Cheat Seeking Missiles

he news reports this morning drip with barely masked contempt for Israel; how dare those Jews shell the UN compound in Gaza?

Israeli forces shelled the United Nations headquarters in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, setting fire to the compound filled with hundreds of refugees as U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon was in the area on a mission to end Israel’s devastating offensive against the territory’s Hamas rulers. (AP)

Israeli forces shelled areas deep inside Gaza City on Thursday, hitting the headquarters of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency and injuring at least three people in the compound, according to witnesses and United Nations officials.

A spokesman for the agency, Christopher Gunness, said that hundreds of Palestinians were sheltering in the compound at the time of the shelling and that there were five fully laden fuel vehicles at the site. (NYT)

Israel shelled the United Nations headquarters in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, engulfing the compound and the main warehouse in fire and destroying thousands of pounds of food and humanitarian supplies intended for Palestinian refugees. (ABC News)

The headquarters of the UN refugee agency was on fire today after coming under attack as Israeli forces pushed deeper into Gaza City, unleashing the heaviest shelling of densely packed neighbourhoods since the military operation began nearly three weeks ago. (UK Guardian)

The media are covering for Hamas by starting with the assumption that the UN is neutral in this matter and is not either actively or passively providing support and shelter to Hamas fighters. To believe that, one has to ignore Hamas’ bragging about its use of human shields. If Hamas is willing to kill its own children to manufacture press outrage, why wouldn’t they use the UN for the same purpose?

When confronted with a united anti-Israel front in the western media, I turn to the Israeli media for a different perspective. And true to form, the Israeli media are reporting on the incident with the same accuracy as the IDF’s radar-guided bombs:

Gunshots and an anti-tank missile were fired at IDF troops near the UN compound that was attacked by the IDF on Thursday, senior defense official told The Jerusalem Post.

Accordng to the officials, the IDF responded by firing artillery shells at the location of the gunmen and that the shells caused damage to the UN installations. (JPost)

Outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon on Thursday that Israeli troops shelled the UN headquarters in Gaza after coming under fire from Palestinian militants within the building.

Olmert described the incident as “very sad and I am sorry about this.”

“We don’t want this event to happen again,” he told Ban, “and I don’t know if you know but Hamas attacked from within the UNRWA compound during the humanitarian cease-fire.”(Haaretz)

The AP story on the incident (linked above) described the Israeli apology without referencing the report that Hamas had been firing from the UN compound shortly before it was hit:

Ban expressed “outrage” over the bombing. He said Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak told him there had been a “grave mistake” and promised to pay extra attention to protecting U.N. installations.

Banki should know by now that the grave mistake is giving cover to Hamas fighters, and that any extra attention that should be paid should be to making sure Hamas isn’t coopting UN buildings, ambulances, schools and other facilties. If there’s one message in Israel’s offense it is that Hamas has no cover, and the human shield or UN shield defense won’t fly. Call first to warn them, then do what has to be done to erradicate the Hamas blight.

By now, the media’s response to incidents like this should be first to verify the facts regarding the incident - what building was hit, how many casualties - and then immediately inquire about Hamas activities at the target at the time of the attack. This is not rocket science; it’s not even Qassam science.

In all the talk of proportionality and disproportionality, we should address proportional outrage. The world should be offended that Hamas would put the UN mission in jeopardy by firing from it, that the UN allowed its mission to be used by Hamas for such purposes, and only then in a distant third, that Israel responded by bombing the compound. But we have a disproportionate response from the media again.

Until the media can show that it can be proportional, media opinions about the disproportionality of Israel’s offensive can rightly be ignored.

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