Sometimes there are unexploded portions of the bomb, still capable of detonation, embedded in the bodies of the victims. Hex nuts appear to be a favorite shrapnel ingredient, judging by those photos.

Should we give them a state, or just keeping giving them more money?

Mohammed Roqa, 5, Samia al-Shariff, 5, and Belal al-Hessi, 15 -- were killed today by shrapnel in an Israeli missile strike on a crowed street.

I wonder if these people are worthy enough to be called victims of terrorism and have the xrays of their mangled bodies on display for all to see?

Or do you see these three children as the terrorists?

They're certainly the victims of terrorism -- Palestinian terrorism. What they weren't, unlike those depicted in the Inside Terrorism project, is deliberate targets.

They were deliberate targets. The pilot who fired the missile certainly saw the crowds on the street when he fired the missile at them.

To say that someone else killed them is just plain stupid.

I can understand if someone is a Jew not wanting Israel to be tarred with atrocities like this, but if you are an American you owe it to your country to look at these incidents in a level headed fashion.

Combatants who hide among and behind civilians are war criminals, Ken, something you choose to excuse.

Pilots who target civilians and cross their fingers hoping to hit a bad guy are war criminals. At least most of the world thinks so. American included. Why don't you?

ken;

Your statement doesn't even make sense. If the pilot is targeting civilians, why would he be thinking about the bad guy? And if he's shooting at the bad guy and crossing his fingers, he's not targeting civilians.

irt Ken.

Did I miss happy hour?

Terrorism is the use of stealth to kill civilians for the purpose of political change. It's my post, I get to make the definitions.

Dropping an A-Bomb on one bad guy in a crowded city market is not terrorism. It's stupid. It's overkill. It's criminal. But it's not terrorism.

These are old subjects, and modern militaries are trying as hard as they can to use the minimum amount of force to acheive their objective.

Words matter. If you have a clear definition of terrorism, then you won't get so muddle-headed about it. If you don't, then everything is terrorism and one guy with a gun is just the same as another. That's when you check your brain at the door and just repeat whatever people tell you to say.

Yes words do matter, and to deny the terrorism that modern militaries inflict on civilian populations is dishonest.

You are intitled to your own opinion and I see that you want to define things to avoid the unpleasant truth. But facts are facts. They are stubborn things and tend to overcome any attempt to define them away.

It was a little more than 30 years ago that I first became aware that in spite of what I had previously believed Israel was using terror tactics on the Palistinian people. Their logic was that if they punished the Palistinians enough for the acts of those attacked Isreal the will to fight would be broken and Israel could live in peace. Hence the straffing of refuge camps, the bulldozing of homes, the confistcation of property, the regular killing of innocent people were all designed to break the will of the Palistinians. I was surprised actually that even though this had been going on for decades that the Palistinians will to fight had never been broken.

Now it seems that some in Israel realize the futility and the immorality of their past approach to terrorise the palistinians and want to try something else.

I hope it works for them cause the previous policy of 60 years of unrelenting terror has not.

Ken --

You'd better be quick and charge George McGovern with War Crimes. Since he dropped bombs on civilians during WWII. [Flew 38 missions and dropped bombs on a civilian house once]

Go ahead. Call for McGovern to be tried and executed. I call him a genuine hero.

Or get real and recognize reality. People will do what they have to in order to stay alive. Regardless of your effort to prove superior status by superior moralizing.

Israel has a perfect right to fire back at people attacking them. Fire off rockets among civilians and yeah, they'll get killed.

Or in terms you can understand, George McGovern was completely justified in dropping bombs on German civilians and military people. The SS murdering the people of Orador was not. The Palestinians (who admire Hitler openly and name kids after him) are like the SS.

What you are really saying is that Israel (and Jews) have no right to exist; Israel has offered term after term to Palestinians, who simply cannot accept Israel's existence. No less than President Clinton has stated that fact after the failure of the Camp David / Wye River negotiations.

Palestinians tried first wars to "erase" Israel in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1974 and lost every time. They then tried terrorism (which you obviously support) such as blowing apart civilians in airports, buses, pizza places. Goal: all Jews "out" of the Middle East or dead, either one. A goal you obviously support (as most Dems now sadly do). Israel's response has been measured and mild. It's sad that Dems have fallen into the typical Leftist anti-Semitic frenzy (hatred of Israel, romanticizing of the Palestinians who never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity).

Ken,
Pilots "target civilians and cross their fingers hoping to hit a bad guy" ? Are you not a native speaker of english, but your comment indeed makes no sense. The indications are that you are intentionally misusing the term "target" to make a false and incendiary charge.

Jim,

Jews certainly have a right to exist, as does everyone else. That is one of our founding values as a nation - that we all the right to 'life, liberty and the persuit of happiness'.

Does Isreal have a right to exist? There is no persuasive argument that any nation, per se, is itself 'entitled by right' to exist. Is the CSA entitled to exist? Is Aztlan entitled to exists?

People, however, do have a right to self determination and often times that right is in conflict between two legitimate peoples. This is the case with Israel.

Working out this conflict is regretfully done through violence, as it was when America was carved out of lands previously held by natives, and also when Israel was taken from the Palistinians.

And, as is the case whenever violence is the means, terrorism often becomes a tactic used by both sides.

So you can get the F())* off of your high horse and just be glad that many in Israel are beginning to realize the error of their ways and are willing to try something else.

Cause if Israel is destroyed then 50 years from now no one will care any more about it than they do today about the Confederate States of America.

Robin,

Missiles fired from the air are not like sniper rifles in terms of accuracy.

If a sniper misses his target and kills a civilian that is indeed a mistake. When a pilot fires off a missile when civilians are within the target blast area he is indeed targeting civilians, unlike the sniper who is not. The only mistake is when he doesn't kill a bad guy along with all the civilians he kills. Hence the 'crossed fingers' in the hope that the attack can be excused however lamely as legitimate.

And if the Palestinians had tried peaceful means, they would have had a state by now. Jews are suckers for civil rights marches - over 50% of the what people talking part in civil rights activity in the South in the 50s and 60s were Jews.

There are even now lots of Jews who want to excuse everything the Palestinians do, in spite of their long record of trying to exterminate Jews by any means possible (even before they called themselves Palestinians, back when they were just Arabs). No other people but Jews would make that many excuses for the most depraved behavior for that long.

Palestinians are the most educated and middle class of all the Arab groups (except maybe Lebanon), if Palestine wanted to develop and create prosperity and self-respect for its citizens, it could be Singapore. Israel - with the highest number of tech startups per capita in the world, and the center for biomedical research - could partner with and seed Palestinian startups. There are already a number of joint Israeli-Palestinian science research ventures.

But most of those people have fled. Palestine has a diaspora comparable to the Jews. If there was any rule of law in the territories, those people would come home and create prosperity. But they fled because Arafat had to take a cut of every business, because there was no standardized banking system, because the constant flood of aid money undercut any business they could start, and because terrorist gangs roam the countryside.

BTW ask Israeli Arabs if they want to become citizens of Palestine. Every time Israel tries to put some Arab village on the other side of the border, they protest. Arabs in East Jerusalem are buying property in West Jerusalem when they can, in case East Jerusalem gets turned over to Palestine.

"Working out this conflict is regretfully done through violence, as it was when America was carved out of lands previously held by natives, and also when Israel was taken from the Palistinians"

No, historically the analogy would be that the Jews are equivalent to the American natives, and were ethnically cleansed from our land by the Babylonians, the Romans, the Muslims, and the Christians. The Palestinians are some of the Arabs who hung around after the Muslim conquest and put down roots. They are natives too, at this point, just like descendants of the Pilgrims are natives in America, but they are not the indigenous inhabitants.

Before they were "Palestinians," the Arabs of the West Bank were Jordanian.

I still don't hear a pig singing. You guys aren't trying hard enough, I guess.

When a pilot fires off a missile when civilians are within the target blast area he is indeed targeting civilians, unlike the sniper who is not.

You're comparing the effect - and ethics - of two very different ways of targeting an enemy. You're extrapolating intent from the basic fact that a helicopter-launched missile will cause many more casualties than a sniper's bullet - even if it hits the target. That isn't terrorism, and it sure as hell isn't intentional.

The use of 'the sniper', that mythic, supposedly 100% clean method of waging war, demonstrates amply you don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about.

Working out this conflict is regretfully done through violence, as it was when America was carved out of lands previously held by natives, and also when Israel was taken from the Palistinians

Even besides the fact that the Palestinans qua Palestinians never had Israel, Israel was not "taken" from the Palestinians. The UN decided to divide the British Mandate into a Jewish section (Israel) and an Arab section. The Arabs rejected the solution and decided to go to war. By saying that the conflict was regretfully worked out through violence initially, you imply that the Israelis should never have had the gall to defend themselves - and therefore you deny their right to exist or to defend themselves.

When a pilot fires off a missile when civilians are within the target blast area he is indeed targeting civilians, unlike the sniper who is not.

What about when a terrorist hides behind a group of civilians? Who has the responsibility then? The laws of war, if you read the Geneva Convention, put the onus on the military to separate itself from civilians for their own protection. In other words, if you mount an antiaircraft gun on a hospital and the hospital is bombed, it is your responsibility since you put the gun there. Likewise, in the case of terrorists hiding behind human shields - if they mix military and civilians, it is their responsibility if the IDF fires and errantly hits civilians.

Targets and locations are chosen in an attempt to avoid civilian casualties. It's not always possible, obviously. But no leader can sit idly by and allow rockets to rain down on his cities when there is something they can do to prevent it. No leader. It is unacceptable. Hundreds of rockets are being fired at Israeli cities, and the fact is that only one is not to be tolerated. Olmert was elected by the citizens of Israel and he has a 100% obligation to prevent these rocket attacks from happening. (As it is, he allowed it to go on too long before taking the gloves partly off.) The Palestinian government also has a 100% obligation - to prevent their territory from being used as a staging ground for attacks. Unfortunately, that government not only does not live up to their obligations, they are complicit in the attacks.

Anyway, a glimpse into the details of several of the recent botched attacks, this from Ha'aretz:

"...IDF Chief of Staff, Dan Halutz, ordered IAF Commander Major General Elyezer Shkedy to conduct a comprehensive investigation of the string of recent failed strikes.

An initial probe of Wednesday's attack revealed that it was caused either by human or technical error.

Peretz said Wednesday that the IDF has clear instructions to call off an attack if there is a chance that innocent people would be endangered.

Shkedy told Haaretz that the IAF has not found a common denominator among the four incidents in which Palestinian civilians were killed. Initial findings suggest a combination of human error and technical failures, he added.

In Wednesday night's incident, the road chosen for the attack was relatively isolated, but the point against which the missiles were fired was problematic, because it was not possible to maintain eye contact between the air vehicle and the target. It is also possible that there was a programming malfunction in the missiles.

"We carry out attacks in the Gaza Strip daily," Shkedy said. "The air operations are nearly the only way to operate in Gaza. The other option is a land operation, and we must do everything possible to avoid that."

"Every strike on civilians is very bad," the air force chief said. "It is troubling on an ethical level, and it also makes it difficult for us to maintain pressure on the terrorist organizations."

Shkedy said that the militants have changed their mode of action, and have begun launching rockets within residential areas to make air attacks against them more difficult.

"Fighting against them (the militants) is becoming more complicated every day," Shkedy said. "But we will continue fighting terror, and that includes air attacks. That is our duty."

The air force chief said that he authorized a small number of senior officers to act as "controllers" in the aerial attacks.

"These are people I trust completely," Shkedy said. "They have enormous experience in such attacks, and we rely on their judgment, even if it turns out that sometimes errors are made."...

...Palestinian witnesses said the apparent target of the IAF strike had been a jeep carrying members of the Popular Resistance Commmittees but the missile struck the house instead. A witness said the vehicle carrying the Palestinian militants passed by the house as the explosion occurred. The men inside jumped out of the car and ran into a nearby field.

A spokeswoman expressed regret at the death of El-Barbarwi. The Israel Air Force had fired the missile as the car travelled in a relatively unpopulated area on the outskirts of Khan Yunis, to avoid civilian death as had happened in previous attacks..."

>>What about when a terrorist hides behind a group of civilians? Who has the responsibility then?

This is easy to unravel: Imagine a terrorist/insurgent/criminal/whatever was hiding in a crowd of American civilians in an American city. Further imagine that the US military fired a missile into that crowd to kill the terrorist.

Right.

The US public would likely demand that the pilot and several levels up the chain of command be lynched, unless there was a real good explanation, one probably involving real nuclear weapons.

Somehow, when the nationality of crowd of people doesn't match the nationality of the pilot, we start hearing about things like "unavoidable collateral damage" and other such BS. Sickening, but typical.

I'm sure that it has something to do with, as you point out, the fact that the civilians and targets are of different nationalities.

One counter-point though is that there are some who think that the plane in PA was shot down - and that if it was, it was the right decision to make. I don't think that it was shot down but I do believe that if it was, it was the right decision. That does make things a little more difficult for your arugment, doesn't it?

In the case of the Palestinians, the situation is not helped by the fact that many of the people are willing (or moderately coerced) human shields, understanding that this is how the proxy war against Israel is waged.

Or to put things a different way, let's say you're charged with defending a country against terrorists who never travel without civilian human shields. Does that mean you never strike the terrorists? Something like this happened in Afghanistan, where the legal folks denied the right to attack Mullah Omar (IIRC) in the first few days of the war since he was surrounded by civilians. This was widely seen as a mistake later on. And in my opinion it is.

The only way to deny the enemy the advantage of using human shields is by making it clear that they are not shields. Under those circumstances, a rational enemy would change their behavior to separate their military operations from civilians, which should be something you would like, and would bring them closer to compliance with the laws of war. Of course, the Palestinian "military" would be obliterated, but, as I understand it, your concern is with the civilians, correct?

TJ,

The explanation for it, at root, is that people value their own lives and the lives of people like them more than others' lives. When you are talking about populations, this is almost universally true.

And don't forget, the leaders of a country first and foremost have an obligation to protect the people who have entrusted them with leadership. They should take utmost care when carrying out this obligation not to harm others, of course, but their obligation is clear.

It was conventional wisdom and we were told for years that the "root cause" of the violence was the occupation. Well, that ended in Gaza and we still see hundreds of rockets being fired at Israeli civilians. So it has become clear that the "root cause" is something different.

That "root cause" is Palestinian irredentism and irresponsible Palestinian leadership who allows these attacks to go on. It is not Israel's responsibility to install good leaders for the Palestinians, that is the Palestinian people's responsibility. It is Israel's responsibility to protect its citizens.

So, yes, the proberbial shit would hit the fan if Americans botched an attack in an American city. But conversely, consider the American public's response if the Canadians were allowing attacks from their soil, we went after them, and we botched an attack on terrorists on Canadian soil. It would be a completely different response and exactly like we see from Israel, and really, any other country in the same predicament.

In response to Ken,

No one said that Jews do not have the right to exist. I do not support that even if I am an Arab Muslim, which I am. Jews have always lived in Palestine among Muslims at the time of the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH). But that's when the Jews signed a pact to live PEACEFULLY between the Muslims or else they will be forced to leave the country. The Jews lived under this pact for many years until they decided that they deserve a country. So they stepped on the signed agreement (the pact) and started killing who ever stood in their way.

I believe that Jews DO NOT have the right to "create" a country out of nothing and from a foundation based on bloodshed, demolition, and forcing Palestinians to leave THEIR country or else they die. Those Palestinian citizens are the ones who gave you, Jews, a place to live in peacefully!

If I had anything else to say, it would be nothing more than an advice to the Israelis. We, Muslims, let the Jews live peacefully with us until you decided to form Israel. So my advice is not to all Jews, but to those Israelis who kill and bomb and demolish homes:
"Read your history and know the truth before pursuing a goal written and directed by ignorance and lack of faith."

Read.