Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said this weekend that Hamas would "pay an intolerable price" for its assaults on Israel.
It is the people of Gaza who are paying the price, whether they are Hamas soldiers or adherents, or civilians who voted for Hamas years ago ... or just individuals in a designated UN shelter in Rafah who couldn't get out of the way.
Now the latest headline from the New York Times describes an Israeli Air Force missile that struck near the entrance of a United Nations school sheltering displaced Gazans in Rafah, killing 10 people and wounding 35 others.
The Washington Post reported:
Capt. Eytan Buchman, a spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces, said the targets of the attack were three militants riding past the school on a motorcycle. “We identified a successful hit on the target,” Buchman said. “We definitely don’t target civilians or schools.”
Below the cirlicue ...
How is it possible that the Israeli Air Force could shell the gates of a building housing 3000 people taking shelter, when the targets were three guys on motorcycles passing by?
According to the New York Times:
The growing death toll has stirred outrage in Europe and large parts of the Arab world, and combined with Sunday’s strike near the Rafah school, prompted Secretary General Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations to call the attack a “moral outrage and a criminal act” and demand those responsible for the “gross violation of international humanitarian law” be held accountable.
The State Department also condemned what it called “today’s disgraceful shelling” outside the school in Rafa. Witnesses near the school, where about 3,000 Palestinians had sought shelter, said that those killed or hurt were waiting in line for food supplies when a missile hit. A State Department spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, said that “the suspicion that militants are operating nearby does not justify strikes that put at risk the lives of so many innocent civilians.”
The Israeli Army said that it had targeted three members of the group Islamic Jihad on a motorcycle near the school with a missile, not the school itself, and was investigating a possible secondary explosion when the motorcycle was hit.
If these reports are accurate - the UN workers who were witnesses to the slaughter have no obvious motive to lie - by such actions, Israel is joining the ranks of terrorist organizations.
By the standards of civilized nations around the globe, Gaza is a world gone mad and there are no longer "Men of Peace" in charge anywhere near it.