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I really hate this because there is death and unnecessary killing happening in Israel from the rockets these people have been showering Israeli's with for years. This one side reporting is exactly the problem and and simply republishing with no commentary by the poster, DAMNING BOTH SIDES for killing children. Unfortunately the Palestinians support HAMAS and ALLOWS HAMAS to install rocket batterys in their school yards, mosques and apartment courtyards. Add this to the fact they consider the dead !!!??MARTYRS??!!! REALLY!!!!??? This shows the teaching these kids get from a very early age, they have been indoctrinated with a doctrine of pure hate. Research you will see how and what they are taught.

Then grow a pair of balls and condemn it ALL!

Jim Allen III

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Gaza kids at risk in crowded urban battle zone

By KARIN LAUB | Associated Press – 16 hrs ago

Associated Press/Mahmud Hams, Pool - Gaza's Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, right, and Egyptian Prime Minister Hesham Kandil, left, hold the body of a Palestinian boy they claim was killed in an Israeli strike on Gaza City, as they show the body to the media at Shifa hospital in Gaza City, Friday, Nov. 16, 2012. Neighbors said the boy was killed in a blast around 8:30 a.m. Friday, around the time Kandil was entering the territory. Israel, which ordinarily confirms strikes, vociferously denied carrying out any form of attack in the area since the previous night. (AP Photo/Mahmud Hams, Pool)

A medic carries the body of a Palestinian boy, who they claim was killed in an Israeli strike on Gaza City, to an event in which media were invited to cover the visit of Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and Egyptian Prime Minister Hesham Kandil at Shifa hospital in Gaza City, Friday, Nov. 16, 2012. Neighbors said the boy was killed in a blast around 8:30 a.m. Friday, around the time Kandil was entering the territory. Israel, which ordinarily confirms strikes, vociferously denied carrying out any form of attack in the area since the previous night. (AP Photo/Mahmud Hams, Pool)

The mother of 10-month-old Palestinian infant Haneen Tafesh holds the dead body of her daughter prior to a funeral in Jabaliya, north Gaza, Friday, Nov. 16, 2012. According to hospital reports Tafesh died from wounds of an earlier Israeli strike. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — The image of a dead preschooler cradled by the prime ministers of Egypt and Gaza in a hospital hallway has drawn attention to the dangers Gaza's children face in this crowded urban battle zone.

Children make up half of Gaza's population of 1.6 million and seem to be everywhere in the current round of cross-border fighting between Israel and Gaza's militant Hamas rulers.

Children loitered Friday outside a Gaza City morgue for a glance at the latest "martyrs." Others followed adults to funerals or even rushed to the site where Israeli missiles had just struck a government building and fire was still smoldering. Despite outward bravado, young boys of elementary school age said quietly that fear of airstrikes kept them awake at night.

So far, six of 28 Palestinians killed in Israel's offensive this week have been children, ranging in age from just under 1 to 14 years, according to Gaza health officials. Most were killed by shrapnel while in or near their homes. In Israel, 12 children were hurt in rocket attacks this week.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accused Hamas of using Gaza's civilians, particularly children, as human shields by launching rockets from crowded residential areas.

Gazans argue that Israel is unleashing massive airstrikes on their territory without regard for civilians. They say that even Israel's self-described surgical strikes on militant targets put civilians at grave risk in Gaza, one of the world's most densely populated places.

Mahmoud Sadallah, the 4-year-old Gaza boy whose death moved Egypt's prime minister to tears, was from the town of Jebaliya, close to Gaza City. The boy died Friday in hotly disputed circumstances.

The boy's aunt, Hanan Sadallah, and his grief-stricken father Iyad — weak from crying and leaning on others to walk — said Mahmoud was killed in an Israeli airstrike. Hamas security officials also made that claim.

Israel vehemently denied involvement, saying it had not carried out any attacks in the area at the time. Gaza's two leading human rights groups, which routinely investigate civilian deaths, withheld judgment, saying they were unable to reach the area because of continued danger.

Mahmoud's family said the boy was in an alley close to his home when he was killed, along with a man of about 20, but no one appeared to have witnessed the strike. The area showed signs that a projectile might have exploded there, with shrapnel marks in the walls of surrounding homes and a shattered kitchen window. But neighbors said local security officials quickly took what remained of the projectile, making it impossible to verify who fired it.

Mahmoud's 12-year-old cousin Fares was injured in the right leg by shrapnel and was still visibly shaken several hours after the incident. "It's terrifying. I don't sleep at night," the boy said of the massive Israeli air attacks of the past three days. "I'm staying up all night."

Mahmoud's body was taken to Gaza City's main Shifa hospital around midmorning, just as Gaza Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas was showing Egyptian Prime Minister Hesham Kandil around the wards of patients.

One of the Sadallah's neighbors, carrying the lifeless boy, pushed through a throng of Hamas security men to reach the politicians. Eventually, the two prime ministers were photographed cradling the child.

Fighting back tears, Kandil called on Israel to halt its offensive.

"What I saw today in the hospital, the wounded and the martyrs, the boy ... whose blood is still on my hands and clothes, is something that we cannot keep silent about," he said.

In the propaganda war between Israel and Hamas, the suffering of children has served as a powerful tool.

Israel has repeatedly accused Gaza militants of cynically exploiting children. Netanyahu alleged Thursday that "Hamas deliberately targets our children, and they deliberately place their rockets next to their children."

On Thursday, a rocket attack on an apartment building in the southern Israeli town of Kiryat Malachi wounded a baby and a 4-year-old child, along with killing three adults. Photos showed rescuers evacuating the baby, who was covered in blood. In addition, 10 children have been hurt by shrapnel, Israeli paramedics said.

The rockets fired from Gaza are relatively crude and Israel says their main purpose is to instill fear and harm Israeli civilians. Gaza militants have fired hundreds of rockets since Wednesday, paralyzing large areas of the country where civilians were ordered to stay close to home or bomb shelters. The fighting has forced tens of thousands of Israeli children to stay indoors, and schools in southern Israel have been closed for the past two days.

Israel, meanwhile, has pounded Gaza with dozens of rapid-fire airstrikes, with loud booms ringing out, sometimes just minutes apart. Few civilians ventured into the streets Friday, particularly after dark. In Gaza City, a tractor-pulled cart loaded with women and children had a white flag dragging on the ground behind it, presumably as an extra precaution.

Some of the Gaza boys trying to get close to the "action" put on a brave face.

"I'm not afraid of the rockets the Jews are firing," said 10-year-old Mohammed Bakr, waiting outside the Shifa Hospital morgue for bodies to arrive. But, he acknowledged, "I like it better when it's quiet."

Mohammed and his cousin, 12-year-old Udai, said they had seen many dead bodies, including during Israel's last major offensive in Gaza four years ago. Both boys come from large families, as is typical in Gaza — Mohammed said he has nine siblings and Udai has six. Overwhelmed parents often find it difficult to keep tabs on all their children in dangerous times.

"Our parents tell us to stay home, but we don't," said Mohammed with a smile. "We want to see the martyrs."

Earlier, another group of boys tried to get closer to the ruins of a former Hamas government building, with smoke still rising from an Israeli strike. Hamas policemen tried to push them away, shouting that there was concern about unexploded ordnance.

Adults often pressure children not to show fear. Asked if they were scared, several boys waiting for Mahmoud's funeral procession to begin nodded. However, when an adult showed up and told them that Gazans are not afraid, they quickly stopped talking.

Child psychologists say the trauma of war stays with Gaza's children for a long time.

Hussam Nunu, the head of Gaza's Community Mental Health Program, said close to a third of the about 1,500 patients treated every year are children affected by stress and violence. After Israel's last offensive four years ago, the number of children suffering from post-traumatic stress disorders was "overwhelming," he said.

"Since then we have done a lot of outreach, but when another escalation like this happens, our work can be undone," he said.

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Associated Press Writer Lauren Bohn in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

Israel shoots down Tel Aviv-bound rocket

Israeli military says 'Iron Dome' system shoots down rocket aimed at Tel Aviv

Israel hits Hamas buildings, shoots down Tel Aviv-bound rocket

Gazans watch with pride as Hamas strikes Israel

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israel's new offensive against theGaza Strip has turned into a political bonanza for the territory's Hamas rulers, while sidelining Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, their Western-backed rival in the West Bank.

Gazans feeling unfairly attacked by Israel have been watching with gleeful pride as Hamas militants fire rockets deeper than ever into Israel and Arab leaders flock to previously isolated Gaza to show solidarity. Growing collateral damage from Israel's massive aerial bombardments of Hamas targets does not appear to have hurt the Islamists' sudden popularity.

Saed Moaserji, a 19-year-old engineering student from Gaza's Jebaliya refugee camp, said he felt intense pride after Hamas rocket squads for the first time this week targeted Jerusalem.

"I never liked Hamas, but I wished I could kiss the forehead of the one who fired the rocket on Jerusalem," Moaserji said Saturday, standing outside a local Hamas commander's two-story home that had just been flattened in an airstrike.

The support was in sharp contrast to recent months, when the Islamist group seemed to be flailing, riven by internal divisions over the direction of the movement and the refusal of Egypt's new government to lift a Gaza blockade imposed by Israel and the previous regime in Cairo after Hamas seized the territory in 2007.

Meanwhile, a mention of Abbas — formally the leader of all Palestinians — elicited shrugs or even scorn in Gaza.

Many Palestinians have lost faith in Abbas' attempt to set up a state through negotiations with Israel, but he appeared particularly marginalized as he tried to exert influence over the latest events in Gaza by calling foreign leaders from his headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Abbas, who has not visited Gaza since the Hamas takeover, acknowledged that he also tried to call Gaza's Hamas prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, and the top Hamas leader in exile, Khaled Mashaal, but did not get an immediate response. Mashaal eventually returned Abbas' call.

Ahmed Hatoum, a Gaza City resident, said Abbas' approach has been futile, pointing to two decades of intermittent negotiations without results. Hatoum and others in Gaza argued that Israel started the current round of fighting with the assassination of the Hamas military chief Wednesday and that Palestinians have the right to shoot back.

"There is no political solution with the Israelis," said Hatoum, 60, whose house windows were shattered Saturday by an air attack on Haniyeh's office. "They only understand the language of force."

Israel and Hamas have clashed repeatedly since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. Four years ago, they fought a full-fledged three-week war initiated by Israel to stop rocket attacks from Gaza.

Since Wednesday, Israel has bombed Hamas' rocket launching sites, weapons depots and increasingly its symbols of power while Hamas fighters showered Israel with rockets. Forty-two Palestinians and three Israelis have been killed and hundreds of thousands of people on both sides have seen their lives disrupted.

Sunday marks the first full work day in Gaza after a long holiday weekend. The Gaza government announced that schools would remain closed, but asked civil servants to report to their jobs. Streets have been fairly empty in recent days, but some shops were open.

The trade ministry said no shortages of fuel or food have been reported, while Israel announced its cargo crossing into Gaza — mainly for consumer goods — would reopen Sunday. Gaza's other supply route — smuggling tunnels under the border with Egypt — has been blocked because of massive Israeli bombardment meant to halt weapons shipments.

Even as Hamas installations were being pounded, the movement — an offshoot of the pan-Arab Muslim Brotherhood — scored diplomatic gains after years of painful isolation. Arab states in the region, particularly Egypt and Tunisia where Arab Spring uprisings swept the Brotherhood to power, are under popular pressure at home to support embattled Gazans.

The Egyptian prime minister visited Friday, followed by the Tunisian foreign minister Saturday. The Arab League said it is sending a contingent of foreign ministers to Gaza in coming days. In a nod to Abbas, the group is to include West Bank-based foreign minister Riad Malki.

Ghazi Hamad, the deputy foreign minister of Hamas, said the influx of foreign visitors shows the rules of regional diplomacy have changed. During the last Israel-Hamas war, a pro-Western regime deeply suspicious of Hamas was in charge in Egypt, traditionally the regional mediator between Israel and the Arab world. The recent visits show that "the Arab and Islamic nations are with us ... and this will give a very strong message and signal to the international community and even to Israel," he said.

The Gaza offensive came just two weeks before Abbas planned to seek U.N. recognition of "Palestine" — consisting of the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem — as a non-member observer state. Israel captured those territories in the 1967 Mideast war.

Such recognition, likely to be approved by a majority of U.N. General Assembly members, would be largely symbolic but also protect the borders of a future Palestine against Israeli land claims through expansion of Jewish settlements.

However, the U.N. plan is now being overshadowed by the Gaza fighting.

"With the gravity and dramatic nature of the events in Gaza, this U.N. move will appear ... less significant and less attractive," said Ghassan Khatib, until recently a spokesman of Abbas' autonomy government, the Palestinian Authority. At the same time, the Gaza offensive "is making the Palestinian Authority less relevant and politically marginalized," he said.

Israel and the U.S. oppose the U.N. bid, saying it's an attempt to bypass negotiations, a charge Abbas has denied. He complained in a televised speech to Palestinians on Friday that the Gaza offensive is meant to undermine the U.N. recognition quest, but that he would go ahead and submit it on Nov. 29.

The apparent rise in Hamas' popularity also forced Abbas to ease up on his crackdown on the Islamists in the West Bank. On Friday, Abbas' security stood by as hundreds of Hamas activists — raising their movements' green banners — marched in several West Bank towns.

In Gaza, Hamas was basking in its newfound appeal. Government spokesman Taher Nunu claimed, without providing evidence, that the level of popular support for firing rockets at Israel is unprecedented.

The current mood in Gaza can quickly turn on Hamas, especially if fighting drags, the death toll rises or shortages are felt more keenly. But for now, Gazans seem to enjoy the rare feeling of keeping Israel off guard.

"Israel is more powerful, no argument about that," said Gaza City grocer Safwan Darwish, watching a Hamas TV station in his shop. "But this strong state which all Arabs fear found itself under the mercy of fire from Gaza."

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