Shades of Jenin Redux

The IDF final report has been released from the weekend Qana bombings and concludes that an intelligence failure lead to death of civilians at Qana. IDF General Chief of Staff Halutz has also implemented new protocol for evaluating any suspicious targets effective immediately. The Jerusalem Post carries this report:

The IDF inquiry into the Kana incident in which civilians were killed as a building collapsed released its final conclusions Thursday morning.

Two missiles, the only one of which exploded, hit the building on July 30. The army said that they had operated according to information that "the building was not inhabited by civilians and was being used as a hiding place for terrorists." Had they known that civilians were in the building, the attack would not have been carried out.

The IDF spokesperson noted that the building had been targeted only after residents had been warned to evacuate through various media, and that the building was adjacent to areas from which rockets had been launched towards Israel. Other buildings in the area had been targeted with no civilian casualties.

The Israelis are in the midst of a war, and yet, when it came to light that the IAF had targeted a building that contained primarily civilians an apology immediately came not only from the IDF General Chief of Staff but the Prime Minister of Israel as well as the Israeli Minister of Defense. While in the midst of a war the IDF conducted an investigation which in no way exonerated the IDF of responsibility for those deaths, and furthermore, a protocol was established in the hopes that this kind of intelligence failure can be avoided in the future.

Meanwhile Hezbollah in a 24 hour period has launched 210 rockets into Israelis civilian population centres with the expressed purpose of killing Israeli non-combatants. No apology has been issued from Nashrallah or Hezbollah for the deliberately targeting of Israeli civilians, nor has Hezbollah issued any directives to its terrorists operatives to spare the lives of Israeli civilians.

Ironicaly enough, there are still shades of the Jenin Massarce fiasco at work in Qana. Contrary to initial media reports the body count is substantially lower than was originally widely reported. Not only has the International Red Cross failed to find 60 bodies at Qana, even the rabidly anti-Israel NGO, Human Rights Watch also concludes only 28 civilians died at Qana and not 57+ as was reported initially in the main stream media and Arab media.