Gaza: Civilian Casualty Watch !

And let's drop a bomb on that old saw about "the first causalty of war" being truth, when it really is the media that bites it first...The AP reports:

The new deaths brought the death toll in the Gaza Strip to more than 500 since Dec. 27. Palestinian and U.N. officials say at least 100 civilians are among the dead.

The only problem is that the AP, UN and Palestinian officials have been using the "at least 100" figure for quite a while; note this 400 dead/100 civilians report from a few days back. What, have the Israelis killed over 100 consecutive enemy combatants in a row without offing a single civilian? Most humane army ever, that's what I'd say....

But not the French, who report an unsubstantiated and unrepeated claim by the Palestinians that:

At least 75 of those killed have been children, according to emergency services inside Gaza.

They also refer to Hamas fighters as mere "Palestinians" in this article as well, so perhaps there is nothing but civilian casualties, as far as the French are concerned. Then again, as a bulk of brave Hamas' front-line soldiers are often teenagers, maybe the report is accurate.

And now one begins to wonder...how many of the dead "civilian" bodies being turned up by the UN were actually killed by Hamas thenselves? The J-Post reports:

Fatah officials in Ramallah told The Jerusalem Post that Hamas militiamen had been assaulting many Fatah activists since the beginning of the operation last Saturday. They said at least 75 activists were shot in the legs while others had their hands broken.

"Hamas is very nervous, because they feel that their end is nearing," a senior Fatah official said. "They have been waging a brutal campaign against Fatah members in the Gaza Strip."

Meanwhile, sources close to Hamas revealed over the weekend that the movement had "executed" more than 35 Palestinians who were suspected of collaborating with Israel and were being held in various Hamas security installations.

The sources quoted Hamas officials as saying that the decision to kill the suspected collaborators was taken out of fear that Israel might try to rescue them during a ground offensive.

Nothing here is surprising - not Hamas' brutal savagry towards their fellow Palestinians, nor the media's unwillingness to tell this story, lest it interrupt their by-rote storyline.
But do the math - assuming the AP/UN/Pali civilian body count is high by at least 30% (it is usually closer to 50%), and "at least" 35 Palestinians were killed by intertribal warefare, then we see that fully half of the noncombat deaths in Gaza were by Hamas' own hand.

Again, the figures bespeak to an amazingly accurate targeting regimen by the Israelis...Gaza civilians are lucky that the Israel does not go with the simple-but-effective "Hamas-style" of missile attack, that is to say, firing rockets willy-nilly into strictly civilian targets. I think the Palestinians would thank the Israelis if they could, but since Hamas has either killed them or busted up their hands and legs...