Left I on the News

The slaughter continues in Gaza:

Fighting erupted between Israeli troops and militants in central Gaza after the army pushed into the strip, killing 10 Palestinians -- five militants and five civilians -- in air strikes and other attacks, medics said.

Israel has killed about 110 Palestinians, around half of them militants, in Gaza since the abduction.

In the West Bank, Israeli troops backed by armored vehicles surrounded a Palestinian security compound in the city of Nablus and killed three gunmen from moderate President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction, medics said.

Two civilians were also killed, medics said. The army said troops had confronted civilians who had thrown stones at them as well as gunmen, but that soldiers had only fired at Palestinians who shot at them.

Note that, even in this "closer quarters" fighting, half of the Palestinians killed were civilians (not that the world is going to object to those deaths any more than the deaths of Lebanese civilians, nor the thousands of deaths of Palestinian civilians which preceded these). Note also that Reuters phrases that in the negative, writing "around half of them militants" which clearly de-emphasizes the civilian fatalities. Finally, note the very typical use of the word "gunmen," as if carrying a gun and resisting the invasion of your territory by troops from another country somehow legitimizes your death and makes it more acceptable than the death of an "innocent" civilian.