Whispers

File under: You don't say...

A local source said the target was a room allegedly used by Hamas police.
Air strike on Gaza school kills at least 13 people

When I saw the headline, I knew that somewhere in the story, there would be an accusation that Hamas was using the building for something or other. It's pretty much a given. Such rumors serve the Israelis, in the sense that the deaths of civilians can be laid at the feet of Hamas. But they also serve Hamas, because Israel is more or less guaranteed to act on them, which generates sympathy for the Gazans throughout the region, and with people who understand that the broader Palestinian public is on the receiving end of a raw deal in this war. Accordingly, it would be interesting to find out the identity of this helpful "local source," although I expect we, the general public, never will.

I would say that the number of civilian casualties of the fights between the Israeli Army and Islamic militants has always been high, but that presumes that this really is a fight between organizations, rather than populations, and there are times when I'm not at all sure this is true. While those people who consider themselves civilians on both sides of the conflict may feel that it's inappropriate for the other side to target them, I'm not sure that the broader Israeli and Palestinian populations still buy into the idea that there are innocent people among their opposites.

Back in the Google+ days, one of my contacts found it ironic that people considered fighters legitimate targets, but not the civilian populations that supported them. I suspect that this opinion is more widespread than people are prepared to concede. Israel faces criticism, because it's considered to have a professional military that should be able to minimize the overall death toll, and the government says that it tries, but I wonder if their hearts are really in it. Hamas has earned the designation of a terrorist organization for making it pretty clear that, as far that they are concerned, there are no innocent Israelis; the events of October 7th of last year, that kicked all of this off, were proof enough of that. But it also appears that they are willing to see everyday Palestinians be in the line of fire. It's said that every orphan is a future Hamas fighter, but it still seems like a remarkably high price to be willing to pay. The death toll among Palestinians is always higher than that among Israelis; Hamas' tactics seem destined to result in a continuous attrition of the population of Gaza. And Gaza simply can't win a lopsided war of attrition.