Dead is Dead: The Mass Killing in Jabaliya in Gaza

I'm highlighting this story from The Washington Post because I fear it will quickly become a front-line propaganda piece to gloss over the civilian deaths in the Gaza conflict.

The Post headlines Geoff Witte's piece "U.N. Says School in Gaza Where 43 Died Wasn't Hit by Israeli Fire". Wow --- does that mean the 43 died at the hands of others, say, Hamas or a mystery force? Was the attack a fantasy? Let's read:

The United Nations said this week that Israeli mortar fire that killed at least 43 people in Gaza's Jabaliya refugee camp on Jan. 6 had landed just outside a U.N.-run school housing refugees from the fighting but did not hit the school itself.

OK, so the Israeli shells didn't kill anyone inside the shelter. They just killed people trying to get to the shelter because 1) they had told by Israel in some cases to evacuate their homes 2) their homes were getting hit by Israeli fire 3) they were panicked.

No one claimed, at least on this website, that the Israeli military deliberately targeted the school. Instead, we said that the deaths occurred because Israel was firing artillery in a built-up civilian area and that Israel might have been using a new type of mortar which was not as precise as advertised.

Indeed, this latest twist actually exposes the desperate Israeli attempt to cover-up the killing. Remember, Israeli spokesmen claimed that they were firing at Hamas fighters who were inside the school. Now, they are saying, no, no, we didn't ever fire at the shelter. The story changes depending on which straw "information" officers think they can grasp.

So Israel didn't hit the school, deliberately or accidentally, in this case. It did hit other schools, hospitals, large family houses, and tower blocks in its attacks. It did kill hundreds of civilians in this operation. It did so, in some cases, with weapons which are banned under international law. And, in almost every case, it has tried to escape responsibility for its actions.

Dead is dead. It doesn't matter one jot if that death occurred inside a building crammed with civilians or in a street crammed with civilians trying to get into that building, fleeing from attack, or just running about madly.