05/02/2004: "Cowardly beasts strike again"

Hamas has again demonstrated what it's made of. In what it says was a response to the assassinations of former leaders Yassin and Rantisi, it went right for the heart of the enemy:

A pregnant mother and her four daughters were shot dead Sunday after two terrorists opened fire at Israeli cars traveling near the Kissufim Crossing at the entrance to the Gush Katif settlement bloc in the Gaza Strip.

The dead were identified as Tali Hatuel, 34, eight months pregnant and her daughters Hila, 11, Hadar, 9, Roni, 7, Merav, 2 all from the settlement of Katif. The five were laid to rest 6.30 pm on Sunday at the new cemetery in Ashkelon. Tali's husband David, a school principal in Ashkelon, was not with the family at the time and is left on his own.

The Hamas, the Islamic Jihad and Popular Resistance Committees claimed joint responsibility for the attack, saying it was to avenge the assassinations of Hamas leaders Sheikh Yassin and Rantisi. The 'Resistance Committees' is a group associated with PA Chairman Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement. There has been no statement from the Palestinian Authority regarding the attack.

Damian Penny comments on this and nails it:

Six weeks ago, Israel launched a fatal missile strike against the "spiritual leader" of Hamas, Sheikh Yassin, and the world recoiled in horror. "War crime!" people cried. "Murder! The cowardly killing of an old blind man in a wheelchair!"

Today, gunmen from Hamas and Islamic Jihad walked up to a car containing a mother and her four daughters, aged 2 to 11, and shot them all dead at close range.

And you know the same people who were so shocked and outraged by the assasination of Yassin are already working on excuses. They were "settlers". The mother had a bumper sticker on her car speaking out against Sharon's plan to evacuate Gaza (a plan Israel's opponents also oppose, of course, because it doesn't involve the complete liquidation of the Jewish state). They had a nice car while Palestinians live in poverty. The children would have been conscripted someday, so they weren't really civilians. It's a Zionist conspiracy to make sure Likud members vote down the Sharon plan. The attack wasn't carried out by a state, so it wasn't really a war crime (never mind the well-documented rhetorical, political and financial support Arafat has given to these groups, of course).

And above all, they were Jews. And Jews aren't really human.