The probvlem is Gokul I'm still seeing aplogism, for quite frankly abhorent actions. here's a few points:
1) The wheelchair-bound Sheikh Yassin ceratinly was a member of Hamas, however he is not the most recent palestian in a wheelchair to be killed by the IDF, a palesttiian civlian was shot and killed in June was killed by Israeli soldiers during a protest. A disproportionate number of physcially and menatlly disabled people have been killed by the IDF, one of the main reasons for this is the shoot-on-site policy used to enforce curfews.
Also I'd point out that Yassin was never direcctly linked with any terroist attacks and few believe it likely that he ordered any terrorist attacks, as that was simply not the role he played in the organisation, so the question is should someone be killed for what they believ, hoewever abhorent you find that? (compare this to the assaimnation by a Palestian of a Jewish member of the Knesset, from one of the unabashedly racist settler parties there).
2) Mosr settlemnts are not in Palestinian towns, but more often than not they are are near Palestinian towns, howvere the main exception is the settlemnt in Hebron which is distributed throughout the Palestian town of Hebron. Most settlers are not US immigrants, certainly not all of them are ideologicl zealots many live in settlemtns due to the fact that they are heavily subsidised by the Israeli government. Howevre Hebron is a completely different kettle of fish; nearly all of the settlers their are relgious fundamentalists and there is a disproportionatly large number of US immigrants, the Hebron settlemtn is a hotbed of racism and is the heartland for KACH-related terrorist groups.
3) You say that in the recent shooting of the Palestian girl, that the IDF soldiers had good reason to think she was carrying explosives. No suicide attack has evr been carried out by anyone neraly this young, indeed even the the lovable Hamas have a policy of not allowing people this young to carry out attacks (indded the Isreali army never claimed thta they suspected her of carrying explosives). In the past children of simlair age have been used as muels to smuggle explosives across borders by Palestian terrorist groups.
5) The ratio of civilains-militants killed by the Israeli army during the current is approximately 50-50 (by their own admission they placed a mininmum value of the number of Palestians killed who were miltnats at about 40%, howver this was acouple of years ago), infact this is not much better than the Palestinian militant groups. During the current initfada just less than 50% of the Israeli deaths have been Israeli citizens within Israel (i.e. most of those killed have either been soldiers on active duty or non-soldiers in the occupied teroritries).
Israeli and inertnatinal human rights groups have documented many cases of human rights absues and disregard for life by the IDF, howver Israel rarely investigates these claims. A cae in point is the killing of Briton Tom Hurdnall in the OTs, Tom was shot whilst trying to save Palestian children from an IDF sniper, at the time Israel tired to cover-up the incident, even claiming that Tom was armed himself (the whole incident was caught on video which showed that IDf was just plain lying through it's nose as except for the IDf soldier there wer no other gunmen in the area). After sevral years of sustained diplomatic pressure from the UK Israel dediced to investigate the murder, the soldier involved admitted he was shooting the children for the hell of it and this was not the first time he had amused himself by doing such a thing, he's now facing crimanl charges. The main point is thatincidents like these are rarely investigated (this incident would never of been investigated if it was not for the tireless campaiging of Tom's parents) as the IDF has created a culture were soldiers can do anything they please to Palestinians without fear of reprisal (unless thye are unlucky enough to be caught on film or reported by their subordinates).
