At least 40 people have been killed in an Israeli air strike on an United Nations-run school in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian medical sources have said.
A number of children were among those who died when the al-Falluj school in the Jabaliya refugee camp took a direct hit, doctors at nearby hospitals said.
People inside had been taking refuge from the Israeli ground offensive.
Earlier, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) warned of a "full-blown humanitarian crisis" in Gaza.
Speaking on the 11th day of the Israeli assault, a senior ICRC official, Pierre Kraehenbuhl, said life in Gaza had become intolerable.
Palestinian medical sources say up to 600 people have been killed since the attacks began, and Mr Kraehenbuhl said much more needed to be done to protect civilians.
At least 70 Palestinians were killed on Tuesday, while four Israeli soldiers were killed by fire from one of their own tanks.A UN-run school? Was this a facility harboring terrorists? For Christ's sake! Can someone explain at this point what possible defense there can be for Israel's actions. 600 people dead. This is shameful. Shameful that Israel continues to conduct itself in this manner, shameful that the Bush admin is doing nothing but supporting it, and increasingly shameful that Obama has made no official statement.
While understanding the need to combat terrorism, Israel cannot conduct itself like this. It is immoral and ineffective. Please, I ask everyone who stops by to visit this blog to email their senators and representatives to ask that they (at the very least) call on Israel to make a greater effort to avoid civilian casualties. Better yet, ask them to pressure Israel to end the siege of Gaza, correct the humanitarian crisis, and work to find a lasting solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel cannot just have a free hand and full US support to undertake tactics that kill 100s of civilian bystanders. What is the value of fighting terrorism when you kill scores of innocent people to do it?
3 comments:
I agree with you on everything, except... It would not be prudent for a not-yet-installed Obama administration to issue any statement on the matter. It would be in the very least politically unwise to bad mouth the current administration two weeks before you are getting sworn in. If president-elect Obama does want to do something in the region, the most intelligent thing to do is call for peace and bide his time until HE is the one in power.
But let me again go on record to say the whole situation in Gaza is a tragedy. Hamas and the Israeli government are both terrorists in my book.
Fair assessment. And this what I would like to hear more people say. Nearly everyone agrees that Hamas is terrible, but why is it so hard to call out Israel when it's tactics are clearly out of proportion with the threat? As I have said before, by any measure, this is out of proportion. According to B'tselem, and Israeli human rights group, 4800 Palestinians have been killed by Israelis compared to only 600 Israelis killed by Palestinians. Are both terrible? Certainly. But Israel has killed 8 times the number of persons as have ALL the radical Palestinian groups put together. If you don't think that is despicable and if you can't criticize Israel AT LEAST as much as Hamas (and similar groups) you are either an idiot or blind to the realities on the ground. One might argue that Hamas hides among a civilian population, but by the same token Israel encourages civilians to settle in contested lands. So why is one any worse than the other?
Oh, and one last statistic. Since 2000 Israeli security forces have killed 952 minors. So, they have killed more children under that age of 18 than all of the Palestinian terror groups have killed Israelis of all ages and types. Look at the data. Terrible. How can there any justification period. Here is the link for the B'tselem for anyone interested:
http://www.btselem.org/english/statistics/Casualties.asp
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