Israel Matzav

60 Minutes visits the IAF, the IAF visits Gaza - UPDATED

CBS News' 60 Minutes had a great segment on Sunday night in which they visited the Israeli Air Force (Hat Tip: Democast via Little Green Footballs). I'm going to embed the segment below - it's a bit long (12:15).



The comments (there are 39 pages of them) have included a lot of Muslim and leftist seething. But on a day when a mother and four children were among seven victims of an IDF attack on a home in Beit Hanoun that was being used for rocket fire (please see an important update at the bottom of this post), I'd like to point out something that one of the IAF pilots said on the program:

For the last two years, Capt. Omri has been hunting down militants in Gaza from his Apache attack helicopter.

"But you still can't take out all the people who are firing rockets at you?" Simon asked.

"They are working from very crowded, populated places and they shoot the missiles from there. And they're shooting near children. And when you are taking your weapon system and looking at the launcher, you see children running near it. It's unbelievable," Capt. Omri said.

"And you retaliate," Simon remarked. "They fire rockets. You hit back. They fire more rockets, and you hit back in a bigger way. And it just gets worse and worse."

"Yeah, I agree," Omri said.

It's a classic guerilla war - $50 rockets made in the back alleys of Gaza against Israel's $50,000 missiles. The Israelis will tell you that kind of expense buys precise weapons which limit collateral damage, but it also gives the air force the capability of assassinating their enemy’s leadership. The Israelis call this "targeted killings;" the Palestinians call it "murder."

Go back and watch that segment of the video and you will see children fleeing right after a Kassam rocket is shot.

As I have pointed out many times, the Geneva Convention does not protect the civilians whom the 'Palestinians' use as human shields.

[A]s a matter of international law it is most certainly not correct to say that "any killings of civilians is an act [sic] of terrorism." Recall that the Geneva Convention provides quite explicitly that "The presence of a protected person [i.e. a civilian. CiJ] may not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations." Thus if a civilian is killed because terrorists are hiding behind him - something that the IDF sees every day in Gaza and which has been repeatedly documented in photographs and videos - that is completely legal and is not "an act of terrorism" or a violation of international law. It doesn't permit targeting civilians, but Israel's not the party that targets civilians anyway.

Additionally, we have all seen the evidence that Hamas tries to put civilians in the line of fire so that they will have civilian casualties to exploit in the media. Given all that, I thought Defense Minister Ehud Barak said the right thing this morning:

"We see Hamas as responsible for everything that happens in the area around Gaza, all of the strikes, and the IDF is acting and will continue to act against Hamas, within the Gaza Strip," the defense minister said.

"Hamas is also responsible, through its operations within the civilian population, like the laying of explosives, for wounding some civilians who are not involved in the operations," Barak stated.

Maybe he got the right answer to the question he asked six weeks ago. In this morning's 'operation,'

... seven Palestinians were killed and six wounded in an IDF attack on a home in Beit Hanun, in the northern Gaza Strip, Israel Radio quoted Palestinian sources as saying.

Palestinians said that among the dead were a mother and her four children, all of whom ranged in age from 6 down to 15 months. In addition, two Palestinian gunmen were killed.

Medics on the scene identified the dead children as sisters Rudina and Hana Abu Meatik, ages 6 and 3; and their brothers, Saleh, 4 and Mousab, 15 months.

Islamic Jihad said one of its gunmen, and another unidentified man were killed about 400 meters from the family's home.

According to the IDF, an aircraft was used to attack a group of armed Palestinian gunmen. There was no confirmation about the success of the attack.

IDF Spokeswoman Maj. Avital Leibovich said militants fired at troops from within a residential area. "It's another example of the use of civilians as a human shield," Leibovich said.

There's no choice. Israel has to stop worrying about the 'Palestinians' civilians and start worrying about its own.

Finally, here are some samples from the comments section:

Not a day passes when these scum Zionists do not drop bombs on innocents and then claim they killed 3 or 4 "militants." I look forward to the day when my brother, Ahmadinejad, has complete his mission to manufacture a cure for what the Zionists have at Dimona. I only hope I live to see the day. These Zionists slime have no right to live and breath. Their so-called god is a piece of cow dung.

Posted by shaheed8 at 01:41 AM : Apr 28, 2008

One religious extremism gives rise to another religious extremism.

If Europeans were not brought into Palestine to occupy the land of those Palestinians by force who had nothing to do with the actions of Hitler, because bible said so; Alqaeda would not get enough recruits to fly planes into buildings since koran says so.

The mother of all the evils is bible and christianity!

Posted by patriotic9 at 12:21 AM : Apr 28, 2008

qwester1:

The aggression of the Zionists against the Palestinian people is without precedent. One would think they were the Nazis who perpetuated the so-called holocaust the Zionists parade before the world at every opportunity. These people love to play the victims; in truth and fact, they are the victimizers. What a pity that I am not in the middle of J''lem with a few bombs under my waist. How I would love to visit a cafe full of Zionists talking about how their airforce killed Palestinians. I would smile as I pulled the pin.

Posted by rufisgufis at 12:21 AM : Apr 28, 2008

cfin5

I only hope that I live to see the complete destruction of the fiction called the State of Israel. I would love to see all Zionists on the face of the earth dead. Then I could die and rest in peace. I could easily give my own life to reach that goal. Maybe, inshallah, I can be a part of this event. My god did not "choose" these people.

Posted by rufisgufis at 12:14 AM : Apr 28, 2008

How dismaying to see 60 Minutes put aside investigative reporting in favor of cheerleading for the Israeli air force. If 60 Minutes were interested in educating and informing, it might have asked the following:

What evidence is there that Iran''s nuclear program is aimed at developing nuclear weapons?

Which country, Iran or Israel, has refused to allow international inspection of its nuclear facilities?

Which country has refused to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty?

Which country is known to currently possess nuclear weapons?

Why is it okay for Israel to have nuclear weapons, but not Iran?

Assuming that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons, what effort has Israel devoted to mutual disarmament, instead of plans to bomb Iran?

Given that Iran has not attacked or threated to attack Israel , would a preemptive Israeli attack be permitted under international law?

Would it be in the US interest for Israel to stage a preemptive attack with US weapons purchased with US tax dollars? Would that make a terrorist attack on the US more or less likely?

Do any corporate sponsors of 60 Minutes manufacture weapons sold to Israel? Does its corporate sponsorship explain why 60 Minutes deals with a complex issue in such simplistic pro-Israel terms?

Posted by Seascape5 at 10:43 PM : Apr 27, 2008

That's through the middle of page 9, but it's enough to give you a flavor. There were also some pro-Israel people who objected to the segment where Simon told the pilot that he didn't "look like a killer." I suspect that was a bad editing job and with background might have come out a lot better than it did.

Anyway, I'm shocked that CBS aired a segment that was so fair to Israel. I doubt that would have happened in Dan Rather's day.

UPDATE 4:16 PM

If you watch the video below, you will see that it implies that the home in which the human shields were killed this morning may have been hit by a tank shell and not from the air.



UPDATE 5:14 PM

The JPost is reporting that the mother and children were killed by exploding ammunition carried by the terrorists and not by IDF shells.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 3:20 PM