Casus belli: Deliberately targeting school buses

Two years ago, I wrote about Hamas terrorists deliberately targeting Israeli schoolchildren, and the lack of response from the world. Today, history repeats itself. Hamas terrorists deliberately targeted a schoolbus yesterday, using a laser-guided anti-tank missile to make sure of the hit. Hamas is taking full responsibility for it, calling it “self-defense.” Self-defense—sending a laser-guided missile capable of blowing up a tank or a cement bunker—at a bus filled with children. Or so they had hoped. It was their bad luck (and his) that only one child remained on the bus.

The school bus was traveling in southern Israel near the Gaza border when it was hit by a type of anti-tank missile known as a Kornet, said Israeli military spokesman Capt. Barak Raz. The Kornet is a Russian-made anti-tank guided missile system that is thought to have a maximum range of 5 1/2 kilometers (3 1/2 miles).

The Kornet anti-tank missile was supplied by Iran to Hizbollah and used to great effect in the 2006 Lebanon war. It is now obviously being supplied to Hamas. Israel has developed and used successfully a defense system for its tanks, but nobody ever thought that a schoolbus needed anti-tank missile defenses. Nobody outside of the subhumans that make up the terrorists groups trying to destroy Israel, anyway.

Israeli aircraft and ground forces struck Gaza on Friday, killing three Hamas militants and three civilians in a surge of fighting sparked by a Palestinian rocket attack on an Israeli school bus the day before.

Even the AP is pointing out that it wasn’t a directionless mortar, but a laser-guided anti-tank missile that terrorists used to make a sure hit on the bus. The Washington Post and CNN have also highlighted that fact, although the CNN update has since dropped the important factor that this was a deliberate, laser-guided anti-tank missile attack on a bus presumably filled with schoolchildren. That’s a pretty important fact to drop, considering the deliberate targeting of children is the reason the IDF is still bombing Gaza as I write this post.

In Thursday’s attack, Gaza militants hit an Israeli school bus near the border with a guided anti-tank missile, injuring the driver and badly wounding a 16-year-old boy. Most of the schoolchildren on the bus got off shortly before the attack.

You can see pictures of the bus at most of the links.  It’s quite clearly a yellow schoolbus, of the kind used throughout the world to denote “This bus is filled with children on their way to and from school.” There is no way the terrorists could have mistaken it for any other vehicle. A bus is a bus is a bus. Below is a video of the missile that Hamas used to hit the bus. Watch the video. See what kind of damage that missile can do. See how easy it is to assemble and disassemble the missile launcher. Note the ease and clarity of the targeting scope. The terrorists knew full well what they were aiming for, and Iranian dollars supplied them with the weapon. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is smiling today.

Alex Fishman, writing in Ynet, has captured the reasons behind Israel’s furious response perfectly.

Every American or European mother fully understands the meaning of firing at a yellow bus. A yellow bus is an international warning signing that means “these are children.” Those who fire at a yellow bus with the intention of murdering children are war criminals of the worst kind and a partner for nothing.

He also points out that Israel’s vapid response last month to the barrage of dozens of mortars emboldened Hamas to push even further. And push they did, almost committing a goal they have tried to reach for years: The murder of dozens of Israeli children. The anti-Israel left has no sympathy for murdered Israelis. They see no difference between the deliberate targeting of a schoolbus with a missile designed to penetrate solid, reinforced steel and the accidental death of civilians. If Hamas had hit the bus when it was full, the anti-Israel left would still be calling for both sides to exercise “restraint.” Because the world simply does not have a problem with more dead Jews.

The thing is, Israel does. Jews do. And this time, Israel has a clear casus belli—even though the anti-Israel forces will not admit it. The reason for this attack will soon be lost in the last paragraphs of the news reports. But not here. Here, you will know why the IDF is bombing Gaza: Because terrorists deliberately tried to murder dozens of children riding home from school.