This isn’t about Hamas. That was the excuse. The means to the end. The end is taking over the desirable land lots of beach front property and energy resources in the sea. Israel has coveted those energy resources for a very long time. This is ethnic cleansing. Calling the situation exactly as I see it.
Israeli forces bombarded cities, towns and refugee camps across Gaza on Thursday, killing dozens of people in a widening air and ground offensive
The war has already killed over 20,000 Palestinians and driven around 85% of the population of 2.3 million from their homes. Much of northern Gaza has been leveled, and it has been largely depopulated and isolated from the rest of the territory for weeks. Many fear a similar fate awaits the south as Israel expands its offensive to most of the tiny enclave.
Israeli officials have brushed off international calls for a cease-fire, saying it would amount to a victory for Hamas.
STRIKES FROM NORTH TO SOUTH
An Israeli airstrike on a home in the northern town of Beit Lahiyeh — one of the first targets of the ground invasion that began in October — buried at least 21 people, including women and children, according to a family member.
Bassel Kheir al-Din, a journalist with a local TV station, said the strike flattened his family house and severely damaged three neighboring homes. He said 12 members of his family — including three children ages 2, 7 and 8 — were buried and presumed dead, and that nine neighbors were missing.
In central Gaza, Israeli warplanes and artillery pounded the built-up Bureij and Nuseirat refugee camps, leveling buildings, residents said. Israel said this week it would expand its ground offensive into central Gaza. The Israeli military typically launches waves of airstrikes and shelling before troops and tanks move in.
A hospital in the nearby town of Deir al-Balah received the bodies of 25 people killed overnight, including five children and seven women, hospital records showed Thursday. Nonstop explosions could be heard throughout the night in the town where hundreds of thousands of people have sought shelter, with many spending cold nights sleeping on sidewalks.
“It was another night of killing and massacres,” said Saeed Moustafa, a resident of the Nuseirat camp. He said people were still crying out from the rubble of a house hit Wednesday by an airstrike.
“We are unable to get them out. We hear their screams, but we don’t have equipment,” he said.
ANOTHER WAVE OF DISPLACEMENT
Rami Abu Mosab, who lives in the Bureij refugee camp, said thousands of people have fled their homes in recent days because of the intense bombardment. He plans to remain there because nowhere in Gaza is safe.
“Here is death and there is death,” he said, “To die in your home is better.”
Bureij and Nuseirat are among several camps across the region that were built to house hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation. They have since grown into crowded residential neighborhoods.
Some 700,000 Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes during that conflict, an exodus the Palestinians refer to as the Nakba, or catastrophe. Some 1.9 million have been displaced within Gaza since Oct. 7.
As Israel has broadened its offensive, fleeing Palestinians have packed into areas along the Egyptian border and the southern Mediterranean coastline, where shelters and tent camps are overflowing. Even in those areas, Israel continues to strike what it says are militant targets.
The military says it has killed thousands of militants, without presenting evidence….
The military says it has killed thousands of militants, without presenting evidence, and that 167 of its soldiers have been killed and hundreds wounded in the ground offensive.
13 replies on “85 % of Gaza’s Inhabitants Driven From Their Homes, Israel’s Op covers most of Gaza”
Penny,
This gives lie to our ‘rules based international order’, you know that ‘liberal enlightened order’ that we brag about. This is what gives us the ‘moral high ground’. This is our ‘civilized’ response to ‘barbarism’.
When in reality it is “Helter Skelter” from John Lennon’s worst psychedelic thought dream and the story could be used as a preface to Orwell’s 1984.
What is happening in Gaza and before our eyes completely obliterates the concept of human progress.
This is Chaos Theory and let the nuclear fall out fall where it may.
This situation gives lie to everything about the so called liberal world order and righteousness and humanitarianism- And the superiority of western morality when it concerns saving others- the garbage people believe, or are willing to believe to keep their delusions in order are mind boggling.
What’s going on in Gaza is complete and total destruction. None of it justified by what occurred on Oct. 7/23. None of it. (Frankly I believe Israel let that happen) As stated this, what is occurring now in Gaza, is what Israel wanted. And they created the conditions for it to happen.
the sheer and total destruction along with the mass killings are overwhelming to consider…
But to live it, daily. Is unfathomable.
Mark, I agree 100 percent with you. We imagine ourselves civilized but we aren’t.
Penny said: … “what is occurring now in Gaza, is what Israel wanted. And they created the conditions for it to happen.”
Heck, it’s what “God” wanted to happen! “God” gave them that land. They are God’s chosen out of all of humanity. So they’re not required to obey the “thou shalt not kill” commandment.
https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/Exodus%2020:13
Nor is there any commandment to have prevented gross settler violence (even against small children) as early as 2021 to frighten Palestinian families into vacating their homes.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/28/israel-palestine-west-bank-settler-violence-tension
“God” gave the land to the Jewish people, so Israel is really not doing anything wrong.
But it sure makes God look like Satan.
Hi Corrine!
They (Israelis) may believe God gave them that land.
They may want others to believe that is the case as well (not necessarily yourself)
I’m not one of those people.
I saw this saying the other day, like a meme
You can’t think yourself superior to anyone else because that’s racist, sexist, or whatever but, if you don’t believe Jews are chosen than your antisemitic.
That’s a double standard.
Penny,
I’m not sure Israel allowed the Oct 7th attack to happen per se. I am a great believer in military incompetence. The conscript ‘Reserve” IDF has demonstrated itself to be irrational and unprofessional in the last couple of decades enough to show that the rot goes to the heart of the organization. Their pilots are well trained in bombing defenseless civilian targets but the ground forces are poorly trained for close combat and they lack the “Crusader” mentality necessary for full adherence to the agenda of Zionist ethnic cleansing and the militarist state.
But I do wholeheartedly agree with your words, “…what is occurring now in Gaza, is what Israel wanted. And they created the conditions for it to happen.”
The long term apartheid policies of Israel made this outcome inevitable and the genocide we are participating in is something radical Israelis have hoped for; not as a “mowing of the grass”, but a tearing up the roots and forever contaminating the soil.
Like the Romans who got their revenge but demolishing Carthage and enslaving and displacing the people then “salting the earth.”
It’s madness, all of it. The cruelty.
No wonder I feel such an oddball?
sigh..
Hi Mark:
What does “salting the earth” mean?
Gary,
It is an expression found in ancient Roman texts which refers to eradicating your opponent’s crops and poisoning the soil so nothing will grow there.
Tacitus also described Roman policy as :
“They created a desert and called it peace.”
Thanks to Gary for asking and Mark for explaining because I wondered what it meant as well!
Hi Mark:
What is the poison used?
Gary,
There were no large scale industrial poisons. Usually it meant uprooting Olive trees, tearing down vineyards and clearing forests to allow erosion to wash away any fertile topsoil. Fresh water wells were polluted by throwing in rotting carcasses. Also at Carthage in Tunisia and Corinth in Greece they tried to sow rock salt into the best of the farmland but that cannot have been viable in a broad sense but the intent was there. This, all in an effort to prevent re-settlement.
This is the agenda with “modernized” weapons in Gaza.
Hi Mark:
Even with no vegetation on it water dies not wash away fertile soil. When you see soil erosion, it is a symptom of low soil fertility.
Soil that is very acidic is regarded as a soil problem. The excess acidity is actually a symptom of soil deficiencies. Applying calcium carbonate to the soil loads the soil with the positive cation calcium while removing the acidity. It is usually the main deficiency in acid soil. Magnesium carbonate and sodium bicarbonate can also be used. They will load the soil with magnesium or sodium respectively while removing the acidity. In the case of sodium bicarbonate you have loaded the soil with sodium and you won’t be able to grow a weed as the soil has been salted.
The dust bowl was blamed on soil acidity. The response was to apply limestone (calcium carbonate) to the soil in order to remove the acidity and it seemed to work. They should have done a test with sodium bicarbonate as it would have also removed the soil acidity but made the dust bowl worse.
Although they solved the dust bowl problem, that actually did the right thing for the wrong reason. That’s agricultural science for you.