At least a dozen emails have come in about this story, because it’s an appalling illustration of the perversion of normal human behavior that occurs in Gaza. A family balked at letting terrorists use their property to fire mortar shells into Israel—and in response, the Islamic thugs of Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades gunned down a 15-year old boy.

But the sick twist is that the family didn’t try to stop the militants because they wanted to prevent their Arab brothers from murdering Jews—they did it purely out of self-preservation, to prevent their house from being bulldozed: Militants Force Palestinian Family Into an Agonizing Choice.

JERUSALEM, July 23 - The Zanin family of the Gaza Strip faced a familiar, and agonizing, choice: whether to let Palestinian militants use their land to fire mortar shells at Israel, and risk having their home razed in retaliation by Israeli troops. They balked, and ended up losing one of their own, a 15-year-old boy.

For days, militants used the family’s orange and olive groves in the Gaza village of Beit Hanun to set up launchers. On Friday, four members of Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, an armed branch of Yasir Arafat’s Fatah movement, returned to try to set up a launcher in front of the family’s house.

The family protested, said Amna al-Zanin, a member of the family. The militants drew weapons. Three shot into the air, but a fourth fired directly at the family, wounding Ms. Zanin and hitting her 15-year-old nephew, Hassan al-Zanin. He died later at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City; doctors said the bullet had penetrated his heart.

“Even if we ask them not to fire from our land, that doesn’t give them permission to shoot at us,” Ms. Zanin said in a telephone interview from her bed at Alawdah Hospital in Jabaliya. “It’s very painful that a Palestinian bullet was directed toward a Palestinian chest.”

Her 18-year-old nephew was hit in an ear, and her 20-year-old nephew was struck in the hand.

Ms. Zanin is no friend of the Israelis. She was interviewed 10 days ago about conditions in Beit Hanun during an Israeli incursion, and she angrily described how children in her clan could not sleep at night and were frightened much of the day.

“I wish I could be a fighter to shoot at Israelis,” she said then. “I am willing to explode myself out of anger.”