Reuters wanted Israeli soldiers punished for not waiting around to see whether somebody is going to shoot a missile at them:
Reuters news agency says the Israeli army has made reporting in Gaza “almost impossible” after it cleared a tank crew that killed one of its cameramen.
Fadel Shana and eight other Palestinian civilians, mostly children, were killed by a shell packed with darts in April.
The army’s top lawyer said the troops acted properly as they suspected his camera tripod was an anti-tank weapon.
Reuters says it shows the army is not meeting an obligation to protect civilians in combat areas.
Shana was filming some Israeli tanks from about a mile (1.5km) away on 16 April when one of them fired a flechette shell, an anti-personnel weapon which releases a shower of darts.
The fact that rarely has any attention called to it is that it is precisely the Palestinians, and not the Israelis, who have endangered civilians by cowering among them and by using civilian institutions, such as hospitals and schools, as armories. Terrorists use civilians as human shields, and that makes life more dangerous for everybody, including that unfortunate Reuters photographer. But the answer is not to reward them for their cravenness.