Compare and Contrast

Note: The NYT has changed the headline and, who knows, parts of the story I quote below. The headline and story are precisely as they were published when I posted them.

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New York Times:

In Gaza, Right Target, but the Wrong People Die

Israeli intelligence identified the correct target, a three-story concrete house on the northern edge of Gaza City where top Hamas military men were holding a meeting, including Muhammad Deif, the head of the military wing, sought by Israel for more than a decade, and Raed Saad, his top aide.

But the top men of Hamas’s secretive military wing, who have held a captured Israeli soldier since June 25, escaped, although with apparently moderate injuries, even after another Israeli missile was fired on a car fleeing the scene.

Instead, the bombing killed nine members of the Salmiyeh family, a father, mother and seven of the couple’s 10 children, aged 7 to 18, who were on the upper floors of the house.

To hear the views of neighbors and onlookers, the attack was another example of wanton killing, of the Israeli disregard for Palestinian life.

AP:

Hamas Leader Badly Hurt in Israeli Bombing

A Hamas militant leader who has topped Israel's most-wanted list for a decade was badly wounded and underwent four hours of spinal surgery Wednesday after being wounded in an Israeli airstrike, security officials said.

The top fugitive, Mohammed Deif, could end up paralyzed, Palestinian security officials said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss his condition. Wednesday's blast marked the army's fourth attempt to kill Deif, held responsible for suicide bombings in Israel. In a 2002 missile strike, he lost an eye.

At least 23 Palestinians were killed in Gaza on Wednesday. And an Israeli airstrike early Thursday destroyed the building housing the Hamas-controlled Palestinian Foreign Ministry.

Nine members of one family were killed in Wednesday's airstrike, with an Israeli F-16 warplane dropping a quarter-ton bomb on a home in a crowded Gaza City neighborhood. The strike was by far the deadliest in Israel's 15-day military campaign in Gaza, launched after Hamas-allied militants kidnapped an Israeli soldier.

Israel's air force targeted the two-story house of Nabil Abu Salmiyeh, a Hamas activist and university lecturer, after getting intelligence information that the leaders of Hamas' military wing, responsible for the abduction of the soldier, were meeting there. Palestinian security officials said seven or eight top Hamas officials were present.

The Times is working overtime to remain the most biased news source this side of the BBC, huh?

posted by Ace at 09:39 PM

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