Juxtaposition.

Today's American and international news coverage of the Gaza-Israeli War differs in emphasis...

Foreign journalists yesterday witnessed firsthand the killings of four Palestinian children playing on the beach after taking cover indoors for days:

The Guardian

The first projectile hit the sea wall of Gaza City's little harbour just after four o'clock. As the smoke from the explosion thinned, four figures could be seen running, ragged silhouettes, legs pumping furiously along the wall. Even from a distance of 200 metres, it was obvious that three of them were children.

Jumping off the harbour wall, they turned on to the beach, attempting to cross the short distance to the safety of the Al-Deira hotel, base for many of the journalists covering the Gaza conflict.

They waved and shouted at the watching journalists as they passed a little collection of brightly coloured beach tents, used by bathers in peacetime.

It was there that the second shell hit the beach, those firing apparently adjusting their fire to target the fleeing survivors. As it exploded, journalists standing by the terrace wall shouted: "They are only children."

In the space of 40 seconds, four boys who had been playing hide and seek among fishermen's shacks on the wall were dead. They were aged between seven and 11; two were named Mohammad, one Zakaria and the youngest Ahed. All were members of the extended Bakr family.

Three others who were injured made it to the hotel: Hamad Bakr, aged 13, with shrapnel in his chest; his cousin Motasem, 11, injured in his head and legs, and Mohammad Abu Watfah, 21, who was hit by shrapnel in his stomach.
...
Pulling up the T-shirt of the first boy, journalists administering first aid found a shrapnel hole, small and round as a pencil head, where he had been hit in the chest. Another boy, a brother or cousin, who was uninjured, slumped by the wall, weeping.

The injured boy cried in pain as the journalists cleaned and dressed the wound, wrapping a field dressing around his chest. He winced in pain, clearly embarrassed too as a colleague checked his shorts to look for unseen femoral bleeding. A waiter grabbed a table cloth to use as a stretcher, but a photographer took the boy in his arms to carry him to the ambulance.
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At the Shifa hospital on Wednesday afternoon, Hamad Bakr was conscious and waiting for surgery to remove the shrapnel from his chest and drain fluid from his chest cavity. "My father has a fishing boat there. We were playing hide and seek when we were hit. I didn't hear the first one which killed one of us but I heard the second as we were running along the beach. That one killed three more."

His mother Taghrid, 35, came into the room. "Why did you go out of the door?" she demanded of Hamad.

She said that his brother, Younis, who was with Hamad, while he was being treated, "is so scared that he is shaking".

Suddenly angry and grief stricken, she said: "They killed my nephew. Who does that? Who fires on children?"

As the reporters left, Mohammad Abu Watfah was wheeled out of a lift after surgery to remove the shrapnel in his stomach. As relatives gathered not far from the Al-Deira hotel to bury the four dead boys, barely 90 minutes after the attack on the beach, the boys' uncle, Abdel Kareem Baker, 41, said:

"It's a cold-blooded massacre. It's a shame they didn't identify them as kids with all of the advanced technology they claim they're using."

What strikes me looking at those photos: just how skinny and malnourished-looking those children are, living under occupation.

The New York Times, meanwhile, has chosen to front-page this article about the war sufferings in Israel:

With the Israeli Air Force pounding targets in Gaza for the ninth day on Wednesday, in the hope of quelling the rocket fire, the death toll on the Palestinian side has risen to at least 205, many of them civilians. But Israel did not suffer its first fatality until Tuesday, though several adults and children have been seriously injured.

The combination of public resilience and the low casualty rate has afforded the Israeli government some leeway in deciding whether to send ground forces into Gaza or to seek a cease-fire.

“We are not tired,” said Meir Cohen, whose house next door was also damaged by the rocket. “We are ready to continue for another week, two weeks, until their rockets run out.”

Mr. Cohen, his wife and a grandson, 14, were uninjured; they had taken cover in their safe room when the first siren went off.

“That’s not weakness,” Mr. Cohen said. “That is [Israeli] bravery.”

In the next house, Anat Suissa, 17, was alone when the siren went off. Her mother, a pediatrician, was working at the local hospital at the time. Anat also ran into her family’s safe room; when the rocket crashed to the ground, the shock of the blast threw open the room’s door.

“I heard glass shattering, and understood it was very, very close,” she told reporters afterward. “I came out and saw it was in the yard." Neighbors heard her screaming and rushed to comfort her.

Later came the Israeli television reporters, who asked for her opinion about what action the government should take. “I am not in a position to say what should be done,” she told them in a trembling voice.

“But it is not logical that children and youth here have 30 seconds to run for their lives.”
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Rotem Vandel, 37, who runs the Beach Bum kiosk at Lido Beach in Ashdod, said he stayed home with his baby daughter for a week. But July is the height of the summer season, so on Wednesday he reopened the kiosk, which sells hot dogs, drinks and ice cream, to clean up and get ready for the weekend. The beach was almost empty and he had no customers, so once the work was done, he decided to take a chance and do some surfing.