Shock in Israel is old news in Palestine

The Israeli Defense Force killed two of their own on Thursday, an item that is only newsworthy in that they mistook the two men, security guards Yoav Doron and Yehuda Ben-Yosef, for Palestinians. Many in Israel, rightly so, are shocked: "innocent and helpless, one was gunned down as he stepped out of the security vehicle south of Hebron, the other killed by an anti-tank missile fired from a pursuing helicopter." The incidents shed light on IDF tactics which have killed dozens of Palestinian civilians, but, unlike earlier cases, these cases will be investigated by the IDF because "Jewish blood was shed."

Writes Gideon Levy:

No one should be surprised that, this time, two Israelis were killed - the real surprise is the rarity of such incidents. If the IDF has killed no fewer than 50 Palestinians in the past 13 days alone (according to the figures of the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group), some of them civilians, no one need be taken aback if Israelis, too, have fallen victim to the wholesale shooting...

As reported last Thursday in Haaretz, the IDF itself admits that 18 percent of the Palestinians who have been killed in the current confrontation (since September 29, 2000) were innocent civilians, 235 adults and 130 children below the age of 16. The actual number of innocent civilians killed is probably higher.