Child killed by Israeli troop fire
JERUSALEM -- Israeli troops shot to death a Palestinian child in the Gaza Strip on Saturday, Palestinian medical workers said, while in the West Bank soldiers clashed with Palestinian university students.
The unrest came a day after four Israelis died in a Palestinian attack on Jewish seminary students.
Palestinians said 9-year-old Hanneen Abu Suleiman was shot in the head outside her home in the Gaza Strip town of Khan Younis when troops opened fire from a Jewish settlement a few hundred yards away.
An Israeli military source said a preliminary inquiry showed that troops at a nearby army outpost came under Palestinian fire from the direction of a graveyard. The soldiers fired back but were unable to verify hitting anyone, the source said. Palestinians had said earlier there was no fighting when the child was shot.
Don't get me wrong; any death is a tragedy, particularly an innocent child. But let's try to maintain some perspective here, shall we? Before we begin excoriating the Israeli military, let's ask how many Jewish children Palestinian terrorists have been killed?
There is plenty of blood to go around in Israel, plenty of what Yitzhak Rabin once called "blood and tears". Yes, the death of Hanneen Abu Suleiman is a tragedy, but how much of it can be placed on Palestinians themselves for creating a defacto nationwide war zone? If Palestinians would stop bombing malls, buses, and pizzerias, perhaps more of their own would be alive today. And perhaps then they could stop turning their children into martyrs.
