Famed British journalist Robert Fisk believes that the slaughter of 45 civilians in Israeli attacks on UN-run schools in Gaza and the West’s complicity is yet another reason why some Muslims hate the West.

"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," Fisk wrote in the Independent on Wednesday, January 7.

"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."

Israeli occupation forces bombed out on Tuesday, January 6, three UN-run schools where thousands of Gaza civilians were taking shelter, killing at least 48 of them.

"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," said Fisk, using an earlier death toll.

"What happened was not just shameful. It was a disgrace. Would war crime be too strong a description? For that is what we would call this atrocity if it had been committed by Hamas."

Fisk believes the deafening Western silence on the UN school massacre, the latest in a long list of Israeli atrocities against civilians, fuels ant-West hatred.

"And of course, when an Arab bestirs himself with unrestrained fury and takes out his incendiary, blind anger on the West, we will say it has nothing to do with us.

"Why do they hate us, we will ask? But let us not say we do not know the answer."

(IslamOnline.net)