JERUSALEM POST: Steinitz: Palestinians are perpetrating war crimes

Wednesday's killing of 15 Palestinians by a helicopter missile in Rafah is a sad and tragic event, said Knesset foreign affairs and defense committee chairman Dr. Yuval Steinitz (Likud) speaking on Israel Radio Wednesday afternoon.

"Something is definitely wrong," he said, "but something is even worse with a Palestinian enemy that skewers its own people in the fighting. The terrorist organizations and the Palestinian administration injure Israeli civilians intentionally using rockets and suicide bombers, and if this operation fails, they will target Israeli civilians using Katyusha rockets, as well."

"Furthermore, they are prepared to place their own people and their children into the eye of the fighting in order that there will be Palestinian civilian casualties," he said.

"I am the last to avoid criticizing the army, sometimes even harshly," Steinitz said. "But you cannot avoid shooting at armed gunmen just because they are surrounding themselves with innocent civilians. I would even say that placing Israeli soldiers at risk in order to do so would in itself be an illegal order."

(To deny the Palestinian use of women and children as human shields as a terrorist act on the part of the Palestinians is ultimately a denial of their humanity by the UN and other NGO human rights groups.)