Israel Matzav

Only the New York Times....

Israel has a practice of warning civilians before it hits Hamas targets that sit among them. Only the New York Times could turn a humanitarian practice into a vice.

A further warning came as the occupants were leaving, he said in a telephone interview, when an Israeli drone apparently fired a flare at the roof of the three-story home. “Our neighbors came in to form a human shield,” he said, with some even going to the roof to try to prevent a bombing. Others were in the stairway when the house was bombed not long afterward.

Seven people died, Mr. Kaware said, a figure also stated by the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza, which also said that 25 people were wounded. The Israeli military said that targeted houses belonged to Hamas members involved in launching rockets or other military activity, and that they had been used as operations rooms.

But the events on Tuesday were another example of a contentious Israeli policy in which occupants of a building about to be bombed or shelled are given a brief warning in Arabic to evacuate. The Israelis have used such telephone calls and leaflets for years now, in a stated effort to reduce civilian casualties and avoid charges of indiscriminate killings or even of crimes against the rules of war.

...

Groups like Human Rights Watch have regularly said that Israel’s efforts to warn civilians with phone calls and leaflets do not absolve the armed forces, which “still need to ensure that the warnings are effective and do not allow attacks otherwise prohibited under international law,” the group said in 2009, even as it welcomed “new procedures to improve its early warning to civilians during armed conflict.”

Name me one other army in the world that even tries to warn civilians. Does Obama send warnings to Pakistani civilians before his drones come to take out al-Qaeda? How many civilians are killed as 'collateral damage' from US drone attacks as compared to civilians killed by Israeli drones and jets as 'collateral damage'? (Answer, the US kills far, far more). And how is Israel to 'ensure the warnings are effective' for people who regard the news that a military target in their own building is to be imminently bombed as an occasion for a block party?

By the way, the report above was less noxious than an earlier version that can still be found here. 

Labels: anti-Israel media bias, Gaza, Hamas rockets, New York Times, Operation Protective Edge

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:33 AM