It was one of the most infamous incidents of the 2014 Gaza war: the killing of four boys by Israeli air fire on an open Gaza beach as they were playing football on a sunny July day. Cousins of the Bakr family - Ismail, Zakariya, Ahed and Mohamed - aged nine to 11, tried unsuccessfully to outrun the shelling which occurred in front of a hotel housing Western journalists as well as journalists who were on the beach at the time and who caught it on camera, causing a worldwide uproar. Which is why the Israeli military's decision not to take any legal action against those involved in the tragedy could have far-reaching consequences for the Israeli Defense Force legally and diplomatically. According to an IDF report, the location of the attack was known to be a compound of Hamas police and naval forces, which the IDF attacked multiple times in the days before the attack that killed the four children. On July 16, the day of the attack, army intelligence reported that Hamas naval commandos were entering the area to prepare an attack on the IDF. Israeli aircraft identified several unidentified persons running into an installation on the beach near where the IDF had attacked the day before. When IDF aerial surveillance spotted four people running toward a shed next to the compound, officials believed them to be Hamas militants, the report says. The IDF struck the area with two missiles, killing the children. The military's announcement, released Thursday night, said the children's death was an accident and did not affect the legality of its military actions in Gaza. So no action is being taken against those involved. Despite the detailed explanation, there is still doubt as to why an IDF missile would have targeted a beachhead that was empty of anything but the four minors. Israel usually fails to thoroughly investigate its military operations or prosecute soldiers for abuses. Israel says it does investigate its actions, although those inquiries rarely lead to criminal punishment. Israel never allows a third party to question its actions. It investigates itself, like a killer who puts himself on trial and after interrogating himself, finds himself innocent. Something which, of course, never happens, not even in the world of make-believe. The United Nations Human Rights Council is expected to publish a report on Israel's so-called Operation Protective Edge which should lead to claims of Israeli war crimes. Later this month, the July 16 incident which drew such an international outcry will probably be among those the Palestinians will present in a war crimes case against Israel in the International Criminal Court. The killing of the four boys on the beach was an incident so full of tragedy and high emotion that it should have knocked some sense into Israel and caused it to abandon its senseless, murderous onslaught on the Palestinians in Gaza. It did not. The attack happened on the 10th day of fighting which by then had killed 230 Palestinians. Israel's unrelenting killing machine would slaughter for 40 more days, for a total of 2,100 Palestinians killed, mostly civilians, many of them children. Israel is gearing up for a major public relations battle in support of its actions in the war last summer in Gaza. But its only defense will be that these young boys, whose funerals sparked grief and anger as they were buried in the sand they had been playing on, were the collateral damage that came with the territory.
