Jonathan Zasloff cautions against a rush to judgment, noting that the cause of the deaths has not yet been determined, and the incident may turn out to be another instance, like the death of 12 year old Mohammed al-Dura a few years back, in which Palestinian propaganda managed to turn manslaughter by inept Palestinians into an Israeli “crime.” Debka reports that various intelligence services believe the most likely cause of the explosion was a “daisy chain” bomb trap set by Palestinians.
As for me, I regret the loss of civilian life, whether caused accidentally by an Israeli shell, or accidentally by a Palestinian bomb. But if a result of the former, I hardly think Israel deserves the international condemnation it is receiving. Despite Israel’s total withdrawal from Gaza, Israeli border town are experiencing constant missle bombardment from Gaza, and the evidence shows that the Hamas government is not only not trying to prevent such attacks, but to some extent participates in them. In short, Israel is at war, and is not only morally justified, but morally required to respond to protect militarily to protect its citizens [Israel, in fact, had a major screw up a while back, when it had the opportunity to eliminate the entire leadership of Hamas in an airstrike, but failed to do because, out of fear of civilian casualties it used too small a missle, creating, in the long-run, far more civilian deaths in both Israel and Gaza.]. Israel’s response has been far from indiscriminate, attempting to eliminate the missle crews while limiting civilian deaths. But in any war, civilians get killed. Ultimately, assuming reasonable efforts to avoid civilian casualties, the relevant moral question is, who is responsible for the war, and thus for the deaths? The answer here seems obvious: There is not a single Israeli soldier or settler in Gaza, giving the Palestinians there not even a fig leaf of an excuse for attacking Israeli towns with missles. In short, even if civilians in Gaza were accidentally killed by a stray Israeli shell, they were, in effect, killed by fellow Palestinians.
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