International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, October 22, 2003

Winning the conflict, but losing the press war -- the IDF’s measured response to Palestinian claims of mass casualties in Gaza late Monday night came twenty-four hours after the international media carried the habitual Palestinian denunciation of reported Israeli "war crimes."

Videotape of the disputed missile strike, taken by a small unmanned Israeli Air Force drone, was released to the media late Tuesday night -- showing that there were no crowds in the street when a second missile hit a car of escaping Hamas operatives as they fled into the densely populated Nusseirat neighborhood south of Gaza City after trying to dispatch two suicide bombers into Israel.

The taped evidence seemed to clearly contradict Palestinian claims that Israeli helicopters fired the second missile into a crowd of civilians - killing at least five bystanders including a medical doctor.

Palestinian reports early Tuesday said that some 80 civilians were wounded and as many as 6 more killed in a wave of Israeli precision strikes that successively targeted weapons warehouses and Hamas operatives engaged in terrorist missions across the Gaza Strip throughout Monday. At least 50 of those were reportedly injured in the second disputed Nusseirat strike, shortly after midnight.

Imad Akel, a senior member of the Hamas military wing was killed along with three associates when helicopter gunships tracked his car after it sped away from the scene of the attempted border infiltration. Two missiles were fired at the car as it entered Nusseirat, after the first failed to stop the vehicle.

Earlier Monday, IAF helicopters and an F16 warplane pounded a bomb factory; a weapons warehouse; a vehicle containing two terrorists in charge of the manufacture of Qassam rockets, mortar shells and explosives used in attacks against Israel.

The IDF said the attacks came in the wake of a marked increase in Qassam rocket production, with as many as 14 being launched in the past week at Israeli communities in the western Negev --as they have been repeatedly over much of the past three years

Neither CNN nor BBC featured news of the IDF video in their web-based Middle East coverage, Wednesday -- preferring to lead on the "overwhelming" condemnation of Israel’s security fence at the UN General Assembly on Tuesday -- a fence identical to the one that prevented the would-be-bombers successfully leaving Gaza late Monday night.

PA Chairman Yasser Arafat meanwhile called on Tuesday for urgent international intervention to prevent any further air strikes in Gaza, telling reporters that world leaders should "immediately intervene to stop the military madness in which they aim to destroy the Holy Land and this steadfast people."

The US, however, refrained from the knee-jerk condemnation of the attacks that quickly came from the European Union and Russia, simply reminding Israel should take steps to avoid harming civilians before pointing out that if the Palestinians take action against terrorism, Israel would not have to act.