Why do you suppose they admitted it? Is it because maybe people are figuring out that Hamas and the Palestinian racket always lie....or maybe there will be forthcoming evidence à la Channel 2 France and Enderlin & Co. which might undermine their, uh, credibility sooner, this time, rather than later.

...the "armed" wing of Hamas? So funny and so sad. You mean to say there isn't a wing without any weapon in it? Mayhap we aren't funding them enough.

Posted by: Jewel Atkins at June 13, 2008 7:30 AM

may many more of the bombs go off in their hammas house!

Posted by: ZenaWarriorPrincess at June 13, 2008 7:34 AM

It's a little surprising it wasn't a mosque or a school that was destroyed. They seem to use those types of buildings for military operations.

Posted by: infidels aplenty at June 13, 2008 7:40 AM

Hamas has never before needed an excuse to fire rockets into Israel. They shouldn't have tried to justify the latest barrage. All it did was expose them to the world.

Posted by: PMK at June 13, 2008 7:48 AM

But the Palestinians killed by Hamas ineptitude will still be added to the skewed death tolls which suggest Israel disproportionately kills more civilians than terrorists, right?

Statistical Analysis of Casualties in the Palestinian - Israeli Conflict

Posted by: DJM at June 13, 2008 8:15 AM

Peace will come to the Middle East when the Arabs love their children more than they hate us. ~Golda Meir

Considering the willingness of Hamas to expose children to the possibility of violent death "in the cause of Allah," thereby guaranteeing that these tiny "martyrs" are Paradise bound, (perhaps to receive 70 houri infants as cribmates?) Meir's comment should be amended to more accurately reflect core Qur'anic family values.

Posted by: Lex at June 13, 2008 9:06 AM

I guess Allah was "not willing" on that day. Someone on the assault team must have been insufficiently pious. Or perhaps he entertained impure thoughts, so that Allah did not back his plan.

Time to go to the mosque, and study the Koran, and to come up with an even better plan for killing Jews--one that is properly inspired by Allah and linked to Allah's cause. Then--it is guaranteed--he will guide his dutiful slaves to ensure their success. Allah Akbar!

How perverted. How sick. How utterly vile.

Posted by: Stendec at June 13, 2008 9:41 AM

DJM, I noticed in the study that they keep using the term "non-combatants". My impression is that, other than very young children i.e. less than 6 or 7 years old, there are no non-combatants on the pali side. In my mind, people that actively support the intifada by grooming their own children to be suicide bombers are not non-combatants. Neither are women that willingly run to a mosque targeted by Israel to use themselves as human shields.

Posted by: walterc at June 13, 2008 10:17 AM

Seven people, including a four-month-old baby were killed in the blast, in Beit Lahiya, in the north of the strip.

What was an infant doing in the area where explosives were being handled? I don't know how dumb could get any dumber...

Posted by: duh_swami at June 13, 2008 10:21 AM

"Members of the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades were trying to prepare for a Jihad operation

And I suppose the Joooooz planted the baby and the 'civvies.'?

Posted by: Un:dhimmi at June 13, 2008 12:08 PM

You know, if they had just paid attention during bomb making class...............

Posted by: tanstaafl at June 13, 2008 2:15 PM

You know how it is. Something goes wrong blame it on the Joooos. Something goes right, it means the Joooos have little time and victory is just around the corner. Something goes . . . RIGHT blame it on the JOOOOS.

Do you see a thread? Do you see what is important? Do you see?

Remember, anyone even suggesting that these (alleged human beings) should be considered, speaks volumes to their willful ignorance or deception.

Call me a hate monger but call me right.

Posted by: Im.mad.as.HELL! at June 13, 2008 4:56 PM

Call me a hate monger but call me right.

Posted by: Im.mad.as.HELL! at June 13, 2008 4:56 PM

There are MANY things worthy of hatred, a valid and important human emotion, in this cruel, brutal, and imperfect human world.

Islam, Mohammed, and the Qur'an are among those many things worthy of hatred.

If we didn't have hate, we'd have to love, or just merely dislike, for example, Naziism? Right. No, we must HATE Naziism. And, Islam, too.

Posted by: darcy at June 14, 2008 6:14 PM

darcy -

there's an element of truth in what you're saying. Although we must strive to have, toward Muslims themselves (especially toward those born and brought up deep within the system of Islam, who have had little chance to encounter any alternative) the attitude of pity which Corrie ten Boom's sister Betsie had toward a young Nazi female guard, 'Oh, that poor woman!', I think that toward the 'system' or gestalt of Islam itself, or the antihuman/ inhuman spirit that animates it, whether that spirit is understood in rationalistic terms, as a peculiarly destructive 'meme', or in Christian terms, as a 'demon', hatred is a legitimate response.

Here is C S Lewis in his fantasy, 'Voyage to Venus', describing his hero Ransom in battle with the 'Unman', that is, a human being who has been possessed and indeed absorbed by a demonic power.

'He [Ransom] wavered. Then an experience that perhaps no good man can ever have in our world came over him - a torrent of perfectly unmixed and lawful hatred. The energy of hating, never before felt without some guilt, without some dim knowledge that he was failing fully to distinguish the sinner from the sin, rose into his arms and legs...What was before him appeared no longer a creature of corrupted will. It was corruption itself to which will was attached only as an instrument. Ages ago it had been a Person; but the ruins of personality now survived in it only as weapons at the disposal of a furious self-exiled negation.'

'It is perhaps difficult to understand why this filled Ransom not with horror but with a kind of joy. The joy came from finding at last what hatred was made for. As a boy with an axe rejoices on finding a tree, or a boy with a box of coloured chalks rejoices on finding a pile of perfectly white paper, so he rejoiced in the perfect congruity between his emotion and its object. Bleeding and trembling with weariness as he was, he felt that nothing was beyond his power, and when he flung himself upon the living Death, the eternal Surd in the universal mathematic, he was astonished, and yet (on a deeper level) not astonished at all, at his own strength."

Perhaps the Biblical expression - fire from heaven - refers to this fierce reaction of life against the principle of death, Eros rejecting Thanatos.

Posted by: dumbledoresarmy at June 16, 2008 12:48 AM

Just a brief postscript to my posting above.

Two years ago, on this comments floor, Mr Hugh Fitzgerald and a poster, 'Caroline', were discussing what is necessary for a person to 'get' what Islam is about, and what happens when they do.

Hugh said something which I have never forgotten, and which I squirrelled away for future reference, because it was so arresting, particularly in light of his obvious experience of what it is to study things in depth.

'Caroline' had said - "In the end, one need only look at Islam's source - Muhammad - and confirm just a few facts about the man himself (and those facts are easily confirmed for those who are willing to look) - and all the rest just falls easily into place."

To which Hugh replied as follows:

"You are right. Whatever manages to supply enough of the truth, and to allow one to convey that truth convincingly to others so they begin to comprehend the nature of the belief-system (try not to call it a "religion") of Islam, surely does not require all kinds of study.

"But such study, when one has the time, merely deepens one's horrified convictions. Ordinarily, as you read more about something, you more and more see the thing in its complexity, and shades of gray, and are more and more hesitant to pass judgment.

"With Islam, the more you find out about what it teaches, the more you find out about the example of Muhammad, the more you find out about what Islam does to its adherents, the more you find out about Jihad in time and space, the more you find out about the fate of non-Muslims under Muslim rule, the more horrified you become.

"But it isn't all necessary. Sometimes a single thing will do it. Here's the single thing about Iran that often does it: the fact that when he came to power, one of Khomeini's very first acts (perhaps the first) was to lower the marriageable age of girls to nine. Tell that to people you know. And then tell them why."
- Posted by: Hugh at July 25, 2006 10:41 PM

Let's hear that again, from Hugh the scholar -

"Ordinarily, as you read more about something, you more and more see the thing in its complexity, and shades of gray, and are more and more hesitant to pass judgment.

"With Islam, the more you find out... THE MORE HORRIFIED YOU BECOME".

Seconded.

Posted by: dumbledoresarmy at June 16, 2008 2:50 AM