I don’t get the comparison. Israel is at war with Lebanon. You’re talking about someone who was mistakenly shot by the police.
I thought that it was from the Sri Lankans.
My point was simply that Israel has/is engaged in some activities which some people find, to put it bluntly, morally bankrupt. Saying that the London police learned their tactics from Israel, and Israel has more suicide bombers, is hardly a justification of the London officers’ actions. All it means is that (perhaps; we have no cite for this) the Metropolitan police have studied Israeli tactics.
Also, it certainly is true that the Israelis are more used to suicide bombers than the Brits. One might wonder, then, if you really want to look at the Israelis for lessons on how to prevent suicide bombings.
I don’t have any official statistics, but I constantly see reports in the Israeli media about suicide bombers who are intercepted and stopped before they have a chance to blow something up. I’d say that they do a very good job of limiting the number of successful terrorist attacks.
One very serious problem with having an instant detonation device is that they are liable to go off before they reach the target, plenty of suicide bombers have killed themselves with pre-target detonation. This was quite a common ocurrance in the intifada days.
The thing is, there was enough evidence at the time to have a very good idea what was being used.
Their devices were made from chemicals that are fairly easily obtained, but they also have a tendency to have a very short shelf life before they degrade so much as to be useless, typically only a few days.
It means that these devices have to be finally assembled very close to operational time.
The devices are fairly bulky, they do not conceal under clothing.
All the July suicide bombers were carrying rucksacks, and all of them had to reach into those bags to start the detonation. There was therefore no reason to expect that there was an instant detonation device.
The reason that everyone was so jumpy at the time was that a device was discovered in a car in the train station car park from where the July bombers were known to have departed from, and it was thought that one bomber had therefore not turned up. The particular device was the same as the others,- to be carried in a rucksack.
There was no reason to suspect that high energy explosives, such as plastics were being used.
Menezes was not carrying a bag, nor did he have bulky clothing on.
On both of these the police lied about in early reports, and he did not jump the underground station turnstiles either, another police lie.
The police log of the incident was also altered, but no-one signed it alongside the alteration (which is basic procedure so that it prevent statements being anonymously amended after interviewees have signed off at the last page), why would that happen ?
The police were sloppy and the surveillance rubbish, they tried to cover it up, the policy was crap, it was stupidly planned and had to result in the death of an innocent person.
No one will be brought to acount, it’ll just go down in someones career record as ‘not recommended for promotion’ and we will never hear a thing about that.
Not only that but I’m sure the same old cobblers that " lessons will be learnt from this tragic accident" will be trotted out again.
Personally I think the accident prone Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, ought to seriously consider his position, and perhaps look for another line of work (but not public relations).