Thursday, August 30, 2007

Are children's lives worth more than 10 shekel?

Israel fire kills two children - Telegraph

Israel fire kills two children
By Tim Butcher in Jerusalem
Last Updated: 2:58am BST 30/08/2007

Where's the outrage from all the humanitarian groups? Where is the outrage from the Arab people? Why isn't there an intifada by the Arabs against the Arabs using children to retrieve the rocket launchers?

Two Palestinian children from the same family were killed when Israeli forces shelled on a rocket launcher in Gaza used by Palestinian militants.
Dr. Moaiya Hassanain of the Palestinian Health Ministry said 10-year-old Mahmoud Ghazal and his 12-year-old cousin Yehiya Ghazal were killed while their 10-year-old cousin Sara Ghazal was also seriously critically injured.
There were no eyewitnesses to the explosion although a spokesman for the Israeli army confirmed it fired an undisclosed number of shells in the area, aimed at the firing position used to launch qassam rockets into Israel.
An Israeli newspaper reported the Israeli army was aware some identified figures were in the vicinity of the launchers at the time of the strike.

Why doesn't Tim Butcher (don't even say it) mention that Israel could not tell whether the figures were adults (terrorist or civilian) or children?

A relative of the children, Wasfi Ghazal, said he heard the sound of an explosion and then children screaming. He held both Israel and the militant rocket squads responsible.
"We are victims of the occupation and victims of the misbehavior of some of the fighters who are randomly choosing our area to target Israel," he said.
About two hours before the shelling, a qassam rocket was launched from the Gaza Strip into Israel, and landed in fields just north of Kibbutz Nir-Am in the western Negev. The rocket did not cause any damage..

"The rocket did not cause any physical damage." The rockets which rain down on Sderot cause irrepairable damage on the psyche of the people who live and work there.

Palestinian militants in Gaza have fired more than 90 rockets into Israel in the past month.

So in August '07 that's about 3 per day.

Israel has used airstrikes, artillery barrages and even ambushes to try to deter the racketeers and while it tries to minimise civilian deaths several Palestinians have died after being caught in the crossfire.
Israel's artillery bombardment against the racketeers provoked controversy last year when eighteen members of the Athamneh family were killed by a barrage of shells into Gaza that went off target.
The incident forced Israel to suspend indefinitely the use of artillery.

No comments: