The Hamas rockets fell short as well as the ethics of the journalists covering them

Israelis take cover in a pipe used as
a bomb shelter, after a rocket was
launched from the Gaza Strip on
Thursday, November 15 in Kiryat Malachi,
Israel [Image Source: CNN]

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
18 November '12..

Wars are complicated and messy. So, sometimes, we form our views about them, and about the parties fighting them, from simpler things. Things like photographs.

On Friday, the Egyptian prime minister came visiting Gaza. He was not there long - an hour or two. Long enough for the insiders of the Hamas regime to arrange (engineer?) some photo opportunities, one of which ignited a firestorm of sympathy, attention and invective against the Israeli actions in this war, and literally, physically brought the Moslem Brotherhood politician to tears [see "Stop the carnage: Egypt PM weeps for Palestinian boy killed in airstrike and calls for truce"]. You can see the photo of the dead child in many places on the web. It's a tragic image, and one we prefer not to place on this page because it's a child there that is dead, and there ought to be a limit to how much an image like that gets exploited. But we're getting ahead of ourselves/

CNN published a video clip yesterday (Saturday) featuring the child and the tragic back-story. It's here.

Small boy caught in Mideast crossfire
CNN|Added on November 16, 2012
CNN's Sara Sidner reports from Gaza on how a small child became a symbol of civilian casualties.

The experts at CNN have it right; the child's death is a symbol, but of something else: the malevolence of the terrorists who routinely use deaths on their own side to advance their political and theological campaign. Watch the video and see the articles that envelope the photo that has been published in dozens of places. You are left in no doubt that this horrible thing (it certainly is horrible) was Israel's doing, and that Israel seeks the deaths of Gazan children.

But is it?

(Continue reading)

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