Robert Fisk: Why do they hate the West so much, we will ask

So once again, Israel has opened the gates of hell to the
Palestinians. Forty civilian refugees dead in a United Nations school,
three more in another. Not bad for a night's work in Gaza by the army
that believes in "purity of arms". But why should we be surprised?

Have
we forgotten the 17,500 dead – almost all civilians, most of them
children and women – in Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon; the 1,700
Palestinian civilian dead in the Sabra-Chatila massacre; the 1996 Qana
massacre of 106 Lebanese civilian refugees, more than half of them
children, at a UN base; the massacre of the Marwahin refugees who were
ordered from their homes by the Israelis in 2006 then slaughtered by an
Israeli helicopter crew; the 1,000 dead of that same 2006 bombardment
and Lebanese invasion, almost all of them civilians?What is
amazing is that so many Western leaders, so many presidents and prime
ministers and, I fear, so many editors and journalists, bought the old
lie; that Israelis take such great care to avoid civilian casualties.
"Israel makes every possible effort to avoid civilian casualties," yet
another Israeli ambassador said only hours before the Gaza massacre.
And every president and prime minister who repeated this mendacity as
an excuse to avoid a ceasefire has the blood of last night's butchery
on their hands. Had George Bush had the courage to demand an immediate
ceasefire 48 hours earlier, those 40 civilians, the old and the women
and children, would be alive.