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Who Is to Blame for Grief on a Beach?

(Washington Post) Charles Krauthammer - * It was another one of those pictures that goes instantly around the world. A young Palestinian, wailing in wretched sorrow, grieving over her dead father, stepmother and five siblings who had been killed by an explosion on a Gaza beach. Then came the blame. Mahmoud Abbas (he's the moderate) immediately called the killings an act of Israeli "genocide" and, to dramatize the crime, legally adopted the bereaved girl. * A few days later, an Israeli army investigation concluded that it was not Israel's doing at all: First, because the shrapnel taken from the victims (treated at Israeli hospitals - some "genocide") were not the ordnance used in Israeli artillery. Second, because aerial photography revealed no crater that could have been caused by Israeli artillery. Third, because Israel could account for five of the six shells it launched at the rocket base nearby, and the missing one had been launched at least five minutes before the blast that killed the family. * But the obvious question not being asked is this: Who is to blame if Palestinians are setting up rocket launchers to attack Israel - and placing them 400 yards from a beach crowded with Palestinian families? * This is another example of the Palestinians' classic and cowardly human-shield tactic - attacking innocent Israeli civilians while hiding behind innocent Palestinian civilians. * There is an even larger question not asked. Why are the Gazans launching any rockets at Israel in the first place? To get Israel to remove its settlers and end the occupation? * But Israel did exactly that in Gaza last year. The Palestinians were given all of Gaza, and they respond with rocket attacks into peaceful Israeli towns - in pre-1967 Israel proper, mind you. * What would the United States do if rockets were raining into San Diego from across the border with Mexico?
2006-06-16 00:00:00
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