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The Cold, Cold Heart of Hamas

[Village Voice] Nat Hentoff - Imagine yourself living in a city or a rural area and being targeted almost every day for months, and even years, by missiles that keep you in constant fear. You might expect your government to negotiate with these faceless people who want to destroy you. But what if they don't recognize the right of your government to exist? What then? Insisting that it had no choice but to retaliate, Israel maintains it had no intention to kill civilians and has always tried not to. The deadly problem is that, like Hizbullah, Hamas deliberately operates its rocket attacks from deep inside civilian Palestinian neighborhoods, and sometimes in the very homes of noncombatants. Yet the great majority of those describing Israel's retaliation as inhuman because of the civilians killed do not mention that using civilians as human shields is a war crime under international law.
2008-03-19 01:00:00
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