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Source: https://spectator.com/article/no-israel-isnt-deliberately-targeting-children-in-gaza/
No, Israel Isn't "Deliberately Targeting" Children in Gaza
(Spectator-UK) Jonathan Sacerdoti - The UN's Independent International Commission of Inquiry has published a 94-page paper claiming Israel "deliberately targeted" Palestinian children during the war in Gaza - language implying war crimes and crimes against humanity. So you would expect, at minimum, one clearly documented case: a soldier who identified a child as a child, and killed that child for no reason other than that they were a child. But the Commission cannot produce one. What it produces instead, according to a detailed rebuttal by the watchdog UN Watch, is a chain of assumptions dressed up as findings. Instead, case after case follows the same pattern: a family account, a doctor's guess about which weapon caused a wound, and a conclusion of premeditated murder. The report leans heavily on doctors, who are, generally speaking, highly trusted members of society. But they are people trained to treat gunshot wounds, not to identify which weapon fired the bullet, from where, or why. They aren't eye witnesses and have no way of knowing the veracity of the story told to them. Throughout the report, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters simply vanish. Strip the enemy out of a war and every dead child looks like a deliberate execution rather than what war actually is: chaotic and lethal. The Commission then quietly invents a new rule of war, treating any Israeli strike on a position embedded with civilians as proof of intent to kill those civilians. This is a standard no army on earth has ever been held to. The public sees "UN report finds Israel deliberately killed children" and takes it as established truth, when an advocacy narrative has simply been given a UN letterhead. That is how bias gets dressed up as authority - and how a country can be convicted in the court of world opinion before any real court has heard a shred of tested evidence. Worse still, these reports will be used as "evidence" in real courts, and nobody will question it because it came from the UN. Israel's conduct in Gaza deserves scrutiny like any other military's. But scrutiny built on speculation and unverifiable testimony does not provide that accountability. UN bodies damage not only Israel's reputation, but also their own, when they simply launder wild allegations with little or no evidence.