Los Angles Times stops short of refuting Israeli claims about "Hamas operatives"

During a severe crisis like the one in Gaza, when every single day of warfare means more large scale violence in and around one of the most densely populated cities in the world, we rely on the media to inform citizens so they in-turn can make informed choices in response. The media has a profound responsibility to examine claims made by the parties that are directly or indirectly responsible for the death and destruction. When they fail us they are complicit in the crimes.
In the Jan 7, 2009 Los Angeles Times there was a report about a United Nations school shelled by Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) : “Calls for Gaza truce mount after school hit.” The attack was on the Al-Fakhora school in the Jabalia Refugee Camp in north of Gaza City on Jan 6, 2009, which killed at least 30 civilians. After giving the basic facts of the attack The Time’s writers cite Israeli officials justifying the attack by saying, “the school was targeted because Hamas militants had launched mortar rounds from its grounds…”, but the article does not cite the statement made by Christopher Gunness, an Official of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), on Democracy Now: “It’s important to say that the coordinates of all of our facilities in Gaza were handed over to the Israelis well before this offensive began.” Or the Associated Press article which states that the UN had given the IDF the GPS coordinates of its 23 schools being used as a civilian shelter during the incursion. The statement by the Israeli official coupled with the information given by the UNRWA official and AP (of which is undisputed by the State of Israel) acknowledges a clear war-crime of intentionally targeting civilians under the Protocol II, article 13 of the Geneva Convention.
The Times article also doesn't clarify that it is extremely unlikely that the persons firing mortars from the school were targeting anything outside of the Gaza Strip, since most mortars have a maximum range of 2.15-2.89 status miles. There is an extended range mortar which has a maximum range of 3.46 miles; however, it is very expensive and it is not commonly used by Palestinians. If said persons wanted to target civilians it is far more likely that they would have been using Qassam Rockets instead of mortars.
Given that they couldn’t have been targeting civilians and were very likely targeting IDF positions within the Gaza Strip, their actions are protected by Article 51 of the UN Charter as defense against an invasion of the Gaza Strip by the IDF; furthermore, the IDF invasion violates Article one, two, and thirty-three of the UN Charter.
In summary The Times fails to: refute the Israeli claims of mortars being fired by "terror operatives", or “Hamas operatives”; defend the actions of the persons firing the mortars as internationally recognized acts of defense; or expose Israel's actions as war crimes.
The article does offer a comment of the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon about the "dangers inherent in the continuation and escalation of this conflict", but it does not give an impression of how dangerous it was for the IDF to shell the refugee camp. The Al-Fakhora school is located in the Jabalia Refugee Camp. The Palestinian refugees living in the camp are from the war of 1948 which established Israel’s independence. The conditions in the camp are extremely dismal and cramped. According to UNRWA as of 2005, 106,691 refugees live in make-shift shelters within the .87 sq. mile camp. The IDF had to know that the density of the population along with the conditions in the camp made it almost certain that a high level of civilian casualties would result from such an attack.
Finally, the citations within the article give a heavy voice to the State of Israel, but very little to Palestinian officials. The Times cites official Israeli sources eight times (including the first after the introduction) while Palestinian ones get two. There were two official US sources, three UN and no citations of independent media or humanitarian aid, and in the last four paragraphs of the story there were two Palestinian civilian sources (including a doctor at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City).