Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Shooting at schools
To "retaliate" -- and I use the term advisedly -- for Israel's efforts to recover one of its own soldiers held hostage in the Gaza Strip, Palestinians fired a rocket into an Israeli high school. There was nobody in it at the time, but one is forced to wonder how the Palestinians knew that.
Meanwhile, there seems to be some confusion over whether Islam permits the execution of hostages:
The three Palestinian factions holding the soldier had set a deadline of 6 a.m. Tuesday (11 p.m. Monday, Eastern time) for Israel to begin releasing Palestinian prisoners, threatening unspecified consequences for the soldier, who was captured June 25. The implication was that they might kill him, but the captors left that unclear.
"Whether he will be killed or not killed, we will not disclose any information," said Abu al-Muthana, a spokesman for the Army of Islam, one of the factions.
But he also said: "We do not kill captives. Our Islam requires that we treat captives well and fairly."
Yet a young Israeli settler in the West Bank, Eliyahu Asheri, 18, who was also captured last week, was executed with a single bullet to the head and his body was found in a shallow grave. The Popular Resistance Committees, another of the groups holding Corporal Shalit, took responsibility for killing Mr. Asheri.
It seems to me that this is something that Islamic scholars might want to clear up. I'd hate to think that any of these creeps might accidentally go to Hell.
UPDATE: Roger L. Simon believes the attack is a deliberate attempt to trigger a war.
2 Comments:
By 
Final Historian, at
Wed Jul 05, 05:04:00 PM:
I don't see Roger mentioning the word War anywhere, but it fits my theory. I think that Hamas secretly wants to start another Intifadah, seeing it as the only way it can keep power.
By 
, at
Wed Jul 05, 07:09:00 PM:
The rest of the world does not care about the truth. Remember Beslam. The Palestinians did it much earlier to an Israeli school.
I do not recall any condemnation at the time and the same would happen if the rocket had caused casualties.
