The BBC News website reports :

A member of the Afghan parliament has criticised a Nato air strike on a clinic where a Taliban leader was being treated for his injuries.

The report stresses that NATO checked there were no civilians in the clinic first before they attacked with helicopter gunships.

Amnesty International has called for an investigation. NATO say 12 militants were killed.

I’d like you to compare this incident to the furore that would surround and has surrounded Israeli attacks of a similar nature.

For NATO to say they checked that there were no civilians in the building requires a healthy degree of scepticism.

Clinics like hospitals are protected buildings unless they are being used as a base for military operations or direct attack.

Think Gaza Operation Cast Lead and accusations of  war crimes.

But AI are very reasonable when it’s not Israel who are the accused party:

Amnesty International has called for an investigation into the attack, but added that if the Taliban fired first, they had committed a serious violation.

Not quite the point despite AI’s attempt to whitewash NATO. If you were confronted by troops and gunships you might be inclined to fire first too. This does not vindicate the imminent attack on a clinic.

Just replace NATO with Israel and Taliban with Hamas. Now what would you say?

I know what I would say. Proportionality.

Israel is being and was being directly attacked on its own borders by Hamas. This rendered Hamas a legitimate target. If those targeted are responsible for horrendous acts of terrorism and are hiding in a protected facility then, as far as I am aware, Israel waits for them to come out. In Operation Cast Lead hospitals were only fired upon when fired from. The main hospital in Gaza, where the Hamas leadership were using the basement as an operations centre, was not attacked. If Israel was so intent on war crimes and so careless of civilian casualties would they not have targetted Shifa hospital?

Apparently NATO would.

Double standards anyone?