The international news-related quote of the day comes from Michael van der Galien at Poligazette:
I’ve had numerous discussions with people, mostly fellow Muslims, in recent days about the Israeli attacks on Gaza and the civilian victims of these bombings. As these people point out to me, purposefully killing innocent people – especially children – is a major crime against humanity and it is forbidden in the Qur’an: killing children is one of the worst crimes imaginable. As the Qur’an says, ‘he who kills one innocent, it is as if he killed the whole of mankind.’
Since children are the most innocent human beings in the world, killing them is a major sin and crime: both in Islam and according to secular law.
However, one should not only look at whether children are killed or not, one should also consider the intention of the killer: did they mean to kill the child or did they do everything in their power (except for not defending themselves and waiting to be killed themselves) to prevent the deaths?
In the case of Israel and Hamas, the difference between both sides should be clear to everyone with half a brain. Israel tries not to kill innocent people, but sadly some die nonetheless (collateral damage). Hamas, on the other hand, purposefully kills innocent Israelis and the terrorist group purposefully uses children and other innocent individuals as a human shield.
See, for instance, this video:
Go to the link to see the video and read the entire post.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.