Shame, Shame, Double Shame...

Everybody Knows Your Name...

(Reuters) - The United States has allowed Israel, waging an offensive in the Gaza Strip, to tap a local U.S. arms stockpile in the past week to resupply it with grenades and mortar rounds, a U.S. defense official said on Thursday.

The munitions were located inside Israel as part of a program managed by the U.S. military and called War Reserves Stock Allies-Israel (WRSA-I), which stores munitions locally for U.S. use that Israel can also access in emergency situations.

Israel, however, did not cite an emergency when it made its latest request about 10 days ago, the defense official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The United States allowed Israel to access the strategic stockpile anyway to resupply itself with 40mm grenades and 120mm mortar rounds to deplete older stocks that would eventually need to be refreshed.

"They didn't ask for it from there but we gave it to them so we could rotate our stocks," the official said.

Additional Israeli requests for U.S.-manufactured ammunition were also being processed in the United States, the official said. The official did not offer further details on quantities or costs of ammunition already supplied or requested.

Israel's embassy in Washington declined comment about the resupply request, including whether it asked for the ammunition because of its operations in Gaza.

Separately, U.S. lawmakers were working in Congress to provide millions of dollars in additional funding for Israel's "Iron Dome" missile shield.

The U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee added $225 million for Iron Dome to a spending bill intended mainly to provide money to handle an influx of thousands of Central American children across the U.S.-Mexico border.

According to the Gaza Health Ministry, 1,346 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have been killed since Israel began its offensive on July 8 with the declared aim of halting cross-border rocket fire and destroying the tunnel network of the Islamist group Hamas.

On the Israeli side, 56 soldiers and three civilians have been killed.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart; Additional reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by David Storey and Mohammad Zargham)

This isn't even the final pricetag.
(Who do you think will be footing the bill for the rebuilding of Gaza, and the massive humanitarian assistance that is now and will be needed in the coming days?)

Destruction is easy; Any dummy can do it.
Building something sustainable... that's the hard part.
How do we honestly defend this?

ADDED:

The attack on the market in Shejaiya killed 17 people and wounded 160 as hundreds tried to buy fruit and vegetables, the Palestinian health ministry said.

A journalist who worked for a local news agency was reported to have been killed.

One witness, Salim Qadoum, told Associated Press: "The area is like a bloodbath, everyone is wounded or killed. People lost their limbs and were screaming for help. It's a massacre."

Mr Ban called the attack "unconscionable".

The attack there and in Khan Younis came during a four-hour humanitarian ceasefire called by the Israelis after the school attack. However, Israel said the truce was only partial and applied to areas where Israeli soldiers were not currently operating. It told residents not to return to areas they had previously been asked to evacuate.

Hamas had rejected the truce as meaningless and "media exploitation".
...
The Israeli military said in a statement that its "initial inquiry suggests militants fired mortars... from the vicinity of the school in Jabaliya".

It said soldiers had "responded by firing towards the origin of fire".

Oy.

The shelling of a market near Gaza City killed 17, while booby traps claimed the lives of three Israeli soldiers.

Precision targeting counts in war. A lot.
Interesting when the response to ongoing military deaths incurred during wartime is to continually go off, half cocked. No disciplined fighting there.

Real soldiers don't kills sleeping children.

The UN expressed outrage at the attack on the school in the Jabaliya refugee camp.

Spokesman Chris Gunness told the BBC that Israel had been told 17 times that the school was housing displaced people, saying the attack caused "universal shame".

Mr Ban later said: "I condemn this attack in the strongest possible terms. It is outrageous. It is unjustifiable, and it demands accountability and justice.

"Nothing is more shameful than attacking sleeping children."
...
Some 58 Israelis have been killed, 56 soldiers and two civilians. A Thai worker in Israel has also died.

MEANWHILE IN ISRAEL...

The Flopping Continues.*
(I'm embarrased for the people in this picture, even if they're not for themselves. Putting themselves in the dirt like animals, and deliberately.

"Get up already, people. Dust yourselves off and join the real world. Showing weakness like this always ... why? Stop feigning and toughen up, buttercups. It is the only way to truly live freely...")

Gil Cohen Magen/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

* [A] flop is an intentional fall by a player after little or no physical contact by an opposing player in order to draw a personal foul call by an official against the opponent. The move is sometimes called acting, as in "acting as if he was fouled".

Because it is inherently designed to deceive the official, flopping is generally considered to be unsportsmanlike.

Flopping effectively is not easy to do, primarily because drawing contact can sometimes result in the opposite effect—a foul called on the defensive player—when too much contact is drawn or if the player has not positioned himself perfectly. Additionally, even if no foul is called on either player, by falling to the floor, the flopping defensive player will have taken himself out of position to provide any further defensive opposition on the play, thus potentially allowing the offense to score easily.

Also:

[T]he penalty for "flopping" is a technical foul if caught in-game, and a fine if caught after the game in video reviews. The technical foul is a non-unsportsmanlike conduct technical foul (one of six fouls a player may be assessed before disqualification; no ejection is possible).

Say, is there much flopping in competitive flag football, do you think? (Mastery of technique and all...)

2012-13 National Federation of State High School Associations basketball rule 10.6.f specifically defines "faking being fouled," in the judgment of an official, as unsportsmanlike conduct subject to penalty of a technical foul, but in practice this call is exceptionally rare.

Too bad.
It really takes away from the sporting game action in the long run.