Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Israel’s war on the Palestinian people in Gaza

Israel is hitting Palestinian civilians, and it is hitting them hard. To even speak of a ‘war’ risks confusion. This is not a clash or a conflict, a tit-for-tat cycle or tribal tussle. This is an anti-colonial revolt.

Israel is at war with the Palestinian people. More accurately, Israel is writing a new, brutal chapter in its ongoing war against the Palestinian people, a horror story stretching back decades, and, appallingly, with more pages to be written.

As of now, the Israeli military has killed 100 Palestinians, and wounded an estimated 680, figures that continue to rise. OCHA, a UN body, reported at 15:00 local time Thursday that 58 civilians were among the dead, including 11 women and 21 children. The headline in today’s Daily Telegraph: ‘Half of Gaza’s dead ‘are women and children”. OCHA also recorded 70 destroyed homes, with 342 housing units destroyed or severely damaged overall.

On Thursday, an unnamed IDF official told Israeli media that strikes on the Gaza Strip were being conducted at a rate of one attack every four and a half minutes. The source also claimed that when “Gaza residents see the great damage to the Strip”, it “will speak for itself”. Collective punishment then, wrapped and packaged as ‘self-defence’.

Continues >>

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