True Evil Exposed: The Gaza School Incidents

I've separated out the two incidents occurring at UNRWA schools in Gaza from the rest of the Operation Cast Lead coverage because the incidents speak volumes about Hamas, the UN, UNRWA, and Palestinian culpability for the mayhem in Gaza.

Reuters has a photo with the following caption for the incident at a school where three Palestinians were killed.

6 hours ago: Palestinians survey the scene after an Israeli air strike at a United Nations school in Gaza January 6, 2009. An Israeli air strike killed three Palestinians in the United Nations school in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, medical workers and U.N. officials said.

What exactly was fired? Machine guns? Because it certainly wasn't anything larger than that - Hellfires blow up cars and leave craters and bombs leave gaping craters. Here? A small hole punched in the wall and smaller shrapnel holes. I think we've got some real questions about what happened at that school.

Israel may have opened fire on Hamas operating in close proximity to the school, and by the looks of it, used limited firepower in the process. The only sources providing details on who was killed or injured in the attack are Palestinians, who aren't exactly going to say that Hamas thugs were involved.

As a vivid reminder of what Israel is up against, here's Hamas busy firing kassams from outside a Gaza school in 2007. Some things don't change. They're still at it today:



More at Gateway Pundit. Hamas is also purposefully dragging children to be human shields in their war with Israel. Here's the visual proof:



So, keep that in mind as the reports come in on the incident in Gaza.

Kenneth at LGF points out that there are now conflicting reports about what happened in or near a school in Gaza. An AP report notes that Hamas fired on Israeli forces from the school and the Israeli return fire set off secondary explosions - meaning that Hamas used the school as a weapons depot:

n Israeli official says Palestinian militants fired on Israeli soldiers from the courtyard of a U.N. school where dozens of people died in fiery explosions.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he said the army is still drafting the country's official response to the incident.

The Israeli official said "hostile fire" was directed at the soldiers from within the school. He said soldiers returned fire and multiple explosions went off, presumably emanating from munitions stored there.

John Ging, head of Gaza operations for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, said most of the casualties at the U.N. school in Jebaliya, where some 350 people had taken refuge, were outside the building. He did not say whether the artillery came from Israeli forces.

More recent reports indicate that Hamas had boobytrapped the school, and that Hamas set off the explosions resulting in the multiple casualties.

The intended effect was to get the media to blame Israel for the carnage; some will inevitably do so regardless of the facts, but the fact is that Hamas uses human shields and purposefully uses UN and UNRWA facilities from which to carry out their evil intentions.

UNRWA and the UN bear special responsibility for this conflict since they have repeatedly gone out of their way to look the other way as Hamas has built up its military capabilities, while making demands of Israel to concede more of its security to terrorists.

Another way to look at this is that Hamas tried to pull a Beslan massacre. They rigged the school to blow, killing as many people as possible. In both instances, jihadis were responsible for the carnage and the hoped-for victims were mostly children.

UPDATE:
Israeli soldiers uncovered a weapons cache at another school in Gaza.

UPDATE:
The IDF reports that they recovered bodies of Hamas terrorists at the school location.

An IDF spokesman said that troops had fired mortar rounds at the school, after militants barricaded inside shot mortar shells at the Israeli forces.

"Initial checks ... show that from inside the school mortars were fired at Israeli forces," a spokesman said. "In response, the forces fired a number of mortar rounds into the area."

The army said that the bodies of numerous Hamas militants were found inside the school following the attack.

The attack brought the Palestinian death toll to nearly 600 in Israel's 11-day offensive on the Hamas-ruled coastal territory.

Two tank shells exploded outside the Gaza school, spraying shrapnel on people inside and outside the building, where hundreds of Palestinians had sought refuge from fighting between Israeli soldiers and Hamas militants. In addition to the dead, several dozen people were wounded, the officials said.

UPDATE:
Elder of Ziyon has more details about the location of the school, and that it was located in what can only be described as a surburban area of Gaza.

UPDATE:
Jeff Goldberg writes the following:

One more thing, speaking of pornography -- we've all seen endless pictures of dead Palestinian children now. It's a terrible, ghastly, horrible thing, the deaths of children, and for the parents it doesn't matter if they were killed by accident or by mistake. But ask yourselves this: Why are these pictures so omnipresent? I'll tell you why, again from firsthand, and repeated, experience: Hamas (and the Aksa Brigades, and Islamic Jihad, the whole bunch) prevents the burial, or even preparation of the bodies for burial, until the bodies are used as props in the Palestinian Passion Play. Once, in Khan Younis, I actually saw gunmen unwrap a shrouded body, carry it a hundred yards and position it atop a pile of rubble -- and then wait a half-hour until photographers showed. It was one of the more horrible things I've seen in my life. And it's typical of Hamas. If reporters would probe deeper, they'd learn the awful truth of Hamas. But Palestinian moral failings are not of great interest to many people.

I'd go much further than that; the media's refusal to dig deeper and expose Hamas and its gross brutality and unimaginable carnage is one of the reasons that Israel is in this fight at all. Had Hamas been exposed long ago, Israel would have been able to destroy Hamas before it managed to obtain longer range rockets and missiles affecting still more people. Each time Hamas is on the ropes, they trot out the corpses, and the media reprints and distributes them worldwide and the diplomats force Israel to stop killing the terrorists responsible for putting those children in harms' way. Today is no different.