If the BBC is to be believed, IDF soldiers are deliberately shooting women and children in Gaza. Their TV reporting from the scene today interviewed doctors in hospitals who asked the obvious rhetorical question as to why they have children patients with multiple small arms wounds. One child had two bullets in the head. In the head, in the head, not fragments from large caliber weapons. These were small arms bullets. Israeli government spokesmen and demonstraters in New York are still "going on" about the peculiarly humane Israeli way of making war. The protestations are wearing thin. B'tselim, the Israeli human rights conscience is seeking to know whether or not these accusations of inhumanity are correct. I, for one, will accept their judgment.

I have been in savage combats, and have had a hand in many more but the deliberate killing of children and women is something I have rarely seen. I have seen the VC kill Montagnard women and kids. That was the product of racial hatred on the part of the Vietnamese for these "Moi." That was a personal exception for me. Generally, fighters will walk away from the dead bodies of male adult enemies and leave the women and children to grieve and starve.

If this is different, the Israeli people need to know and to put a stop to it. pl