of place, be suspicious. Call for us to take a look." J. Ross Baughman, taken originally for LIFE magazine in September 1984  Not published in LIFE. Common objects such as this school yearbook are turned into bombs precisely because they are so tempting for people to pick up. The chart on the wall shows the wide variety of detonators used to set off the explosive charge, which in the case of the book was an easy-to-mold plastic compound. J. Ross Baughman, taken originally for LIFE magazine in September 1984  David Ivgy, 33, had been with the squad for less that two and a half years when, in May 1981, he answered a call at a popular Jerusalem café. The suspicious object was a saccharin bottle in the bottom of wastebasket. When Ivgy picked it up, the explosion tore off his thumb and most of two fingers on his right hand. “I got off cheap,” he says, holding a duplicate of the bottle bomb. J. Ross Baughman, taken originally for LIFE magazine in September 1984  Not published in LIFE. Suleiman Hirbawi, 30, plays with his two-year-old daughter Samiha, who is sometimes distressed by his face, especially his damaged eyes beneath his ever-present sunglasses. “I don't get to see her grow up, and she hates to look at me,” says Hirbawi. J. Ross Baughman, taken originally for LIFE magazine in September 1984  The framed portraits of Steve Hilmes, 31, a U.S.-born immigrant and Vietnam veteran, and Albert Levy, 33, hang in the bomb squad's locker room beside a flickering eternal flame. J. Ross Baughman, taken originally for LIFE magazine in September 1984  Not published in LIFE. Commander Amedi, at left, takes a new member of the Jerusalem bomb squad to the military section of a cemetery overlooking the city to visit the grave of a bomb disposal officer who gave his life to a bomb. J. 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