The Arab League has demanded — and received — an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council following the Israeli counterattack on Gaza. They want the UNSC to issue a condemnation for Israel’s military action, which has killed over 70 Gazans, essentially blaming Israel for responding to the continuing volley of rocket attacks on Sderot and Ashkelon:

The U.N. Security Council is meeting in emergency session at the request of the Palestinians and their Arab supporters who want the U.N.’s most powerful body to condemn the Israeli attack on Gaza and call for a cease-fire.

Council members met behind closed doors Saturday night, though the Arab League’s U.N. observer, Yahya Mahmassani, said its members want an open meeting to protest the Israeli attack.

The UNSC will not likely issue any kind of resolution, mostly because the US and UK are not going to blame Israel for finally responding to the continuing provocations of Hamas. They have launched rockets continuously from Gaza at Sderot since the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza three years ago. The Israelis acted with restraint until the launchers targeted Ashkelon this week, a much larger city, as an escalation of their attacks.

Now they want to haul dead civilians in front of journalists to complain about the Israeli counterattack. That might work except for two points. First, Gazans deliberately targeted Israeli civilians in Sderot and Ashkelon, or at the very least didn’t bother to target anything at all and had no worries whether they killed women and children. Second, the Gazans locate their rocket launchers in civilian centers, essentially using women and children as human shields.

The Arabs want to handcuff the Israelis while the Gazans continue shelling them. If the Arabs really wanted to keep Gazan civilians alive, they would get Hamas to quit launching rockets at Israeli cities. If the Gazans, led by Hamas, want to make acts of war, then they should quit crying when their enemy hits them back.