The Accidental Deaths in Gaza Mike Rappaport

I was hoping to post on the accidental deaths in Gaza, accidents either by the Israelis or the Palestinians, but David Bernstein has said everything I would have.  Here is a portion of his excellent post:

As for me, I regret the loss of civilian life, whether causedaccidentally by an Israeli shell, or accidentally by a Palestinianbomb. But if a result of the former, I hardly think Israel deserves theinternational condemnation it is receiving. Despite Israel’s totalwithdrawal from Gaza, Israeli border town are experiencing constantmissle bombardment from Gaza, and the evidence shows that the Hamasgovernment is not only not trying to prevent such attacks, but to someextent participates in them. In short, Israel is at war, and is notonly morally justified, but morally required to respond to protectmilitarily to protect its citizens [Israel, in fact, had a major screwup a while back, when it had the opportunity to eliminate the entireleadership of Hamas in an airstrike, but failed to do because, out offear of civilian casualties it used too small a missle, creating, inthe long-run, far more civilian deaths in both Israel and Gaza.].Israel’s response has been far from indiscriminate, attempting toeliminate the missle crews while limiting civilian deaths. But in anywar, civilians get killed. Ultimately, assuming reasonable efforts toavoid civilian casualties, the relevant moral question is, who isresponsible for the war, and thus for the deaths? The answer here seemsobvious: There is not a single Israeli soldier or settler in Gaza,giving the Palestinians there not even a fig leaf of an excuse forattacking Israeli towns with missles. In short, even if civilians inGaza were accidentally killed by a stray Israeli shell, they were, ineffect, killed by fellow Palestinians.   

Update: Upon reflection, the case puzzles me even more.  What is Israel supposed to have done that makes this case such a cause celebre?  Even if Israel did mistakenly kill the innocent civilians, they did it by accident in response to being attacked.  Surely, no one can doubt that.  Israel has the power to kill many Palestinians on purpose if they wanted to. I can certainly feel sorrow for the young girl who lost her father, but hardly more than the victims of terrorism.   In the end, the world’s reaction seems to result from focusing on a young girl who lost her father and the fact that the hated Israelis did it.  No explanation of how or why it happened is allowed into the discussion.  Sadly, the newspapers contribute to this way of looking at it, as with this story from the New York Times, by omitting why the Israelis might have sent a shell into Gaza.