Palestinians kill 2 girls in Gaza

The actual Associated Press story is entitled “Palestinian rocket misfires, kills 2 girls in Gaza” but the rocket didn’t actually misfire, it was misdirected.

First of all understand that weeks before the Israeli-Palestinian ceasefire ended, the Palestinians were firing rockets at Israel and the AP along with every other news service were wringing their hands over Israel’s reaction. Israel hasn’t done anything up to this point.

Then, while still firing missiles, some clumsy doofuses in Gaza fired a homemade rocket which fell short.

A crude rocket fired by Palestinian militants fell short of its target in Israel on Friday, striking a house in the northern Gaza Strip and killing two schoolgirls.

So we should probably blame the Palestinians, right? Nope. AP says it’s Israel’s fault;

The attack came as Israel sent mixed signals over its plans to respond to continuing Palestinian rocket fire. Israeli defense officials say politicians have approved a large-scale incursion into the territory once rainy conditions clear.

Oddly enough, no one has claimed responsibility for the misdirected rocket;

None of Gaza’s militant factions claimed responsibility for the deadly attack on the house in Beit Lahiya.

You can read the entire story and not find a reference to the fact that Hamas fired missiles into Israel weeks before the ceasefire ended last week, only with a nebulous reference to the ceasefire collapsing;

The girls were the first Palestinian civilians inadvertently killed by militants since their truce with Israel began collapsing six weeks ago.

Now, if these girls had been killed by Israeli forces, their bodies would have photographed and splashed across the internet as evidence of the cruelty of Israel’s “occupation” of Palestine. There would have been shots of Palestinians tossing rocks and bottles at checkpoint guards and the volume of rockets would have increased and the AP would have made excuses for their fury. But, in this case;

But, as with similar cases involving unintended civilian casualties in the past, there were no immediate signs of backlash against the militants after the girls’ death.

And there won’t be any backlash, because Hamas is much more brutal in quashing dissent than the Israelis.

Here’s a screen shot in case the story disappears later;

There’s more on the ceasefire’s collapse by Lisa Goldman at Pajamas Media.

Category: Foreign Policy, Terror War