The fallout from a deadly explosion in Gaza.

Israel

It was not an Israeli shell that killed a Palestinian family on a Gaza beach last week, said Herb Keinon in The Jerusalem Post. It’s still unclear what did cause the explosion, which killed seven members of one family, including five children. But an Israeli military investigation shows that the cause was not one of six shells Israel had fired in the vicinity—those shells have all been accounted for. Yes, Palestinian doctors treating the wounded claim that the shrapnel was Israeli; but the doctors removed all traces of the shrapnel, so their claims could not be checked. Meanwhile, Israeli doctors kept the shrapnel from the one wounded person who was brought to an Israeli hospital, and that shrapnel was “not connected to any type of Israeli ammunition,” the military said. Facts are facts: Israel has been absolved.

Not in the eyes of the world, said Anshel Pfeffer, also in The Jerusalem Post. The Israeli Defense Forces failed utterly “to counter the Palestinian propaganda campaign in the foreign press.” The IDF had footage of its own shelling, which backs the conclusion that Israel did not bomb the public beach. It also had footage of Hamas members on the beach after the explosion, “tampering with evidence.” Yet instead of releasing this footage immediately, it wasted three days conducting an investigation. “By then, of course, it was too late.” Images of 12-year-old Huda Ghalia screaming for her dead father had already been beamed across the world, and Palestinian spokesmen were crying “massacre” to every reporter they could reach. Now, when Israel comes out with other exonerating details—such as evidence that militants had been storing explosives on that beach to defend against further raids by IDF frogmen—it just looks like a “coverup.” At least Israelis themselves are convinced of their army’s innocence.

Israelis shouldn’t let themselves off so easily, said Avi Issacharoff and Amos Harel in Tel Aviv’s Ha’aretz. The IDF may not have killed those particular Palestinian children by an errant shell. But in the past few years, it has accidentally killed hundreds of other children in the territories. Artillery fire on Gaza poses “considerable risk” to the civilian population, which is why it has long been opposed by one of the top artillery gunners himself. Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz vowed to be more restrained than his bellicose predecessor, Shaul Mofaz. Yet in the six weeks Peretz has been in office, “far more Palestinian civilians have been killed” than in the previous six.

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Ofer Shelah

Yedioth Ahronoth