Does the Rule of Law Matter?

I rarely watch Channel 4 news and Krishnan Guru-Murthy’s interviewing approach is hardly my cup of tea, but having heard Justin Webb questioning Bristol’s Black Mayor this morning, I must say that I thought Channel 4 was the more probing of the two. Was Marvin Rees in favour of ‘direct (mob) action’ or was he in favour of upholding the rule of law? 

Isn’t there a little inconsistency in a black mayor, who (let’s assume) had been democratically elected, speaking so unequivocally about institutional racism against black people? I suppose this is a case where the exception (dis)proves the rule, but nevertheless, someone might have pointed out the irony there. 

“We have a statue of someone who made their money by throwing our people into water…and now he’s on the bottom of the water.” – Labour’s Marvin Rees, the directly elected Mayor of Bristol.

Militant black power (strongly connected to the Nation of Islam) is one of the most racist anti-white organisations that has ever been created. Having listened to Any Questions and Any Answers (which left this topic to the last minute) I gather that white people are collectively responsible for the murder of George Floyd, but it's unclear if anti-racism covers all forms of racism, or is merely a skin-shade type of thing.

What if you're a little more olive-skinned than your average whitey? When schools used to send us those over-priced whole-class photos that we were expected to buy, our children’s little olivey-complexioned faces always stood out amongst a sea of pale-pinks and the occasional little black one.  Can you get a Pantone shade-card that determines whether your life matters or not?

I think I’m excluded from both white privilege and black victimhood, and these anti-racist demonstrators seem remarkably unconcerned about a whole lot of race-related injustices that affect people of all hues or are perpetrated by blacks.

Oh, and watching Labour’s democratically elected Dawn Butler complaining about racism on the BBC whilst the Labour Party is being investigated by the ECHR for antisemitism is another of the inconsistent messages that the BBC routinely lets the most hypocritical and obviously opportunistic BLM advocates get away with.
 
Update:
Brendan O’Neill

"The idea that the tearing down of Colston's statue was a reckoning with the historic crime of slavery is especially ridiculous. Britain has had its reckoning with the horrors of slavery. The entire West has. I bet you could not find a single person in this country who thinks slavery was anything other than an abomination. 

[...] "Everyone knows how immoral slavery was. There is something deeply patronising in the idea that we all needed to witness the performative iconoclasm of the woke Taliban in Bristol yesterday in order to understand how terrible slavery is. Believe it or not, British people are not racists biting at the bit for the return of slavery. 

[…]"Colston lavished money on Bristol. He funded alms houses, schools, hospitals. Some of these institutions are still standing. Tear them down? After all, they were built with the blood money of a slave trader.

Will Heaven has also written about this in the Spectator and ITV has even produced a shortlist of persons and institutions that, it could be argued, should be torn down and erased from history in accordance with the revisionist ‘black revolution’. Edward Colston and of course Cecil Rhodes, Sir Robert Peel and a plethora of street names.

Who's Lying? (IV)

Meanwhile, here's a little Channel 4-BBC exchange:

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: Extraordinarily the BBC says it will no longer allow journalists to call somebody a liar because it is for audiences to judge motive. Does this include people convicted of telling lies? Or people whose deliberate untruth can be proven?

Andrew Neil: Deliberate untruth is very hard to prove. Our job is to probe for truths and untruths. But we are not judge and jury. It’s for the people to decide and they don’t need our guidance. Just our efforts. I’m very happy with David Jordan’s sound sense.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: What about somebody convicted of perjury?

Andrew Neil: Then in that specific case, fine to mention it. But not to say you were a proven liar in this so you must be a lying about everything else.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: Of course. But I’m guessing you would put it to somebody that they are a liar if you have evidence that they have deliberately said things that are untrue. I accept a difference between labelling and putting to them that they are a liar.

Andrew Neil: Then we’re pretty much in agreement! Including your second sentence. I would do that too if I had the evidence.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: Would you say Trump is a liar?

The conversation seems to have either paused or ended there. Disappointingly, as I'd have liked to hear Andrew Neil's reply to that.

Who's the fairest of them all?

If you're interested, here are the results of the other surveys by Mark Lees:

Just looked at the last 50 tweets & retweets on Beth Rigby's Twitter Timeline. Of the last 50 tweets or rt's, 18 included overtly critical messaging of a political party. Of those 18: 15 were critical of the Tories. 2 were critical of Labour. 1 was critical of the Lib Dems.
As a % of criticism towards a particular party: 83% criticism of the Tories. 11% criticism of Labour. 6% criticism of the Lib Dems. 0% criticism of the SNP. 0% criticism of the Greens. 0% criticism of the BXP Source: Beth Rigby's Twitter timeline, last 50 tweets & rt's.

Here are Kay Burley's stats: Of the last 50 tweets and retweets, 24 overtly criticise a political party. Of the 24: 23 criticise the Conservatives 1 criticises Labour 0 criticise the Lib Dems 0 criticise the BXP 0 criticise the SNP 0 criticise the Greens 0 criticise Plaid
As a percentage that is: 96% criticism of the Conservatives. 4% criticism of Labour. 0% criticism of the Lib Dems. 0% criticism of the SNP. 0% criticism of the Greens. 0% criticism of the BXP. Source: Kay Burley's twitter timeline, last 50 tweets and retweets.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy

Of the last 50 tweets or retweets on Krishnan's timeline, 15 tweets overtly criticise a political party.

11 criticise the Conservatives. 3 criticise the Lib Dems. 1 criticises Labour. 0 criticise the SNP. 0 criticise the Brexit Party.
As percentages: 73% criticism against the Tories. 20% criticism against the Lib Dems. 7% criticism against Labour. 0% criticism of any other party. Source: Krishnan Guru-Murthy's Twitter timeline. Last 50 tweets or retweets.

Just looked at the last 50 tweets or retweets on Robert Peston's Twitter feed. Of the 50 tweets or retweets, 17 overtly criticised a political party. Of those 17: 12 criticise the Tories 3 criticise the Lib Dems 2 criticise Labour 0 for any other party.

You may have noticed a pattern. But there's one exception (so far):

Laura Kuenssberg
Of the last 50 tweets or retweets on Laura Kuenssberg's timeline, 12 were overtly critical of a political party. Of those 12: 6 criticised the Conservatives. 6 criticised the Labour Party. 0 criticism of other parties.
In percentages: 50% criticism of the Conservatives. 50% criticism of the Labour Party. That's an exact balance of criticism between the 2 main parties. Source: Laura Kuenssberg's Twitter Timeline. Last 50 tweets or retweets.

Weel done, Laura K!

This evenings viewing

You’ll have heard that Tony Hall has reversed the BBC’s unfortunate decision about Naga Munchetti and she has been uncensured. Will heads roll? Come back John Humphrys, that’s your speciality isn’t it?

I intended to watch Jane Corbin’s take on the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, mainly because I’ve just mastered the fluent pronunciation of 'Khashoggi', with both adjacent gs (hard and soft) bound seamlessly together, which is more than most BBC announcers can manage. 

The problem was that the TV was tuned to Channel Four and I was transfixed by the post-conference interview with a portly-looking Krishnan Guru-Murphy, Rachel Sylvester, Craig Oliver and Gillian Keegan MP. 

Tory MP Gillian Keegan tells @krishgm re Johnson groping claims: ‘I've no reason not to believe him’ https://t.co/ZGhx9zfywd

— Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) September 30, 2019

Unsurprisingly, being Channel 4, the topic they were most excited about was Boris and thigh-gate. Who lied? If it wasn’t Charlotte Edwardes with her extra e, it must be Boris, the lying letch.

I had been reflecting on the increasing ubiquity of Rachel Sylvester as seen on TV. She’s been on loadsa political programmes recently. She’s a columnist for The Times, yet she appears to be a very priggish lefty. 

In the event, I sacrificed the first half of Khashoggi to my own morbid need to see how far Channel 4 could go with their petty, childish and spiteful Boris-bashing gossip. Gillian Keegan was the only sane person present and Guru-Murthy was almost beside himself with glee.

Looking at Rachel Sylvester’s spite-flecked eyes and listening to her squeaky voice one couldn’t help thinking that no-one’s going to be touching any of her body parts under or over any dinner-tables any time soon without written permission.

Watching Ed Balls on BBC 2 marvelling at our massive non-European fruit and veg related import and export industry was a nice change. It came across as rather pro-Brexit. Probably accidentally.

So bad it's (almost) good

“The UK government is completely controlled by Israel” 

asserts Palestinian poster girl Ahed Tamimi. 

“The UK is completely controlled and occupied by Israel and is supporting Israel to kill innocent people who are demonstrating for their rights.” 

she continues.

“They [Zionists] want nothing but to kill all Palestinians so they can take all their land. They believe that all Palestinians should also be killed which shows that they're racist.”

What is it about those people who unintentionally reveal their own thoughts and wishes through this uniquely infantile type of projection? This example is such a blatant ‘reversal of the actualité’ that it’s quite comical. It’s so bad it’s (almost) good. I wonder if the oleaginous Afshin Rattansi from R T agrees with Ahed. I don’t suppose we’ll ever know.

The BBC is undeterred by the negativity surrounding this foolish little liar. (Foolish to tell such obvious lies, but smart enough to manipulate others.)  No wonder Ahed Tamimi is dazed and confused. She has been indoctrinated from birth by professional agitators, the Tamimi clan, but she’s wise enough to tailor her message to suit the audience.

The BBC is promoting Ahed and two other ‘minors’ in a nasty little propaganda film. The producer, Megha Mohan, the BBC's "gender and identity correspondent", has an openly anti-Israel agenda, and with this, the BBC is openly encouraging inflammatory propaganda and violating its remit. It’s quite appalling that it was ever approved.

Tamimi didn’t seem to have had much to complain about in prison, but Krishnan Guru-Murthy manages to prise something detrimental to Israel out of her in this interview. She’s wearing her silver pendant in the shape of ‘One State’ 

Guru-Murthy believes Israel has treated her too harshly for the crime of ‘just a slap’. Who knows whether or not he’s aware of her and her family’s record. Not that she’s responsible for her terrorist Auntie  Ahlam who’s being protected by Jordan,  but she certainly sees her as a role model.

Honest Reporting

“While the BBC shows footage of Tamimi attacking an IDF soldier, for which she spent eight months in an Israeli prison, it fails to give any real background on the Palestinian poster girl for terror. For the real tragedy is not Tamimi’s experience with the Israeli military court system (what the BBC terms a “childhood”). 

Ahed Tamimi’s entire childhood has been spent in an environment permeated with Palestinian terrorism: terror  in which her family has long played an active and prominent role.  For example,  Ahed’s aunt helped plan the horrific Sbarros Pizza restaurant bombing, and her mother posted anatomically precise tutorials on how to most effectively stab Israelis. 

Ironically, this very terrorism is the reason Israel has security measures in the first place.
Since childhood Ahed has learned from her family that all of Israel is occupied Palestinian land, including Tel Aviv, and that she must fight to gain all of it. Hardly a path to peace. And Ahed’s family have placed her personally in danger over and over, for the benefit of cameras. 

Her appearance for the BBC is just the latest in a global propaganda tour, milking her iconic status.

“The rights of children are undoubtedly extremely important. If the BBC were so concerned for the rights of Palestinian children, it would be focusing on the incitement that drives Palestinian minors to confront Israeli soldiers, carry out terror attacks or promote violent extremism. 

Instead the BBC in typical fashion attempts to portray Israel as a militaristic child abuser backed up by the claims of an iconic professional propagandist, a terrorist-affiliated NGO and its own efforts to muddy the legal waters of international law. 

UPDATE
Former IDF military prosecutor Maurice Hirsch, who featured in the BBC film has responded directly on Twitter to the BBC’s Megha Mohan, the journalist responsible. The thread of multiple tweets is a devastating take down from an expert whose insights were clearly edited out of the film in order to favor the Palestinian narrative.

Yes, if you can bear to look at the Twitter timeline of the producer of this programme you can see the agenda. There is no attempt whatsoever to conceal it. No pretence of impartiality or genuine fact-finding. She willfully misunderstands why Palestinian ‘children’ go through military rather than civilian courts.

“Israel says that this is due to an article in the Geneva Convention saying that they are an occupying force” she tweets. I understand that putting Palestinian citizens through Israel's civil courts would necessitate annexation of the West Bank. So that's why. (She probably knows that.)

Another of the children featured claims that she was made to sign a confession in Hebrew. But this is untrue. Maurice Hirsch responds:

But this is something Col Maurice Hirsch refutes. As the Israeli military's chief prosecutor in the West Bank prepared indictments against thousands of Palestinians - including hundreds of children. pic.twitter.com/b7TIPLp3Nu

— Megha Mohan (@meghamohan) August 28, 201

Sadly, you piece is just another example of biased BBC coverage. While we spoke extensively about teenage Palestinian murderers like the murderers of Daphna Meir, the Fogel Family, Ari Fuld and others, you shamefully omitted any reference to them. 1/12

— Maurice Hirsch (@MauriceHirsch4) August 29, 2019

What is a 'gender and identity correspondent' for? How does this role relate to pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel activism? Does the BBC intend to redress the balance at any point?

Update:
BBCWatch has more on this.  Do read. The fact that this film is proving so popular is very disturbing.

Channel 4 debate review

Well, despite myself, I failed to follow Boris's lead and watched the Channel 4 News Conservative leadership debate tonight.

It involved Michael Gove, Jeremy Hunt, Sajid Javid, Dominic Raab and Rory Stewart but (famously) didn't involve Boris Johnson, who declined Channel 4's invitation.

The quip already doing the rounds on my social media feed this evening is that tonight's joint winners were the absent Boris and the even more absent Nigel Farage.

And I can see why. Except for Rory Stewart they were all awful. And, even including Rory, Boris's empty podium put in by far the best performance.

The Channel 4 audience put BBC Question Time audiences to shame, bias-wise. This was a pro-Rory audience from the start. Rory couldn't say anything without them loudly clapping him.

This isn't me just saying that. I was deliberately listening out for enthusiastic audience applause and Rory got the lion's share of it by a very large margin. That's simply a fact.

So who selected this audience? Rory's friends and family? Jon Snow? John Simpson? Or a reputable polling company? Whoever it was didn't do a good job, impartiality-wise.

Poor biased Krishnan Guru-Murthy had a pre-prepared point about none of the candidates mentioning climate change. He deployed it after both Michael Gove and Jeremy Hunt had already mentioned it. They protested that they'd already mentioned it. He moved on. Good grief, Krishnan and Channel 4 - listen and adapt!

Boris was wise to skip this farrago. 

Ways to Change the World

This is about ITV and Channel Four. Turn away now if you’re exclusively interested in bias on the actual BBC.

Did anyone see Rachel Riley and Krishnan Guru-Murthy: the Podcast  “Ways to Change the World” ?

She’s clever and pretty and she’s not afraid to swear at George Galloway on Twitter. What’s not to like?

 The first thing that struck me here was that she was extraordinarily late in the day in becoming - may I use the word ‘woke’? (i.e., alert to injustice in society, especially racism.) I mean, how disappointing was it to discover that she has existed (I assume) within the Metropolitan bubble for at least ten years, yet until the Jewish community got its act together and took some concerted, high profile action, she knew zilch about the media’s relentless bias against Israel or the antisemitism in the Labour party?

But there you go.  Her personality + brains + beauty are invaluable assets for publicly raising awareness; and who knew the glamorous mathematician from Countdown possesses a fully functioning Jewdar? 

What we did hear, loud and clear, was Krishnan G-M’s appalling ignorance. Of course, one expects him to take a pro-Palestinian / anti-Israel stance in accord with Channel Four’s remit, but publicly displaying (and hence perpetuating) his core ignorance of the topic under discussion is (should be) a huge embarrassment to himself.

He tries to expound on the ‘difference’ between anti-Zionism and antisemitism and pretends to be playing Devil’s advocate. But Rachel Riley, as a beginner  - a newcomer to the subject - is ill-equipped to make the strong rebuttal that this particularly foolish “Devil” deserves. 

“I’m having to have so much knowledge that I didn’t have before, to combat it” she declares.

She insists that Israel is necessary as ‘somewhere for Jews to go’ should the need arise, to which Guru-Murthy counters that the Palestinians shouldn’t have had to be “displaced” for this to happen.

“As you know, people on the there side will say it is not racist to say Israel shouldn’t exist because all I’m saying is …. they (are saying)…it was wrong to displace the Palestinians; we should go back to a pre 1948 situation and that means the modern state of Israel doesn’t exist, that doesn’t make me….I’m not hating a people, I’m not hating Jews, I’m just saying that state, you know, is an unjust state … let’s go back to before it existed.”

In the eyes of this particular devil’s advocate, Israel’s Jews are simply interlopers in “Palestinian Land” - and violent and aggressive with it.  Perhaps the Naz Shah remedy would satisfy Mr G-M. Of course, nowadays even the United States is beginning to look a lot less like the safe haven for Jews it might once have been. Antisemitism is rife on campus, and now in congress too.  

It’s pretty shocking that Krishnan Guru-Murphy invites a guest to discuss a frought topic on film and doesn’t even bother to gen up beforehand.

Sarah Baxter has written about this in the Sunday Times. (£)

Riley was inspired to speak out on Twitter after the Jewish community protested against Labour anti-semitism outside parliament last spring. “Jews complaining about anti-semitism in 2018?” she wondered. “This is a bit odd.” 

As she explained on a Channel 4 podcast last week: “There were moments when my mouth was on the floor about Holocaust denial.” With a Jewish mother — and, she laughed, a “Manchester United father” — she was horrified by the level of abuse she received from Corbyn supporters.
“This is what Jeremy Corbyn is inspiring,” she said. “You can’t say anything against [him] without getting shot down.” The hard-left fan site Skwawkbox falsely repeated smears accusing Riley of “meeting” Jacob Rees-Mogg for talks about her “potential political future”, a piece of nonsense designed to discredit her.

By her enemies you shall know her. Riley also attracted the wrath of George Galloway, leader of the so-called Respect Party, after he was kicked out of Labour. He was incensed by her attack on the intellectual guru of the far left, Noam Chomsky, who had previously defended a French Holocaust denier. “Dumbfounding,” Galloway tweeted. “She calls Chomsky . . . an anti-semite and slanders half the Labour Party as the same.”
To which Riley replied with a simple four-letter expletive: “F*** off George Galloway.” If only Corbyn would do the same.”

Ms Baxter also mentioned Fiona Bruce’s debut Q.T. 

Personally, I thought Fi was pretty ineffectual as a chairperson. Rather than facilitating free and fair debate, I thought she took a bit of a liberty in exploiting her position. Rather than letting the panellists get on with it, she kind of ‘joined in’ and took on the argument with each panellist herself. Some would call her approach ‘interventionist’. 

I don’t know if that’s what’s required of a chairperson. I’d prefer the chair to be a non-interventionist with the ability to allocate time between members of the panel fairly, sensitively and intelligently. 

Several commenters online remarked that Melanie Phillips wasn’t given much space. However, she made good use of the window she was given, slapping down the obnoxious comedian, Nish Kumar. No-one knows why he was there. Since this was meant to be a ‘fresh look’ at the programme, how about abandoning the role of rogue, comedy guest altogether.?

Two sides to every story

“Good News!” said the announcer this morning. “An historic deal has been stricken! “ Well, not exactly, but the announcement that the US and co have reached an agreement with Iran seemed to have been framed as though this was jolly good news. 

As  a supporter of Israel, I’m inclined to take the view that it is no such thing, but seeing as I am only a relatively ill-informed member of the public I’ll leave it at that for now.

When they said the deal was “to curb Iran’s nuclear programme”  I thought, yeah, but I bet they ain’t reporting it like that in Tehran. They’ll be calling it a deal to lift sanctions.

Which brings me to the theme 'two sides to every story'. Like the case of the Arab Spring, which caused euphoria within the ranks of the BBC, but not so much amongst people who predicted a disastrous outcome.

But that wasn’t what I thought of first. That was the infamous interview on Channel 4 with Krishnan Guru-Murthy and Jeremy Corbyn.  I first saw it on the Spectator website, then on Harry’s Place, where the gist of the reaction was astonishment that some of Corbyn’s supporters thought he’d ‘won’.  

I was surprised that Krishnan took this tone, as the Channel 4 crew seem ideologically inclined, on the whole, to be in synch with the hard left, and accordingly, sympathetic to Israel’s enemies, Hamas and Hezbollah. But never mind, Krishnan was conducting an adversarial interview, and adversarial he was gonna be. 

Looking decidedly chunky these days, especially sitting opposite Corby whose scrawny frame hardly seemed to fill his jacket, Krishnan’s interviewing technique was sadly lacking.

 As Sarah AB noted, he never even mentioned Raed Salah. Instead he insisted on a repetitive Paxo-style harangue about the meaning of the word “friend”.  

Corbyn became so rattled that he seemed to be about to lean across the desk and smack his tormentor. That was the moment he really really lost it. Imagine him as leader of the Labour party. Or any political leader. His hard-line fans will disagree.  

Here’s another  two-sided tale.

Apparently this incident occurred two months ago, but I only read about it yesterday. I don’t know why. I’m not being very topical here I guess.

The outcome, according to the Daily Mail, was an eight-month detention and training order for breaching a youth rehabilitation order that was imposed on March 8 for GBH and witness intimidation, as well as the assault.” 

  

 While most of the btl comments on “Entertainment Daily” applaud the boy for not retaliating, one commenter put the other side of the story.

“Whilst this kind of behaviour disgusts me, If you listen to what she's actually saying, she's implying this guy is a dealer who's been supplying poor quality drugs. She asks him "Where's your weed?" and at the end says "When my bredrens come for a draw, or anyone on this estate comes for a draw, you not giving them dust. You understand? If you're shotting, you're shotting properly, otherwise I'm getting my BLEEP to come and jerk you yeah?" To anybody who doesn't understand British 'street' lingo, this roughly translates to. "When my friends or anybody from this area comes to buy drugs from you, it must be of acceptable quality'. If you're going to deal, you must deal properly or I'll get my BLEEP (friends, family, boyfriend etc) to come and sort you out. Do you understand?" If the guy is in fact a drug dealer, would that change people's reaction towards it? “

He has a point.

And why is this girl form Croydon speaking in Jamaican slang? Am I being like the judge who had to ask who or what are the Beatles?

No win scenario

Having read a detailed account of the IDF’s enquiry into the incident of the boys killed on the beach in Gaza I kind of knew that Krishnan Guru-Murthy would find a way of using it to damn Israel. 

Sure enough he ignored the findings apart from the admission that the IDF’s surveillance mechanism made it impossible to tell whether the running figures were adults or children. 

“Why, if it was impossible to tell, did you continue  your attack?” asked Krishnan, of his long-time bête noire Mark Regev, spokesman for the Israeli government.

By that token, one might surmise, one would never attack anyone ever.  

Did you see that programme last night about the Met?  There was a horrible spate of crimes - muggings with violence, that had been terrorising the law abiding people of Camden. The young criminals were using scooters to zoom up to their victims, sometimes right up to  the victim’s doorstep, (or even further) snatch the booty and speed away. 

If the police were on the scene in time to give chase, the wily lads would remove their helmets so that the police could not pursue them with any vigour lest they should cause a death. The criminals were using themselves as human shields, if you like.

Needless to say the residents of Camden were totally pissed off. The poor spokesperson from the Met had to face the residents’ hostility at a meeting - rock and a hard place anyone? I think they resolved the matter by wholesale arrests and imprisonment.  No doubt it’s only a matter of time before that un-resolves itself again.

Just look at the expression on Krishnan Guru-Murthy’s face. It’s a picture, ain’t it?

Someone has appointed Krishnan Guru-Murthy and Channel Four, the BBC and much of the press as judge, jury and hangman-in-chief  over matters of which they personally disapprove; but we don’t get to know who has made this appointment, when it was made, and by whose authority.

It must be covered by that super-duper injunction that excludes the general public from access to material prohibited under the dedicated official secrets act (otherwise known as for the purposes of journalism and art) and from knowing by whom, why or from what we have been excluded.

As it happens I can see that there are two sides to this story. 

The Israelis claim that the target was a a weapon-storage 'container', while the Palestinians and their supporters say it was only a dilapidated fishermen’s hut. 

The Israelis expressed regret, said it was a tragedy, and that they don’t target civilians.  Their opponents dispute that, and wonder why the IDF failed to identify the figures as children playing on a beach. The Israelis also say that the spot where the boys were playing was closed off from the rest of the area by a fence, and from aerial observation operational staff had concluded Hamas figures were entering the area to conduct a military action, and authorisation was given to fire a missile after one of the identified figures entered the container and after 'a civilian presence in the area' had been ruled out.

The Palestinians and their supporters say the IDF had failed to take the appropriate precautions stipulated by the rules of protecting civilians in a conflict. The stature of the boys was small compared to adults; no IDF soldiers, potentially exposed to danger, were in the area as the ground invasion had not yet got underway; no other persons were in imminent danger, and therefore there was no urgency in launching a strike. 

The IDF, they concluded, could therefore have taken more exhaustive measures to verify whether or not the targeted people were militants. 

Lastly, the compound was located in the centre of a city with a half a million residents, between a public beach and a fisherman's area, close to international hotels lodging journalists, facts that would not rule out the possibility civilians might in the area. 

***

That last paragraph implies that the entire Gaza war was not viable as a war zone under any circumstances (because Gaza is the most densely populated place on the planet and the biggest open prison in the world)

It also implies that such an area is jam-packed with international hotels full of journalists eager to mop up any scandalous gossip about Israel they can conjure up. Every confrontation in the region has at least half a dozen camera-men in attendance. 

What’s my point?  

Gaza is like a lad on a scooter without a helmet. The media is on the case, always waiting to pounce on any casualty caused by the Israelis, who are like the police, forced to chase a criminal who has made himself intentionally vulnerable, and inevitably blamed when it ends in tragedy.  The media is like the media; it puts the Israelis between a rock and a hard place.