Twilight Zone / Loss upon loss (Gideon Levy)

[Scurrilous]

<snip>

"We drank tea with the head of the household. That was in May. Mohammed Abu-Ouda showed us the ruins of his house, which had been damaged by Israel Defense Forces fire. Boom after boom, shell after shell; the guns roared and the walls of the house trembled. Little Meisa walked barefoot among the ruins, stepping on shattered glass, refusing to let go of the bundle of clothes she was holding. Five years old, her gray face expressed shock. Abed, her cousin, was wounded in the shelling when he went up to the roof of the house to fill a container with water. Mohammed, short and bearded, accompanied us silently on a tour of his ruined house, whose roof had collapsed onto the balcony below.

This week we returned to that house, at the edge of the town of Beit Hanun in the Gaza Strip, opposite the orchards that the IDF uprooted and the row of Washingtonia palms that has survived. Mohammed is no longer there, nor is his son Ismail or his daughter Hanan. The three of them were killed by IDF fire. The house that was shelled a few months ago turned into a house of triple bereavement in September.

Mohammed was 53 years old; Ismail was 27 and Hanan was 15. Their only crime, according to the evidence, was that they emerged from their house in the middle of the night, frightened by the thunder of the shell or missile that landed on their house. And then the soldiers standing in the street fired at them, killing them one after the other.

Azhar, 16, is now limping, on crutches; she was also wounded. Together with her sister, Hanan, she was lying on the sand at the entrance to the house; the soldiers, say furious family members, denied them medical treatment and did not evacuate them for a long time. Hanan was bleeding and died about three weeks later at Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon, where she was finally taken. Azhar was saved.

On Hanan Abu-Ouda's death certificate, signed by a doctor, it says: "Cause of death: deliberate hit."

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/777005.html

[IntiRaymi]

1. Easy to shoot defenseless civilians.

And then, when faced with real trained soldiers in Lebanon, IDF fails miserably.
....
Using the military for this sort of policing action brings it dishonor, and reduces its effectiveness.

[bemildred]

2. It is amazingly stupid, that's for sure.

And an evil thing, too.