He saved the children. He also saved the Palestinian cause from a catastrophic blunder from which it probably never would have recovered. Palestinian children can die anonymously as far as America's news media are concerned, but Israeli children would not. If, in fact, the military wing of Hamas planned this attack, then the leaders of Hamas ought to execute them, not only for their evil intent but also for the evil they would have done to both Islam and to the hopes of Palestinians for peace and self-determination. Adults killing adults is bad enough, but killing children is evil, and too many children, both Palestinian and Israeli, already have died in this struggle over land so arid and rocky most Americans wouldn't buy an acre of it at a bankruptcy sale.
Every single death is another log on the fire of hatred that burns on both sides.
And killing has become all too common and casual. There is no moral difference between trying to blow up a school bus and Israeli gunners deliberately shelling a United Nations camp in Lebanon, knowing that it contained more than 100 women and children who had sought refuge. Without a just peace, these fires will burn and consume flesh indefinitely on into the next century. And, inevitably, the fires will spread. This was the sea change that the hard-nosed Israeli Col.