As Israel Hits Mosque and Clinic, Air Campaign’s Risks Come Home

ny times ^ | 7-12-2014 | STEVEN ERLANGER

[Citizen Zed]

As Israel’s air war against Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters in Gaza entered its sixth day on Saturday, a pair of bombings threw the difficulties of the campaign into painful relief: Israel bombed a mosque, which its aerial photos indicated was harboring a weapons cache, and a center for the handicapped, killing two handicapped patients and wounding three, as well as a caretaker.

The bombing of the center, the Mabaret Palestine Society here in northern Gaza, occurred just before dawn, when a missile crashed through the roof and exploded. Because it was the weekend, only five of the 19 severely handicapped residents were in residence, while the rest were with their families, said Jamila Elaiwa, who founded the center 20 years ago.

She spoke at Al Shifa hospital’s burn unit, while she was visiting the wounded, including Mai Hamada, 30, and Salwa Abu al-Qomssan, 53, the caretaker, both of them with severe burns, while two more patients were in intensive care.

[867V309]

Now I understand why Hamas issued orders that people are to stand in place even if they know a bomb is coming.

They are requiring everyone to be a potential suicidee. This decree betrays their utter desperation.

[DCBryan1]

Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers had a grenade that broadcast, “I am a grenade. I will explode in 10, 9, 8, .....”

[Iscool]

Maybe the rest of them will realize that human shields aren’t worth what they thought they were...

[idov]

What do you know? War is heck. Don’t like it, don’t start one.

[Jack Hammer]

The author p*sses and moans when the Israelis defend themselves, but says nothing when the Moslems murder civilians, execute hostages, snipe from cover, set off terrorist bombs on buses and beside roads, and then refer to the Jews as Big Meanies.

Bone-deep anti-Semitism is back in fashion.

[cookcounty]

A "mosque" that is a weapons depot is not a mosque. Oh, that's right Israel bound by the Geneva Conventions, but Hamas is not.

[editor-surveyor]

Every “mosque” is an arsenal.
.

[terycarl]

VERY SAD......VERY.....and when the U.S. bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki....chances are that some nursing home and innocent hospital patients died.......don’t bomb us and we won’t bomb you!!!

[EQAndyBuzz]

“Israel should take back the Gaza—even if by sections at a time. The little feel good experiment of giving up land for peace was a miserable failure. Now start taking back land for peace Israel—enough with the incessant rocket attacks from Gaza. Take back the Gaza-—scrooge the world.”

I’d go the other way. Call Gaza Palestine and cu it off from all Israeli resources. If the rest of the world love these much, let them supply gas, electric and water to them.

[elcid1970]

There’s talk of the IDF going in all the way to the Gaza border with Egypt and destroying all the smuggling tunnels because that’s how Hamas gets their Iranian missiles.

Also talk that if the IDF does this, the Egyptian response will be limited to tut-tutting with a wink.

[aquila48]

Wouldn’t a better title be...

“As Hamas hits urban areas in Israel, their indiscriminate attacks backfire”