In a heartbreaking story emerging this week, four Palestinian children aged 10 and 11 were killed and other little boys wounded as a result of a botched Israeli drone strike. The event was witnessed by journalists and others from the balcony of a local hotel, and the horrific photos emerging of the bodies is stirring international outrage.
(Image courtesy of middleeasteye.net.)
Here is the article in question:
https://theintercept.com/2018/08/11/israel-palestine-drone-strike-operation-protective-edge/
Check out this sad excerpt from the above link:
"'Everyone involved in the strike, including the air force officer who coordinated the attack from Palmachim air base, told investigators that even though they had a live video feed of the area during the attack, 'we couldn’t tell they were children.' The testimonies also reveal a crucial moment when the attack could have been halted, but was not. After the first missile was fired at the shack, killing one of the boys, and the other children ran out to the beach, the attack team requested clarification about how far onto the beach they were permitted to fire.
The attack team radioed a superior officer, asking where, exactly, the area designated a closed military zone ended. They wanted to know if there was a point at which they could no longer shoot at the fleeing figures, as they approached an area of beach umbrellas and tents used by civilians. When they received no response to that query, the attack team fired a second missile at the fleeing children, about 30 seconds after the first strike, which killed three of the boys and wounded at least one more of their cousins."
The attack took place near a shipping container on a pier that the IDF had previously determined (without solid proof of any kind) was being used to cache weapons used by Hamas. They also claim the area was cordoned off and not accessible to the public, when that obviously was not the case on the fateful day.
Now, anyone can make mistakes..especially "military intelligence," which is often the worst oxymoron known to mankind. But, this attack points out a couple of obvious issues that DEMAND a convention banning armed drones. The U.S. Military, of course, is, by far, the worse offender when it comes to raining terror down on innocent people from the skies as they are left hoping...as Barbara Bush once spitefully was know to have said...that somebody DOES "worry their beautiful mind" about collateral damage to innocents. Too often, as this news story points out, that is not the case. It is clearly becoming a question of "shoot first, then gather the real intelligence afterwards."
This heart wrenching story shows that the precision videography that we are told makes the killing of innocents near impossible is total B.S. The Isareli courts of inquiry in this case have cleared the team that killed these children of any wrongdoing because they claim the resolution was too poor to determine whether those fleeing were children or adults. So, I say "WELL THEN DON'T USE THE DAMNED THINGS AT ALL!!!"
The other problem is the cursory dismissal of charges that the IDF has done..essentially the fox guarding the hen house has decided that killing a few hens was regrettable but inevitable as the hens got in the way of the foxes' claws and teeth. There is something doubly wrong about these murders...the fact there is no system in place to prevent them, and that Barbara Bush's attitude about collateral damage appears to be pervasive among western military leaders, and that THERE IS NO JUSTICE AGAINST THE PERPS IN THE AFTERMATH...and this makes future similar crimes inevitable.
(Image courtesy of dawn.com.)
Given those two factors, anybody can (and may) be droned from the sky at any time, anywhere, with no real restraint applied whatsoever.
The world needs to address this issue ASAP.