Pajamas Media » Middle East Terror and Double Standards

Pajamas Media » Middle East Terror and Double Standards: "On Monday NATO announced that two errant rockets fired by U.S. forces the day before had killed 12 Afghan civilians, including six children, in a house in the Taliban stronghold of Marjeh. Afghan President Hamid Karzai expressed “sadness” and ordered an investigation. NATO is worried about the impact in terms of winning local support.

But there has been no outcry or condemnations, certainly not from democratic governments or even from the UN. The lack of an international response seems to reflect awareness that the killings were accidental and that it is intrinsic to the nature of war that such incidents occur.

But it was different back on November 8, 2006, when three misfired Israeli artillery shells hit a residential area in the town of Beit Hanoun in Gaza, killing 19 civilians. The shells were fired in a bid to prevent an imminent rocket attack on the Israeli city of Ashkelon, of which there had already been several. Israeli forces had been engaged in skirmishes in Gaza in a direct attempt to protect Israeli communities from the rockets — and it was all happening a year and some months after Israel had evacuated Gaza completely and put an end to what was called its “occupation.”"