What's in the News - a Reality Check

"Sixteen Palestinians - the four boys, three adult civilians and nine
militants - were killed in missile strikes on Thursday, the medical
workers said.

The father of two of the youths wept in a Gaza hospital, unable to speak.

Medical workers said the boys were playing soccer when an Israeli missile struck.

An Israeli military spokeswoman said the missile targeted militants who had fired rockets at southern Israel."

This is the story I read from the ABC News here in Australia.

The question now is what to believe from this simple set of statements?

I suspect that those who are hostile to Israel and its actions will focus on the statement from the medical workers.

The words "the boys were playing soccer when an Israeli missile struck" will of course convey the message that the Israelis are brutal, immoral, non caring people who attack and kill innocent children just being children, out innocently playing soccer.

Those whose point of view is a little more aligned to the Israeli cause might suggest that targeting militants who had fired rockets at Southern Israel is not incompatible with the story of the medics.

Think about it from a time frame perspective:

1. rockets are fired and take some time to hit their targets
2. Israeli authorities take time to check the sites where the rockets have landed take more time to see if their systems can trace where these rockets had come from and then take more time to organise a missile strike in response.

What I am getting at is that quite a deal of time is likely to have passed before the Israelis respond to the rocket attacks.

If Shakespeare was right and people undertake multiple roles and wear 'manifold garb' in life then it's possible for young people to be firing rockets at one time frame and playing soccer at another time.

If you can understand and believe that many of the militants in Gaza (as elsewhere) are youths (indeed many soldiers in all wars, insurrections, rebellions, terrorist actions are young people)

If you can understand that often in Gaza it is difficult if not impossible to distinguish between the multiple roles that people have to play in life.

Then, here is no doubt that at some point young people will play a sport or play the role of a child or a son. This does NOT prevent or preclude them from playing another role at another point in time including that of a militant who sets up and fires rockets into Israel.

One the one hand it's possible that the Israelis struck at militants and mistakenly killed some innocent children who were doing nothing more heinous than playing soccer.

On the other hand it's also possible that these youths who are described as children were in reality militants.

There is no doubt that another part of the news which refers to the death of a six month old child when a missile hit a militants house while he was there with members of his family is regrettable, but the Israelis will target militant commanders whenever they can find out where they are. If these militant commanders put their families at risk, that's just too bad.

Considering the response of one Hamas leader who suggested that their women will continue to bear children whose fathers will mourn them as martyrs when they are killed - suggests that perhaps at least some of the propaganda that hopes to horrify the world, with stories of nasty Israelis killing innocent civilian children in Gaza needs to be taken with several grains of disbelief.