The recent American airstrike on the Afghan city of Kunduz, which hit a hospital and left 22 people dead, reminded one American journalist of a similar incident during last year’s Gaza war, as the editors of the New York Post write:
[The] Associated Press reporter Matt Lee caught the deputy State Department spokesman Mark Toner by surprise at a briefing this week. . . . Lee recalled Israel’s August 2014 shelling of a UN school in Gaza—which the State Department immediately labeled “disgraceful,” adding: “The suspicion that militants are operating nearby does not justify strikes that put at risk the lives of so many innocent civilians.”
Lee asked: Does that policy still hold?
Toner was at a complete loss . . . and begged Lee to “give [him] a pass [and] wait for the investigation to run its course.” That’s a pretty reasonable position, actually. But it flies in the face of last year’s instantaneous criticism of Israel—made long before any investigation had even begun.
More about: Afghanistan, Civilian casualties, Israel & Zionism, Protective Edge, State Department, US-Israel relations