Friday, November 20, 2015

"Embarrassed."

More drive time today, more talk-radio. Only caught ~a half-hour of  "The World," all-Paris on this the one week anniversary. Two women were interviewed, a mother and daughter, Jewish, since the daughter said she was immigrating to Israel because she would feel safer there! Two things stuck out. The daughter said this could never happen in Israel because Israelis are used to fighting, impliedly France was not, as France decidedly is not, the Israelis are trained in how to defend against terrorism and everybody has to serve in the military. But, those things notwithstanding, I though, don't things like this happen in Israel? My instant answer was "yes" but then she said that gunmen would never be able to go from street to street, neighborhood to neighborhood as they did in Paris, that the Israelis know how to contain a gunman or gunmen. That was an excellent point and when I thought about the question, I could not remember this specific problem of the Wandering Gunman in Israel. This is the same thing that happened in January with Charlie Hebdo. Those mother-fuckers were all over the place: Charlie headquarters, then the Jewish market, then someplace else. Isn't this the basic police practice of establishing a perimeter? If it is, then it's not that the Israelis are so sophisticated in terror-fighting it is that for some inexplicable reason France has not adopted the perimeter method.

The mother said that a friend "whispered" to her that the French are too "nice" about terrorism, that in Israel they destroy the homes of families of terrorists. :o  I didn't know that. That is positively Chinese! That is a cousin to the ancient Chinese practice of  株连九族, the Nine Exterminations. From Wiks:

The criminal's living parents
The criminal's living grandparents
Any children the criminal may have, over a certain age (which is usually variable depending on the time period)
Any grandchildren the criminal may have, over a certain age (which is usually variable depending on the time period)
Siblings and siblings-in-law (the siblings of the criminal and that of his or her spouse, in the case where he or she is married)
Uncles of the criminal, as well as their spouses
The criminal himself

Whack all of them.

No. We're not going to whack all of them, the Chinese don't even whack all of them now. (How about just nuclear family? C'mon!) It is barbaric and it is not efficacious, it truly doesn't work. The Israeli practice seems to me to be particularly un-efficacious, at least 株连九族 can be said to work for those who are whacked. That's a main pillar of capital punishment: it may not deter anyone else but it sure do deter him!  The Israelis, though, jeez. That's just gonna piss people off. The rationale is the same, to deter the terrorist: if he or she knows that the family homestead is going to be leveled it'll make him think twice...That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard of.

The mother said that French are "embarrassed." That is a good sign! They absolutely should be embarrassed. Unfortunately, I was not paying attention to the specific context in which she used that word but the general context was all of the above, that this just should not have happened, could not have happened in at least one other society, and now has happened twice in one year in France!