In case you haven\u2019t heard, Israel shelled a UN school.\u00a0 It\u2019s been on the news for two days straight.\u00a0 It\u2019s the worst atrocity since \u2026 I dunno, Fallujah?\u00a0 Boko Haram?\u00a0 Two weeks ago?<\/p>\n
But I kid.\u00a0 The real issue is people are trying to make moral statements about the war without any attempt to peek through the fog of war and see what\u2019s actually happening.<\/p>\n
So before I make my moral assertions about this war, let\u2019s cut through that fog of war to see the events surrounding the shelling.<\/p>\n
The basic issue is that the UN school was sheltering an alleged 3000 people.\u00a0 Of those people, 20 died.<\/p>\n
Now, if Israel were directly targeting the school with artillery fire, a lot more people would have died in that attack.\u00a0 It\u2019s pretty safe to say that entire structure and everyone in it would have been decimated in a minute.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s also keep in mind that the whole compound is in a crowded neighborhood, where Hamas fighters are engaging Israeli troops all around it.<\/p>\n
Now, I don\u2019t make any apologies for engaging Hamas fighters with overwhelming force.\u00a0 You don\u2019t attack without it, all militaries use it.\u00a0 That means softening up their hiding spots with artillery fire.<\/p>\n
So, the likeliest explanation is that Israeli troops engaged Hamas relatively close to the school.\u00a0 And a couple of artillery shells, which are \u201cblunt instruments\u201d exploded a bit too close for comfort to the school.<\/p>\n
This certainly jives with what we\u2019ve seen in videos, even from CNN\u2019s lookout tower, where artillery shells were falling all around them.<\/p>\n
So, for the UN to make this moral assertion without bothering to peek through the fog of war; to make this assertion that Israeli troops were targeting a UN school despite some serious contradictions: this now makes the UN the target of moral scrutiny.<\/p>\n
Just what are they doing there?\u00a0 Are they there to shelter innocents?\u00a0 Or are they there to erode Israel\u2019s moral authority for self defense?<\/p>\n
Hamas has engaged Israeli troops in their own turf, in Gaza.\u00a0 There\u2019s no shortage of evidence showing their willingness to hide behind civilians.\u00a0 This means no neighborhood is now safe from the conflict.\u00a0 Gaza City is imminently an occupied city, much in the tradition of Atlanta, Dresden, Berlin, Fallujah.<\/p>\n
Why insist on keeping civilians so close to the line of fire?\u00a0 You want to tell me there\u2019s no other way for them to keep civilians safe, if this is their mission?\u00a0 How about barges on the coast?\u00a0 Buildings on the border?\u00a0 Something that Israeli troops can secure?<\/p>\n
And let\u2019s not forget the video footage being shown for two days straight.\u00a0 It\u2019s the same stock footage of Palestinian mothers screaming and crying, which cries out propaganda video.\u00a0 If people were seriously wounded, mangled, killed, the footage would be a lot more grisly.<\/p>\n
And for the UN to take it and run with it like this, this makes them sound like a propaganda arm.\u00a0\u00a0 Not so much for Hamas, but for the millions of anti-Semites in the streets right now, calling for death to Jews.<\/p>\n
UN, J\u2019accuse.\u00a0 Get out of Gaza, now.\u00a0 You serve no purpose there other than to foment further conflict around the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In case you haven\u2019t heard, Israel shelled a UN school.\u00a0 It\u2019s been on the news for two days straight.\u00a0 It\u2019s the worst atrocity since \u2026 I dunno, Fallujah?\u00a0 Boko Haram?\u00a0 Two weeks ago? But I kid.\u00a0 The real issue is people are trying to make moral statements about the war without any attempt to peek […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[79,32,34,44,163,164],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=274"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":275,"href":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274\/revisions\/275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}