the fog of information war.
however:
Quote:
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"I know no one was killed in the school," Mr. Ging said. "But 41 innocent people were killed in the street outside the school. Many of those people had taken refuge in the school and wandered out onto the street.
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i'm not entirely sure how much this changes about the story, really.
i don't doubt that there were inaccuracies of information at any number of points over the course of the 3 weeks this was happening. and there's been considerable scurrying about after the fact, particularly within israel, in order to be proactive in the face of an expected wave of criminal charges for war crimes. strangely, all this seems to have dropped off the radar screen.
the most recent blip happened at davos. i watched the sequence on c-span. it was curious--but in the end, to my surprise, i agreed more with the turkish prime minister than anyone else.
but the facts remain: there was nowhere for the civilian population to run in gaza.
this followed from the siege that was put into place in january 2006.
the humanitarian situation throughout was catastrophic.
it remains not great.
all the main criticisms of israeli actions remain.
but now we are forgetting, like we always do. anything and everything we forget.
the settlements in the west bank continue to be built.
the routine brutalization of the palestinian population there continues.
so from time to time do rocket attacks on israel.
so do the outsized retaliations.
most recent reports put likud ahead of kadima in the coming elections. that is a disaster.
but at the same time, i think israel lost far far more than it gained---but that changes nothing about the appalling action it undertook in gaza--and that israel will not directly answer for it, here or anywhere else. so it happens, once again, that we are reminded that the primary cause of war crimes is not what a military apparatus does, but whether it wins or looses a war. war crimes happen when a country looses. that's the defining characteristic.