By Juan Cole
The U.S. State Department became a little testy with Israel on Sunday over the 6th school shelling by the Israeli military, which killed 10, saying
“The United States is appalled by today’s disgraceful shelling outside an UNRWA school in Rafah sheltering some 3,000 displaced persons, in which ten more Palestinian civilians were tragically killed,” reads the statement from State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki. “We once again stress that Israel do more to meet its own standards and avoid civilian casualties.”As for the standard Israeli military pretext for such war crimes, that Hamas was hiding out in the school or firing from the school, no reporter on the ground has seen any evidence of any such activity by Hamas in schools where there are people. Then the Israeli military obfuscates things by saying that Hamas was “in the area.” Since Gaza is so small, I suppose they are in the area of almost everything. But the State Department didn’t let Tel Aviv off the hook this time: “The suspicion that militants are operating nearby does not justify strikes that put at risk the lives of so many innocent civilians.”
