A group of Palestinian boys is playing on the beach in Gaza, kicking a soccer ball around in the bright sunshine. But not for long: an Israeli missile hits a nearby shack, where their family members keep their fishing boats: it bursts into flames and the boys take off running. But they can’t run fast enough to evade the second shot: four are instantly killed, and several wounded. Ahmed Abu Hassera, who was with them, told Reuters:
“The kids were playing football on the beach. They were all … under the age of 15. When the first shell hit the land, they ran, but another shell hit them all … It looked as if the shells were chasing them."
The shells were fired from an Israeli ship patrolling off the coast, which was no doubt equipped with the highest hi-tech monitoring system American tax dollars can buy. There isn’t any doubt that the Israelis knew just what they were doing and who they were targeting. The Israeli side practically admits this, albeit sotto voce. A New York Times account of the incident reports:
"Alon Ben-David, a well-sourced Israeli military affairs analyst, said on Israeli television that the first beach blast targeted a structure that Israel believed was used by Hamas. He said the second blast might have been aimed at the running children, perhaps mistaken for militants. He added that given the military’s technologically advanced surveillance equipment, ‘it is a little hard for me to understand this, because the images show that the figures are children.’"
Ben-David sounds like he’s seen the images, and he probably has. The Israelis have the technology and the acumen to know who and what they are targeting. It certainly is "hard to understand" how Israel’s "precision bombing" could’ve gone so wrong. What’s easier to understand, however, is that it wasn’t a "mistake" at all, but a deliberate act, just one example of a general policy of terror carried out by the Israelis against the people of Gaza.
This kind of thing has been happening ever since the fighting started – just as it happened all those other times the Israelis have taken out their sadistic impulses on Gaza’s sitting ducks. The only difference is that the killing occurred at a location where a good deal of the Western media was gathered: right in front of the beachside hotel where they were all staying. Journalists rushed out to save the boys, but it was too late for four of them: see this dramatic account by a reporter who found himself turned into an emergency medical technician on a moment’s notice.
Nearly half of the victims of the Israeli assault are children, a fact widely noted in the media but never really dramatized so vividly as on that day. Naturally the Israelis claimed it was a "tragic accident," and Max Boot, writing in Commentary magazine, is quick to concur: