31.7.03
Guardian piece on killings of Palestinian children
A few days old, but worth reading: a Guardian column on a string of killings by Israeli soldiers of Palestinian children, which have naturally gone unpunished. Some excerpts:
A few days old, but worth reading: a Guardian column on a string of killings by Israeli soldiers of Palestinian children, which have naturally gone unpunished. Some excerpts:
The numbers are staggering; one in five Palestinian dead is a child. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) says at least 408 Palestinian children have been killed since the beginning of the intifada in September 2000. Nearly half were killed in the Gaza strip...And he probably never will.
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"The troops from the post shot back at the area where the mortar was launched, the area where the girl was killed. We didn't see if we hit someone. I assume that a stray bullet hit Haneen. Unfortunately." Doesn't he think that simply shooting back in the general direction of a mortar attack is irresponsible at best? He says not. "You cannot have soldiers sitting and doing nothing when they are shot at," he says.
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Israel's army chief-of-staff, Lieutenant General Moshe Yaalon, claims that every shooting of a civilian is investigated. "Harming innocent civilians is firstly a matter of morals and values, and we cannot permit ourselves to let this happen. I deal with it personally," he told the Israeli press. But Yaalon has not dealt personally with any of the killings of the six children reported on here.
