Here's today's version of Israeli security forces shooting dead a Palestinian with a knife.
I wonder if there is anyone who has collected the number of incidents in which a Palestinian or someone else deemed inimical to Israel has attacked Israeli soldiers or police with a knife and been shot dead. "Don't bring a knife to a gunfight" is a useful tool. Are Palestinians really that stupid ... or poorly armed.
But for all the times this seems to happen, no one asks how and why Israeli security forces cannot disarm a person with a knife? Is their training somehow lacking? Is their ability to Mace or otherwise neutralize a person diminished? Is it possible to aim for a leg? How many metropolitan police in the United States, for all its faults, who are capable of disarming a knife-wielding person? Of course there is the drugged-up, crazy aspect ... but if so and if deadly force is necessary, why do the news reporters/editors fail to report that aspect of the story they feel they can report with impunity?
Why does Israel get a pass on such things?
Alternatively, perhaps Palestinian security forces are equally skittish and shoot down Israelis with knives? If so, where are those stories?
I wonder how many of those knives were israeli standard issue found after the fact.
ReplyDelete"Why does Israel get a pass on such things?"
ReplyDeleteEver sit in a room with a bunch of people who are well educated and progressive on many issues and were brought up in Jewish families?
No? Well, if you had, you understand the diversity of opinion about the Israeli government and the silence is not acquiescence but, something like hand wringing.
If you are looking for the American government's official response to such acts: Ask Amadu Diallo, or Eric Gardner, or Trayvon Martin.