Call the U.N.: Indiscriminate Shelling of Crowded Palestinian Neighborhood Kills 9! 12 Children Among Wounded! Oops, Never Mind--It Wasn't Israel.

Photo credit: Mahmud Hams, AFP, Getty Images, from The Los Angeles Times

The Los Angeles Times reports that a crowded Palestinian neigborhood in Gaza suffered a relentless, indiscriminate 14-hour attack by artillery and machine gun. Nine Palestinians were killed. The 72 wounded included 12 children! Can anyone doubt that this war crime, this travesty of human rights, will soon receive the international condemnation it so richly deserves? Surely, the international media, the European Union, Human Rights Watch, the U.N. Human Rights Council, perhaps even the Security Council will make their voices heard, as they have in the case of other alleged Israeli atrocities, including ones that never occurred, such as the Jenin non-massacre.

Well, probably not. You see, in this case, the perpetrators of the attacks were the Palestinians themselves, specifically Hamas, directing its mortars and machine guns against the urban stronghold of the pro-Fatah Hillis clan in Gaza City. Since the world community always gives authoritarian regimes and Palestinian thugs carte blanche to perpetrate violence on their own people, as well as on Jews, don't expect much outrage.

Ironically, the survivors of the Hillis clan militia sought refuge from none other than those notorious perpetrators of genocide against the Palestinian people, the Israelis. Even more ironically, as reported in the Jerusalem Post, Fatah Chairman and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, after first requesting that Israel allow the refugees to cross the border from Israel, then refused to grant those Fatah loyalists asylum in the West Bank. Instead, he asked Israel to return the unwounded Hillis clan members to Gaza, where they faced immediate arrest by Hamas, and perhaps death. This despite the fact that seriously wounded Palestinians, who were allowed to remain in Israeli hospitals, accused Hamas of waging "a war of genocide." Good luck, fellas, but unless you claim that the Zionists were behind the attack, no one cares.