The Israeli brutality

More than 100 Palestinians were killed and dozens wounded in an Israeli strike on a Gaza school sheltering displaced people. The strikes hit when people sheltering at the school were performing dawn prayers, leading to many casualties. Medics had not yet been able to reach all the bodies. The death toll appears to be one of the largest from a single strike during more than 10 months of Israel’s military offensive in Gaza against Hamas. Video from the site showed body parts scattered on the ground and more bodies being carried away and covered in blankets on the floor. Empty food tins lay in a puddle of blood and burnt mattresses and a child’s doll among the debris. Saturday’s incident brings to at least 14 the number of schools struck in Gaza since July 6, killing more than 280. A spokesperson for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, urged Israel’s ally Washington to put an end to the blind support that leads to the killing of thousands of innocent civilians, including children, women, and the elderly. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif also condemned the Israeli barbarity, which had no historical precedent, and added Israel had crossed all limits in its open violence. The scale and severity of brutality that has defined the Gaza-Israel conflict has put an end to the widespread apathy towards the suffering of the Palestinian people. The wall-to-wall media coverage has opened people’s eyes to the reality people in Gaza, and the rest of Palestine, have had to endure for generations. The West and now that the overwhelming majority of the Western public are becoming more and more aware of the crimes against humanity that are being committed in Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his commanders not only find the cessation of attacks undesirable, but they are also actively seeking to avoid any prospect of stopping the war which has claimed the lives of tens of thousands of civilians, two-thirds of whom were women and children, in what many describe as a fully-fledged genocide and war crime. Rumors swirling point to Netanyahu’s own desperation for political survival. He wants to lengthen the military operation against Gaza to avoid the prospects of standing trial for a catalog of criminal charges, which threaten to send him to prison for a lengthy term. Considering the Israeli context where daily protests are taking place demanding the cessation of attacks, the release of remaining hostages, and the return of traumatized soldiers from front-line duty, those rumors sit extremely uneasy with those who side with Israel. It is also clear to many that Netanyahu is actively seeking to expand the lines of war northward towards Lebanon and to engage Iran through a series of provocations. Netanyahu wants to prove to his own population as well as to his main allies that the past 10 months of death, devastation, and utter carnage delivered on Gaza, have not been in vain. In Netanyahu’s estimation, the opening of new war fronts will involve his backers for actively defending him. However, it is a huge gamble and only a man in the kind of desperate situation as Netanyahu finds himself, would consider it worth doing. In every country considered an ally of Israel, most of their people have decided that Israel stands in breach of international law and has committed a crime beyond anyone’s imagination. Israel’s arrogance and stubbornness in defending that crime has only led to even more on the fencers jumping to the side of Palestinians against an untenable and indefensible Israeli position. The long-lasting impact and implications of this is terrifying to ordinary Israelis, adding further pressure on an increasingly politically embattled prime minister.