A spokesman for Magen David Adom (Israel's version of the Red Cross), which is operating the clinic in cooperation with the Welfare and Social Services Ministry and the Health Ministry said that so far only seven Palestinian children with cancer had arrived at the center for treatment. MDA hasy stationed a mobile intensive care unit and four ambulances have been stationed at the clinic

  The facility is staffed with emergency specialists, pediatricians, family physicians, gynecologists/obstetricians, trauma experts, surgeons, orthopedists, ophthalmologists, otolaryngologists and other experts. Speaking at its inauguration, government officials said that the clinic would accept all patients and that the more serious cases would be referred to Israeli hospitals.

Moral Equivalence?

  Israel's critics expend much ink and hot air attempting to equate murderous terrorist attacks with Palestinian civilians injured or killed when the Jews defend themselves. It bears repeating yet once more that Israel is not interested in ruling the Gazans, else why would they have departed not so long ago; nor are the Israelis trying to exterminate the people of Gaza. Israelis are reluctant warriors. Remember what was said by former prime minister Golda Meir -"we can forgive you for killing our sons but we cannot forgive you for making our sons killers."

  What should Isael do? Exercise restraint while its citizens are killed a few at a time so as to avoid the possibility that a single Palestinian non-combatant might be killed? Think about it. What if an American President learned that Osama bin Laden and was holed up in a bunker underneath a hospital in Afghanistan occupied by women and children deployed as shields? Launch an immediate cruise missile strike in an attempt to decapitate al-Qaeda and possibly forestall further 9/11 style terrorist attacks or hesitate because of the hostages? Should America act there would be the inevitable firestorm of international protest from the Arab and Muslim world charging the American response was "disproportionate" a violation of humanitarian international law and even a "war crime".

  Even the most-disciplined, best-intentioned armies errantly kill civilians caught in the crossfire as well as their own soldiers who die in friendly fire incidents. Thousands of French civilians were killed by the Allies during World War II's Normandy Invasion. In the current asymmetrical war with Hamas, the Israeli troops have used cellphone messages, leaflets, and other measures to warn non-combatants of impending strikes on Hamas positions and facilities deliberately sited in their midst. The hundreds of trucks laden with foodstuffs and medicine into Gaza from Israel has now been expanded into a daily corridor in order to ensure a steady flow of humanitarian supplies, even when that means some military activities are suspended for hours.

Israel cares more about the Palestinians than their own leaders

  Consider this front page article in the (January 10, 2009) NY Times: A Gaza War Full of Traps and Trickery:

  Hamas, with training from Iran and Hezbollah, has used the last two years to turn Gaza into a deadly maze of tunnels, booby traps and sophisticated roadside bombs. Weapons are hidden in mosques, schoolyards and civilian houses, and the leadership’s war room is a bunker beneath Gaza’s largest hospital, Israeli intelligence officials say.

  Unwilling to take Israel’s bait and come into the open, Hamas militants are fighting in civilian clothes; even the police have been ordered to take off their uniforms...

  Israeli officials say that they are obeying the rules of war and trying hard not to hurt noncombatants but that Hamas is using civilians as human shields in the expectation that Israel will try to avoid killing them.

  ... [E]ven Israel’s critics agree that Hamas’s regular use of rockets to fire at civilians in Israel, and its use of civilians as shields in Gaza, are also violations of the rules of war. Israeli military men and analysts say that its urban guerrilla tactics, including the widespread use of civilian structures and tunnels, are deliberate and come from the Iranian Army’s tactical training and the lessons of the 2006 war between Israel and Iranian-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.

  But the Israelis are doing a great deal to avoid civilian casualties:

  The Israelis say they are also using new weapons, like a small-diameter smart bomb, the GBU-39, ... which is very accurate, has a small explosive, as little as 60 to 80 pounds, to minimize collateral damage in an urban area. But it can also penetrate the earth to hit bunkers or tunnels.

  A new Israeli weapon, meanwhile, is tailored to the Hamas tactic of asking civilians to stand on the roofs of buildings so Israeli pilots will not bomb. The Israelis are countering with a missile designed, paradoxically, not to explode. They aim the missiles at empty areas of the roofs to frighten residents into leaving the buildings, a tactic called “a knock on the roof.

  Hamas tactics are working just fine! Hamas sends its own children into the line of fire and the European and American Left reward them by criticizing the Israelis for "brutality." Because they can be counted upon to reward Hamas for using human shields, they arguably bear responsibility for encouraging the use of human shields. Ironically, the very people who pride themselves on their "concern" for Palestinian children are ensuring, through their actions, that more children will be deliberately used as cannon fodder.

  No one cares about the Palestinians, least of all their "supporters." Rather than condemning the people who deliberately arranged for the deaths of innocent people, the European and American Left actually rewards them. The next time any "supporters" of the Palestinians consider how to inform the world of their "support," they might ask themselves the following question: "Will my action, writing, comments, etc. prevent the use of human shields or encourage it? If your action will encourage the use of innocent Palestinians as human shields, you should probably not do it ... but that applies only if you actually care about the Palestinians, of course. I am very sad and hurt," she said, in Arabic. "We want peace, not war." She refused to identify herself or have her picture taken, for fear of retribution if her presence in Israel was discovered in Gaza.

  For its efforts, Israel gets nothing but diplomatic and media condemnation from those willfully blind to the ultimate outrage against humanitarian international law occurring today in Gaza.

  Why this willful blindness? For some, it is the romanticized image of Hamas; underdog David confronting the giant Israeli Goliath. Israel is a sovereign member state of the United Nations that has no need to apologize for creating a military strong enough to defend it from multiple regional threats, including Tehran's genocidal promise to "wipe it off the map." Those who dismiss threats from Iran and Hamas as mere rhetoric should take a closer look at history. As Ron Rosenbaum recently pointed out, the most significant difference between Adolf Hitler's and Hamas's plans to annihilate the Jewish people is that the Nazis hid their full intent until World War II while Hamas has been promising to do exactly this since its founding charter 20 years ago. And while Hamas does not possess the power of an Adolf Hitler, a nuclearized Iran may be positioned to further the fuehrer's vision of a Judenrein world. It is important to remember that the Nazi leader was incapable of perpetrating the Final Solution until he was empowered by the tacit complicity of a world community that retreated from reality rather than confront the rising tide of evil that was Nazism.

  The Gaza conflict should be remembered as a terrible watershed, not because the IDF has unintentionally killed Palestinian civilians but because Hamas has made the use of human shields a primary military strategy. Buoyed by the unforgivable silence of leading international NGOs, Hamas deploys two complementary tactics that mock and debase the humanitarian core of international law: thousands of indiscriminate rocket attacks targeting Israeli civilians and the massive use of Palestinian civilians—including women and children—as human shields.

  The future of international humanitarian law could be at stake in Gaza. But the deadly menace stems not from the IDF but from Hamas's twin campaign of terrorism against both Israeli and Palestinian innocents. The Gaza terrorist state that turns its own people into human shields also threatens to strip the entire civilized world of the protections of international law. Ultimately, Israel will safeguard its own citizens and secure its own destiny, but if the nations of the world do not speak out against Hamas's barbarities, they should be prepared to see such tactics unleashed beyond the borders of the Holy Land, cheered on by the puppet masters of terrorism in Tehran.

The following from the Wall Street Journal puts the situation more eloquently than al-Ghoul's webmaster could ever hope to do:

"Unlike the Russians, Rayyan did not love his children."

Stinging Hamas

A war even a simple-minded rock star should support.

  "One of the silliest rock songs of the 1980s was "Russians," a solo number by Sting (né Gordon Sumner), erstwhile lead singer for the Police. It was a simple-minded anthem of Cold War moral equivalence that combined truisms ("We share the same biology / Regardless of ideology") with manifest falsehoods ("There is no monopoly of common sense / On either side of the political fence") to draw an utterly fatuous conclusion about nuclear strategy:

There's no such thing as a winnable war
It's a lie that we don't believe anymore
Mr. Reagan says we will protect you
I don't subscribe to this point of view
Believe me when I say to you
I hope the Russians love their children too

  "Of course, Mr. Reagan knew very well that a nuclear war was unwinnable, which is why he strengthened America's deterrent capability, protecting us and ultimately making it possible to win the Cold War. However much the Russians loved their children, it took Reagan to free them (and the children of the captive nations of Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia) from the monstrous ideology of communism (though to be sure, Russia and some of the others still have big problems).

James Taranto on Sting and Nizar Rayyan.

  "OK, so Sting got the Cold War wrong. Whatever. But we were reminded of this by a post from blogger David Gerstman on the current war between Israel and Hamas, the terrorist group that holds sway in Gaza. Yesterday, as ABC News reports, an Israeli air strike killed Hamas leader Nizar Rayyan and 15 members of his "family": four wives, six sons and five daughters.

  "Unlike the Russians, Rayyan did not love his children. Gerstman tracks down a year 2000 New York Times story (written by the notoriously anti-American Chris Hedges) that quoted the terrorist as hoping for his own sons' deaths:

  ""There was not a single night that we did not think and talk about Palestine,'' Mr. Rayyan said, his eyes moist. ''We were taught that our lives must be devoted to reclaiming our land."

  "Mr. Rayyan spent 12 years in an Israeli jail for his pursuit of that end. His brother-in-law was a suicide bomber who blew up an Israeli bus in 1998. His brother was shot dead by Israelis in street protests seven years ago. Another brother was expelled to Lebanon and several more were wounded in clashes.

  "Today, his three sons--ages 12, 15 and 16--daily join the youths who throw rocks at Israeli checkpoints. All, he said, yearn to be one thing--martyrs for Palestine. "I pray only that God will choose them," he said.

  "The Jerusalem Post's Khaled Abu Toameh reports that Rayyan got his wish in at least one case:

  "At the beginning of the second intifada, Rayyan sent one of his sons to carry out a suicide attack in Gush Katif's Elei Sinai in 2001. Two Israelis were killed. Rayyan was also responsible for a series of suicide bombings and attacks inside the Green Line, including the suicide bombing in Ashdod Port in 2004 in which 10 Israelis died.

  "As it turns out, the Israel Defense Forces cared more about Rayyan's children than he did. YNetNews.com reports :

  "Prior to striking Rayyan's house the IDF tried to warn his family about the imminent attack and urged them to evacuate the place, but they refused to do so.

  Ha'aretz reports that this is typical:

  "The IDF has made frequent use of what is known as "knocking on the roof": Militants are warned by phone when a residential building used to store arms will be bombed, and told to vacate the premised [sic] together with their neighbors. The weapons caches are hit only after the residents leave.

  "Hamas has tried placing civilians on the roofs of such buildings when the phone call warning comes in. In these cases, the IDF fired antitank missiles near the building, and in a few cases the residents left.

  "Israel is so scrupulous about civilian life," notes columnist Charles Krauthammer, "that, risking the element of surprise, it contacts enemy noncombatants in advance to warn them of approaching danger." He sums up the situation nicely:

  "For Hamas, the only thing more prized than dead Jews are dead Palestinians. The religion of Jew-murder and self-martyrdom is ubiquitous. And deeply perverse, such as the Hamas TV children's program in which an adorable live-action Palestinian Mickey Mouse is beaten to death by an Israeli (then replaced by his more militant cousin, Nahoul the Bee, who vows to continue on Mickey's path to martyrdom).

  "At war today in Gaza, one combatant is committed to causing the most civilian pain and suffering on both sides. The other combatant is committed to saving as many lives as possible--also on both sides.

  "The moral asymmetry is so great that Israel is on the right side even by Sting's standards.

Update; aka Hamas General Hospital - Episode III "Isolation Ward"

  "The Palestinian newspaper Ma'an reports that the Palestinian Authority’s Health Ministry accused the Hamas-run de facto government’s security services of turning medical centers into prisons.

  "According to a statement from the Health Ministry, Hamas has used hospitals and clinics in Gaza as interrogation and detention centers, where medical staffers have been expelled.

  "Don't ya' just love these guys?

  "After Israel ended its aggression in the Gaza Strip, the Health Ministry was surprised that Hamas militants returned to their old behavior, expelling medical staff and using medical centers as detention centers, and for torture and interrogation,” the statement said.

  "Hospitals affiliated with the PA that were taken over include Al-Quds Hospital in Tal Al-Hawa, a Red Crescent initiative, parts of the Ash-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, the upper and lower floors of the An-Nasser Hospital, as well as the Psychiatric Hospital, according to the statement.

Sources:

Gaza Rockets Force Israeli Hospital Underground

Hamas puts Gazans in danger by drawing IDF into urban warfare

Hamas command bunker placed under largest Gaza hospital

A Gaza War Full of Traps and Trickery

The Threat of the Human Shield Strategy Hamas Uses Extends Beyond Israel, Gaza

Unlike the Russians, Rayyan did not love his children

Captured Hamas Intelligence, 9 Jan 2009, 16:26 IST

Dichter: Hamas salaries paid at Shifa Hospital

Hamas leader escaped Gaza in an ambulance

Gazans stay away from Israeli clinic