During the brief summer Israeli war against the Gaza Strip, Israeli forces repeatedly attacked UN facilities, particularly schools, that they knew for a fact were full of displaced civilians.

The UN inquiry expressed “dismay” at the Israeli strikes, noting they killed 44 Palestinian civilians and wounded 227 others in attacks on emergency shelters.

Israel has defended the attacks, insisting that other, closed schools were being used to hide weapons. Oddly, those sites don’t appear to have been attacked, and Israel instead hit UN sites they knew were loaded down with civilians that had just days prior been ordered out of their homes by the Israeli military.

Pentagon lawyers issued their own report, and while they insisting they weren’t judging “specific incidents,” they did praise the Israeli military, insisting that the decisions on targets to strike were largely in line with what the US military would’ve done under the same circumstances.

The killings loom large in a potential ICC investigation into Israeli war crimes against civilians in the occupied territories, and reflect the continued efforts by the US to keep Israel immune from any consequences for their actions.