1/16/2009

Good Lord

From appletree: For Israelis, no atrocity is too great: officer says he was right to shoot a 13-year-old child

From the Guardian:

An Israeli army officer who repeatedly shot a 13-year-old Palestinian girl in Gaza dismissed a warning from another soldier that she was a child by saying he would have killed her even if she was three years old.

The officer, identified by the army only as Captain R, was charged this week with illegal use of his weapon, conduct unbecoming an officer and other relatively minor infractions after emptying all 10 bullets from his gun’s magazine into Iman al-Hams when she walked into a “security area” on the edge of Rafah refugee camp last month.

A tape recording of radio exchanges between soldiers involved in the incident, played on Israeli television, contradicts the army’s account of the events and appears to show that the captain shot the girl in cold blood.
I rarely make commentary about this because I feel I know too little about it, despite any research I do. But this? This is unacceptable. And I'm just supposed to accept that these people are our allies? No, I refuse.

What's the likelihood of this ever being reported in the national media with any level of accuracy? If this had been reversed, we'd be hearing about it endlessly, wouldn't we?