BEg2 ch 4 Kidon / and just one more borderline

[Joseph Tracy]

The one time Maxine is actually shot at ( Windust by the bus depot?), her weapon isn’t much use and there is the question of whether she had any idea she was even shooting at the right window? Windust couldn’t tell where the shots came from. She could have lett a dead body in some random apartment. When AZ senator G Giffords was shot, there were several people with guns there. Didn’t help for shit. Extremely rare for guns to save lives compared with take lives. Nevetheless I believe in  the right to self defense, especially when you are being attacked by violent crazies as in the case of Vietnamese fighting the French or Americans, South African resistance, Palestinian resistance, Martin King’s resistance movement, the Black Panthers.  However,….Weapons can be a bad choice for such self defense. And nonviolence can bring change. Sometimes there is no good choice as in the peaceful border protests in Gaza.  Krav Maga does not really propose to be self defense.  It is simply an effective and meciless martial skill that can be used for offense and defense. It is not about de escalating  or deflecting but maximizing damage to minimize risk.
  I agree that the Mossad and Israel’s apartheid structure of many decades brings in some powerful borderline issues.  Who is the enemy when we retreat into fantasies of family self defense, tribalism, nationalism? Don’t all warlike societies go to lengths have a claim to virtue to justify their offensive wars, their abuses of others, the destruction of healthy ecosystems?   I am not saying there are no criminals against whom self defense may be effective. But the Mossad is definitely not my model of legitimate.
  The question that comes to the foreground for me in looking at the trajectory of BE and Maxine has to do with courage in the face of large powerful entities connected to violence. At the end of the book Lester Traipse has been murdered, Windust has been murdered, and over 3000 New Yorkers have been murdered. Maxine has every reason to believe she knows something important about all of these, but Reg has run away in fear, and  she has come back to some kind of  family center with Horst  who also has evidence of fishy ( and historically real)foreknowledge of 9-11. I do not blame her for retreating into a posture of self defense but it asks us all how much of our desire for heroism  or even justice will wither in the face of violent extinction, or personal risk? Do we become Israel?  
 

> On Feb 19, 2022, at 2:37 AM, Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On the first day of class, [Ziggy’s] friend Nigel, overinformed and
> unreflective as always, blurted, “So Ms. Levin, you were what, one of those
> kidon lady assassins?”
> 
> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidon
> 
> Maxine has been weaponized (her main weapon is her Tomcat - her 2 main
> weapons are her Tomcat and her ready wit - her 3 main weapons are her
> Tomcat, her ready wit and her sex appeal - her 4 main weapons are her
> Tomcat, her ready wit, her sex appeal, and her personal integrity - )
> 
> & now she is allowing her son Ziggy to be somewhat weaponized. However, his
> main fancy turns to thoughts of love in the presence of Ms Levin.
> 
> Another prevalence of borderline issues is at least alluded to when we
> think of Mossad, is it not?
> 
> 
> Oops, I did it again - A squishy borderline between fantasy and reality
> seems to be the keynote for the James Bond imitators, and for the Dynasty
> fan woman who changed her name to Krystle.
> --
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