Thoughts On The Killing of Jean Charles De Menezes
I’m going to go out on a limb here. It seems to me that the plainclothes British police who shot Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes, 27, did not act professionally. Reports are now indicating that Menezes was shot EIGHT times!—seven shots to the head, one in the shoulder. I’m no ballistics expert, but from what I understand, one shot to the head at close range with any caliber of gun will immediately incapacitate anybody. Certainly two or three will do the trick—pow, pow, pow, you know, a typical rapidly fired volley. But eight shots? Pow, pow, pow, pow, pow, pow, pow, pow. Count it off. Eight shots, pointblank range. Okay, he's dead.
Obviously I do not know what was going through the “Bobbies” minds, and I was not present at the shooting, but the sheer volume of shots leads me to wonder if anger and rage might have played a role in the killing of Mr. Menezes. Were their minds clouded by anger and rage over the recent bombings? What motivated the shooting? Revenge?
I’ve lived in Israel, so I know all about the threat posed by suicide bombers. But even the Israelis, who have suffered literally hundreds of more suicide attacks than the British, behave in a much more level-headed manner when encountering suicide bombers. Off the top of my head I can recall two fairly recent cases in which Palestinians were wearing bomb-vests, yet the Israelis managed to disarm the bombers and bring the situations to non-violent conclusions. One case involved developmentally disabled teenager; the other a young woman who was granted medical care in Israel and planned to blow up the hospital that was treating her.
It’s true that the Israelis have a policy of targeted assassinations, “extra judicial executions,” as the British media outlets self-righteously call them, but this policy is completely justified. For one, the Israelis only target the terrorist leaders, planners and bomb-makers; the hardcore terrorists who are allowed to live freely in areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority. The PA is legally obliged to incarcerate such people, but they don’t. Therefore Israel is forced to ensure that these killers are prevented from killing innocent Israelis. The Israelis take great care to ensure that they kill only the individuals they are after.
I’m all for a shoot-to-kill policy against suicide bombers. The only way to prevent them from detonating the bomb—or from accidentally detonating it yourself—is to shoot the terrorist in the head. At the same time, I can barely stand the rank hypocrisy I’ve been witnessing on behalf of those British (particularly the media and London Mayor Ken Livingston-spit!) who for years have condemned Israel for its targeted killings policy. Where is their outrage now? Why the double standard?
This piece by Tom Gross, the former Jerusalem correspondent for Britain’s Sunday Telegraph, sums up my sentiments exactly:
From London to Jerusalem
Last Friday, as British police frantically searched for four presumed suicide bombers on the run, the people of London had a glimpse of what the people of Israel live with daily. The explosive devices of all four men had failed to go off properly on London's transport system the day before, and the men had subsequently escaped.
Throughout Friday there were roadblocks and house searches throughout London. Closed-circuit TV footage of the four was released to the public in the afternoon, and by evening two suspects had been taken into custody. The people of London expressed the fear of "living with terror 24/7," the world expressed its sympathy, and there was much supportive and understanding coverage of Britain's plight by international media and politicians.
Palestinian terrorists have carried out over 25,000 attacks on Israelis since September 2000, resulting in thousands of deaths and injuries. Israeli security forces have thwarted thousands of attacks, and Israelis have grown used to living with manhunts of the kind seen in London on Friday; yet they are barely reported abroad.
The head of the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) confirmed last week that Israel presently receives some 60 intelligence warnings of potential Palestinian terror attacks every day, and this month alone several Israeli women and teenage girls – and now Rachel and Dov Kol – have been killed in various attacks.
Such was the nervousness in London on Friday that, at 10 a.m., a dark-complexioned man was shot dead on a train at Stockwell Tube station in south London. Witnesses on the train immediately said it was clear the man had been unarmed. In the words of one, he was "literally executed." He was already lying on the ground motionless, having tripped, when British police pumped five bullets into his head at close range. On Saturday evening the police confirmed what had been fairly apparent from the time of the shooting – that they had mistakenly targeted an innocent man. It turned out he was a Brazilian Catholic.
Israel has taken enormous care in its "targeted killings" of "ticking bombs," almost never killing anyone in a case of mistaken identity.
CONTRARY TO the absolute lies told in British media in recent days, the Israel Defense Forces have not instituted a shoot-to-kill policy, or trained the British to carry out one. For example, on Friday, at the very time British police were shooting the man in the Tube, the IDF caught and disarmed a terrorist from Fatah already inside Israel en route to carrying out a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv. Israeli forces didn't injure the terrorist at all in apprehending him and disarming him of the 5-kg. explosive belt he was wearing.
And yet, for taking the bare minimum steps necessary to save the lives of its citizens in recent years Israel has been mercilessly berated by virtually the entire world.
Had Israeli police shot dead an innocent foreigner on one of its buses or trains, confirming the kill with a barrage of bullets at close range in a mistaken effort to thwart a bombing, the UN would probably have been sitting in emergency session by late afternoon to unanimously denounce the Jewish state.
By evening, 12 hours had passed since the shooting, but the BBC still hadn't interviewed a grieving family, no one had called for British universities to be boycotted, Chelsea and Arsenal soccer clubs hadn't been ordered to play their matches in Cyprus, and The Guardian hadn't yet called British policy against its Pakistani population "genocide."
As for London Mayor Ken Livingstone, who is in overall control of transport in the city, including the train where the man was shot, and who strongly defended the shoot-to-kill policy as a legitimate way to prevent suicide bombings, he was not yet facing war crimes charges – as Livingstone himself has demanded Israeli political leaders should be.
Instead on Friday, Polly Toynbee, leading commentator for The Guardian, wrote that the terrorists were "deranged," "savage" and "demented" "killers" who "murder in the name of God." This is a far cry from the habitual manner in which The Guardian and others describe the suicide killers of Israelis as "fighters" and "activists."
ONE OF the London terrorists responsible for the bombings on July 7, Muhammad Sidique Khan, traveled to Israel in February 2003. He stayed in Israel for just one day, and we can surmise that he wasn't there to volunteer on a kibbutz or visit Yad Vashem.
Two months later, on April 30, 2003, two other Britons of Pakistani origin (whom Hamas has since admitted training) were involved in the suicide attack on Mike's Place, a popular bar in Tel Aviv, killing or wounding 58 people.
Khan's visit to Israel was the main international headline in The Washington Post last Tuesday. Yet most British papers have completely ignored it. The Independent and The Daily Telegraph didn't mention it at all; the Scotsman, the Times and Sun newspapers only very briefly.
There seems to be little interest in Britain in the murder of Israelis by British citizens. Many British journalists evidently have difficulty in admitting that people murdered on buses in Israel are as much victims as those murdered on London buses. Another British citizen, Richard Reid, who became known as the "shoe-bomber," also visited Israel and the Gaza strip for 10 days in July 2001.
If people in Britain want to stop terrorists they need to recognize the inspiration, and quite possibly training, that Hamas, the masters of the suicide attack, have given to would-be British and other terrorists, such as Reid. Instead British officials continue to embrace Hamas, and hold talks with them.
Britons will also need to stop listening to the lies propagated by large sections of their media. For example, the cover story of this week's New Statesman, the favored publication of many in Britain's ruling Labour party, says: "There were no suicide bombers in Palestine until Ariel Sharon, an accredited war criminal, sponsored by Bush and Blair, came to power."
You begin to wonder whose side some in Britain's media are on.
Update, 10:45pm: A friend from discarded lies, Aridog, pointed out some things that I overlooked:
Semite 5000...read your blog. You are wrong, which is unusual [I can't be right all the time -semite]. First there is no comparison to the Israelis...as you say they have the experience, and the Brits will too in time. Next, one shot to the head is not necessarily fatal of incapacitating...depends on what is hit. The rule of thumb for such shooting, at least when I took the training, is two pops as close to center of head as possible. Next, there were more than one cop on this guy...how many fired...I don't know. Finally, and most important....what ws the scenario....a guy in a large coat they thought might havve a semtex vest underneath it.....tight, who ran, who jumped a barrier, and who resisted even after pinned to the ground, from reports I have seen. If you are on top of a guy who may be wearing enough semtex to vaporize you, (consider the timing and environment) and he still won't be still, might you not think he was trying to detonate the charge? I would. Try to imagine counting the rounds and gaging the results between each shot...face to face, on the floor with a struggling man....impossible. I would have emptied the magazine in his skull, and reloaded. As it turned out, allegedly, the guy is innocent...just stupid, for running, jumping a barrier, and resisting when captured. It ain't the movies...those cops do not have to unnecessarily risk their life for an idiot. The last cop I knew personally who tried to disarm a guy with a pistol in paper bag, died for the trouble, as he grabbed the bag and gun, the assailant pulled back, thus turning the officer sideways, and blam...one bullet, past the armored vest, through the armpit and in to the heart...and Federal Officer Sheffield bled out on the floor. The other officers fired 5 times, in a crowded lobby, as Sheffield went down, and hit the turd 3 times...the MF lived. This was at the entrance to my office in the federal building here, on 9/21/2001. What was the guy thinking? Do you think the next guy with a gun and no Code 218 police ID won't be shot dead on sight? He'd better be.
Obviously I do not know what was going through the “Bobbies” minds, and I was not present at the shooting, but the sheer volume of shots leads me to wonder if anger and rage might have played a role in the killing of Mr. Menezes. Were their minds clouded by anger and rage over the recent bombings? What motivated the shooting? Revenge?
I’ve lived in Israel, so I know all about the threat posed by suicide bombers. But even the Israelis, who have suffered literally hundreds of more suicide attacks than the British, behave in a much more level-headed manner when encountering suicide bombers. Off the top of my head I can recall two fairly recent cases in which Palestinians were wearing bomb-vests, yet the Israelis managed to disarm the bombers and bring the situations to non-violent conclusions. One case involved developmentally disabled teenager; the other a young woman who was granted medical care in Israel and planned to blow up the hospital that was treating her.
It’s true that the Israelis have a policy of targeted assassinations, “extra judicial executions,” as the British media outlets self-righteously call them, but this policy is completely justified. For one, the Israelis only target the terrorist leaders, planners and bomb-makers; the hardcore terrorists who are allowed to live freely in areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority. The PA is legally obliged to incarcerate such people, but they don’t. Therefore Israel is forced to ensure that these killers are prevented from killing innocent Israelis. The Israelis take great care to ensure that they kill only the individuals they are after.
I’m all for a shoot-to-kill policy against suicide bombers. The only way to prevent them from detonating the bomb—or from accidentally detonating it yourself—is to shoot the terrorist in the head. At the same time, I can barely stand the rank hypocrisy I’ve been witnessing on behalf of those British (particularly the media and London Mayor Ken Livingston-spit!) who for years have condemned Israel for its targeted killings policy. Where is their outrage now? Why the double standard?
This piece by Tom Gross, the former Jerusalem correspondent for Britain’s Sunday Telegraph, sums up my sentiments exactly:
From London to Jerusalem
Last Friday, as British police frantically searched for four presumed suicide bombers on the run, the people of London had a glimpse of what the people of Israel live with daily. The explosive devices of all four men had failed to go off properly on London's transport system the day before, and the men had subsequently escaped.
Throughout Friday there were roadblocks and house searches throughout London. Closed-circuit TV footage of the four was released to the public in the afternoon, and by evening two suspects had been taken into custody. The people of London expressed the fear of "living with terror 24/7," the world expressed its sympathy, and there was much supportive and understanding coverage of Britain's plight by international media and politicians.
Palestinian terrorists have carried out over 25,000 attacks on Israelis since September 2000, resulting in thousands of deaths and injuries. Israeli security forces have thwarted thousands of attacks, and Israelis have grown used to living with manhunts of the kind seen in London on Friday; yet they are barely reported abroad.
The head of the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) confirmed last week that Israel presently receives some 60 intelligence warnings of potential Palestinian terror attacks every day, and this month alone several Israeli women and teenage girls – and now Rachel and Dov Kol – have been killed in various attacks.
Such was the nervousness in London on Friday that, at 10 a.m., a dark-complexioned man was shot dead on a train at Stockwell Tube station in south London. Witnesses on the train immediately said it was clear the man had been unarmed. In the words of one, he was "literally executed." He was already lying on the ground motionless, having tripped, when British police pumped five bullets into his head at close range. On Saturday evening the police confirmed what had been fairly apparent from the time of the shooting – that they had mistakenly targeted an innocent man. It turned out he was a Brazilian Catholic.
Israel has taken enormous care in its "targeted killings" of "ticking bombs," almost never killing anyone in a case of mistaken identity.
CONTRARY TO the absolute lies told in British media in recent days, the Israel Defense Forces have not instituted a shoot-to-kill policy, or trained the British to carry out one. For example, on Friday, at the very time British police were shooting the man in the Tube, the IDF caught and disarmed a terrorist from Fatah already inside Israel en route to carrying out a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv. Israeli forces didn't injure the terrorist at all in apprehending him and disarming him of the 5-kg. explosive belt he was wearing.
And yet, for taking the bare minimum steps necessary to save the lives of its citizens in recent years Israel has been mercilessly berated by virtually the entire world.
Had Israeli police shot dead an innocent foreigner on one of its buses or trains, confirming the kill with a barrage of bullets at close range in a mistaken effort to thwart a bombing, the UN would probably have been sitting in emergency session by late afternoon to unanimously denounce the Jewish state.
By evening, 12 hours had passed since the shooting, but the BBC still hadn't interviewed a grieving family, no one had called for British universities to be boycotted, Chelsea and Arsenal soccer clubs hadn't been ordered to play their matches in Cyprus, and The Guardian hadn't yet called British policy against its Pakistani population "genocide."
As for London Mayor Ken Livingstone, who is in overall control of transport in the city, including the train where the man was shot, and who strongly defended the shoot-to-kill policy as a legitimate way to prevent suicide bombings, he was not yet facing war crimes charges – as Livingstone himself has demanded Israeli political leaders should be.
Instead on Friday, Polly Toynbee, leading commentator for The Guardian, wrote that the terrorists were "deranged," "savage" and "demented" "killers" who "murder in the name of God." This is a far cry from the habitual manner in which The Guardian and others describe the suicide killers of Israelis as "fighters" and "activists."
ONE OF the London terrorists responsible for the bombings on July 7, Muhammad Sidique Khan, traveled to Israel in February 2003. He stayed in Israel for just one day, and we can surmise that he wasn't there to volunteer on a kibbutz or visit Yad Vashem.
Two months later, on April 30, 2003, two other Britons of Pakistani origin (whom Hamas has since admitted training) were involved in the suicide attack on Mike's Place, a popular bar in Tel Aviv, killing or wounding 58 people.
Khan's visit to Israel was the main international headline in The Washington Post last Tuesday. Yet most British papers have completely ignored it. The Independent and The Daily Telegraph didn't mention it at all; the Scotsman, the Times and Sun newspapers only very briefly.
There seems to be little interest in Britain in the murder of Israelis by British citizens. Many British journalists evidently have difficulty in admitting that people murdered on buses in Israel are as much victims as those murdered on London buses. Another British citizen, Richard Reid, who became known as the "shoe-bomber," also visited Israel and the Gaza strip for 10 days in July 2001.
If people in Britain want to stop terrorists they need to recognize the inspiration, and quite possibly training, that Hamas, the masters of the suicide attack, have given to would-be British and other terrorists, such as Reid. Instead British officials continue to embrace Hamas, and hold talks with them.
Britons will also need to stop listening to the lies propagated by large sections of their media. For example, the cover story of this week's New Statesman, the favored publication of many in Britain's ruling Labour party, says: "There were no suicide bombers in Palestine until Ariel Sharon, an accredited war criminal, sponsored by Bush and Blair, came to power."
You begin to wonder whose side some in Britain's media are on.
Update, 10:45pm: A friend from discarded lies, Aridog, pointed out some things that I overlooked:
Semite 5000...read your blog. You are wrong, which is unusual [I can't be right all the time -semite]. First there is no comparison to the Israelis...as you say they have the experience, and the Brits will too in time. Next, one shot to the head is not necessarily fatal of incapacitating...depends on what is hit. The rule of thumb for such shooting, at least when I took the training, is two pops as close to center of head as possible. Next, there were more than one cop on this guy...how many fired...I don't know. Finally, and most important....what ws the scenario....a guy in a large coat they thought might havve a semtex vest underneath it.....tight, who ran, who jumped a barrier, and who resisted even after pinned to the ground, from reports I have seen. If you are on top of a guy who may be wearing enough semtex to vaporize you, (consider the timing and environment) and he still won't be still, might you not think he was trying to detonate the charge? I would. Try to imagine counting the rounds and gaging the results between each shot...face to face, on the floor with a struggling man....impossible. I would have emptied the magazine in his skull, and reloaded. As it turned out, allegedly, the guy is innocent...just stupid, for running, jumping a barrier, and resisting when captured. It ain't the movies...those cops do not have to unnecessarily risk their life for an idiot. The last cop I knew personally who tried to disarm a guy with a pistol in paper bag, died for the trouble, as he grabbed the bag and gun, the assailant pulled back, thus turning the officer sideways, and blam...one bullet, past the armored vest, through the armpit and in to the heart...and Federal Officer Sheffield bled out on the floor. The other officers fired 5 times, in a crowded lobby, as Sheffield went down, and hit the turd 3 times...the MF lived. This was at the entrance to my office in the federal building here, on 9/21/2001. What was the guy thinking? Do you think the next guy with a gun and no Code 218 police ID won't be shot dead on sight? He'd better be.
posted by semite1973 at 5:23 PM
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