Well, I'd like the barbarism to stop, too, but I think you have the wrong barbarians, roachboy. I could write for pages about this, but let's focus on the one incident you quoted the Guardian about. That precise incident has actually been reported differently in different sources. It's one of the reasons I never get my news from only one source. (You know the Guardian's well-documented views on the whole Israel-Palestine mess, I'm sure).
Let's start with
the Associated Press, and I'll boldface the appropriate sections:
Quote:
Israel shells near UN school, killing at least 30
By IBRAHIM BARZAK and STEVE WEIZMAN – 19 hours ago
GAZA CITY, Gaza (AP) — Israeli mortar shells exploded Tuesday near a U.N. school in Gaza that was sheltering hundreds of people displaced by Israel's onslaught against Hamas militants, killing at least 30 Palestinians, tearing bodies apart and staining streets with blood.
Israel's military said its shelling — the deadliest single episode since Israeli ground forces invaded Gaza Saturday — was a response to mortar fire from within the school and said Hamas militants were using civilians as cover.
Two residents of the area who spoke by telephone said they saw a small group of militants firing mortar rounds from a street near the school, where 350 people had gathered to get away from the shelling. They spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.
Majed Hamdan, an AP photographer, rushed to the scene shortly after the attacks. At the hospital, he said, many children were among the dead.
"I saw women and men — parents — slapping their faces in grief, screaming, some of them collapsed to the floor. They knew their children were dead," he said. "In the morgue, most of the killed appeared to be children. In the hospital, there wasn't enough space for the wounded."
He said there appeared to be marks on the pavement of five separate explosions in area of the school.
An Israeli defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to make the information public, said it appeared that the military used 120mm shells, among the largest mortar rounds.
* * *
An Israeli military statement said it received intelligence that the dead at the girls school included Hamas operatives, among them members of a rocket launching cell. It identified two of them as Imad Abu Askar and Hassan Abu Askar.
Two residents who spoke to an AP reporter by phone said the two brothers were known to be low-level Hamas militants. They said a group of militants — one of them said four — were firing mortar shells from near the school.
An Israeli shell targeted the men, but missed and they fled, the witnesses said, refusing to allow their names to be published because they feared for their safety. Then another three shells landed nearby, exploding among civilians, they said.
Palestinian militants have frequently fired from residential areas in the past.
Ging said the U.N. agency's staff work to prevent militants from entering the schools it has opened to shelter those at risk.
"Unfortunately tonight's incident is just another example of how Hamas operates," said Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev. "This is not the first time they have exploited a U.N. facility. This is not the first time that they have deliberately used innocent civilians as human shields."
A total of 71 Palestinians were killed Tuesday — with just two confirmed as militants, health officials in Gaza said.
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OK, so the neighbors were afraid to be named (for obvious reasons - Hamas has been murdering people and breaking legs to intimidate opposition during this fight), but they told reporters that there were rockets fired from right by the school, and it turns out that Israel even could name the bad guys who it took out. You have a problem with schools getting fired on? So do I. Take it up with Hamas and tell them not to use schools as assault sites. Hamas's total disregard for Palestinian life is just horrifying - as far as they are concerned, a dead baby isn't a tragedy, it's a propaganda coup.
The Israeli military has
a YouTube channel with films of its operations in the current fight. One of the things you might notice if you have a look there is the preponderance of secondary explosions - meaning that there was ordnance being bombed, which then exploded. If you bomb a mosque, and then there are a series of additonal explosions from within the mosque, what does that tell you? What it tells me is that the imam of that mosque wasn't too particular about the uses to which the mosque was put. But don't take my word for it, go have a look yourself.
You can get more detail if you want to see what the Israeli military is telling the Israeli press. Take it with a grain of salt, of course - the motivation of the speaker is evident - but this should alert you to the prospect that more is going on than the house organs of the British left are willing to report. So you might find this article in the Jerusalem Post interesting:
Quote:
Two residents of the area near UN school that was shelled by the IDF on Tuesday said that they had seen a small group of terrorists firing mortar rounds from a street close to the school. The two spoke with The Associated Press by telephone on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.
* * *
The army said the school grounds were being used by terrorists to fire mortar shells at troops stationed nearby, and the soldiers responded by firing back. According to the IDF, the dead included members of the Hamas rocket cell, including senior operatives Imad Abu Askhar and Hassan Abu Askhar.
Defense officials told The Associated Press that booby-trapped bombs in the school had triggered secondary explosions that killed additional Palestinians there.
The army noted that Tuesday was not the first time Hamas had attacked Israel from within a school. The IDF released a video taken by an unmanned aerial vehicle in late 2007 showing terrorists firing mortars from right outside a school.
"Hamas has in the past fired at Israel and at troops from inside schools, [exploiting] civilians, as is proven by UAV footage," the army said.
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As far as I'm concerned, if a misogynistic, eliminationist, explicitly and proudly genocidal terror group like Hamas deliberately targets civilians as a tool of its own prestige and does the targeting from civilian areas, those who make apologies for them when retaliation finally comes are complicit in the slaughter.
-----Added 7/1/2009 at 02 : 27 : 06-----
Oh, one other thing. Israel apparently learned a lesson from the 2006 Lebanon War, and that is that no matter what precautions they take there will always be people who parrot the Hizbullah/Hamas propaganda use of civilian casualites and use it as a bludgeon. So Israel no longer pays attention. It does what is militarily necessary, and damn the critics. If you go back to the sources, you'll see that something on the order of 80% of the dead people in Gaza were Hamas fighters, which for urban warfare is extraordinarily precise. (I don't know what the ratio is now; I suspect it's somewhat lower but not drastically so). Those who focus on the 20% as a reason to discredit the entire operation are saying, in effect, that Israel has no right to protect its citizens, and that all Hamas needs to do to make sure it can attack Israel with impunity is to use the local population as human shields.
I really wish this sort of fight wasn't necessary, but those who proudly advertise their genocidal intentions have made it necessary. And frankly, I take this personally. I don't have the link now - I can dig it out - but Khaled Meshaal, the head of Hamas who is out of danger in Syria right now, has told the press that every Jew on the planet is now a legitimate target because of Israel's war on Hamas. (So much for any distinction between Anti-Zionism and Jew-hatred/anti-semitism). That's me and my family that are now "legitimate targets," roachboy. My family has withstood one genocide in the last century and I really don't feel like having to deal with another.