The Associated Press confirmed the Israeli Defense Force’s claim that Hamas fighters were firing from the UN school in Gaza, which lead to Israeli troops to return fire and tragically kill more than 30 Palestinian civilians. As with much of the reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, many initial reports focused on the Israeli “attack” on the school and played up the civilian deaths.

The initial reports aided the Palestinian / Hamas narrative that the Israelis are committing war crimes during its operations in Gaza. But, as Michael Totten noted yesterday in his criticism of media reports, the real war crime was committed by Hamas for firing from the school and apparently rigging it with explosives:

A responsible journalist might also add that what Hamas did is a war crime under international law, and that Hamas is responsible for every civilian killed at that school. Rigging a school with explosives and using it as a base in a war zone is a crime precisely because it endangers the lives of civilians, and in this case of children.