UN chief criticizes Israel over deaths of children in Gaza.

[elleng]

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday criticized Israel for the death and suffering of Palestinian children during last summer's conflict in Gaza, reiterating his demand for the Israeli government to take immediate steps to prevent such killings.

The U.N. chief didn't address the reasoning behind his decision last week not to include Israel on his annual list of parties that kill or injure children in armed conflict in a speech to a Security Council meeting. That decision sparked protests from human rights groups and many in the Arab world and elsewhere.

The secretary-general's latest report said that in the Gaza conflict at least 561 children were killed — 557 of them Palestinians. It said 4,271 youngsters were injured, all but 22 Palestinians.

The 557 Palestinian deaths were the third-highest death toll of any conflict in 2014, after Afghanistan's with 710 child killings and Iraq's with 679 — but ahead of Syria's with 368.

While Ban kept Israel off the list, he kept up pressure on the Israeli government at the council meeting to present his report on children in armed conflict.

He expressed deep alarm at the Gaza killings and urged Israel to review its policies and practices and "respect the special protections afforded to schools and hospitals."

In a letter to Ban circulated soon after his speech, Israel's U.N. Ambassador Ron Prosor accused U.N. special envoy for children in armed conflict, Leila Zerrougui, who worked on Ban's report, of "widespread, systematic and institutionalized biased conduct against Israel (which) undermines the credibility of the report."

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/0efd8c2a599543f99f7dd3f060f215c5/un-chief-criticizes-israel-over-deaths-children-gaza

[4now]

1. I didn't realize that Israel murdered so many innocent Palestinian children

last summer.
I guess that is what you need to do to get reelected in Israel.

[azurnoir]

2. so Israelin a matter of weeks killed almost 200 more children in Gaza than died in Syria

for the entire year, wow

[Mosby]

3. The report is bullshit

More than 76,000 people died in Syria’s civil war in 2014, including more than 3,500 children, a monitoring group reported on Thursday. The figures would make last year the deadliest in Syria since the conflict began in March 2011.

The figures from the monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, put the total number of dead in the conflict as of Wednesday at 206,603.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/02/world/middleeast/syrian-civil-war-2014-deadliest-so-far.html?_r=0

About the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/24/syrian-observatory-for-human-rights_n_6201182.html

[shira]

4. Someone at AP isn't doing the most basic fact-checking. But they're doing.....

....a bang-up job of selling propaganda to their readership.