At least 31 people have been killed in attacks on Gaza, in the worst flare-up since the last major attack in May 2021.
Another day, another horror story struck Gaza when Israel unleashed a wave of air attacks on Friday, killing a senior commander of a Palestinian armed group, Khaled Mansour, at least 31 people, including six children, and injuring more than 260 people also wounded.
Israel has warned that its campaign against Islamic Jihad* could last a week, and its attacks on Gaza have destroyed apartment buildings and struck refugee camps. But the question here is, who is Israel really punishing? The Palestinian armed group or the innocent Palestinians?
Many say that this strike was launched because of the internal affairs of Israel and the upcoming election. Yair Lapid of Yesh Atid, the acting prime minister of Israel, wants people to show that he is strong. Because that is how Israeli politics works, killing Palestinians, crumpling their homes to the grounds and taking innocent lives of kids and women inflicts how strong Israel is.
The only people suffering from decades of war are the Palestinians. The last war caused widespread devastation in the Gaza Strip. A year later, there has been almost no reconstruction. This isolated coastal territory is impoverished; its people are barely recovering. And many fear another round of escalation. This is the reality of Palestine. This is a siege whose end goal is not just weakening but eradicating all Palestinian resistance.
When Palestinian fighters retaliated by launching more than 400 rockets at Israel, there was a cry and hue on the Israeli side that the Palestinians had affected the Israeli drastically, but according to the Israeli ambulance service, most missiles were intercepted. There have been no reports of severe casualties. Now that is the reality the media does not show.
With few exceptions, mainstream media across Europe and North America is once again framing the latest attack on the Gaza Strip through the prism of “borders,” “Israeli self-defence,” “precision strikes,” and “Palestinian terrorism” or what seems to mean the same thing for Euro-American audiences — “Palestinian militancy”. It is as if the Palestinians have agreed on these so-called borders that separate Israel from the Gaza Strip and their side of the border and plot to terrorise Israel for the sake of terror and destruction, driven as they are by “Islamist” ideologies that are inherently anti-Semitic, violent, and barbarous.
Will this ever end? Or will this trigger another series of wars and kill innocent Palestinian lives?
*Islamic Jihad: Designated terrorist group by a few nations
