Conflict in Gaza continues…
The New York Times reports that, after 15 days of fighting, at least 620 Palestinians and 29 Israelis have died.
NPR has an extensive coverage by Eyder Peralta: Gaza Conflict Day 16: Here’s What You Need To Know. Includes in the recap was this report:
— The U.N.’s high commissioner for human rights said Israel’s targeting of civilian installations could amount to war crimes.
“The disregard for international humanitarian law and for the right to life was shockingly evident for all to see in the apparent targeting on 16 July of seven children playing on a Gaza beach,” Navi Pillay said. “Credible reports gathered by my office in Gaza indicate that the children were hit first by an Israeli airstrike, and then by naval shelling. All seven were hit. Four of them — aged between 9 and 11, from the same Bakr family — were killed. These children were clearly civilians taking no part in hostilities.”
NPR’s Emily Harris, who is reporting from Gaza, tells our Newscast unit that Israel has said that schools, mosques and private homes can be legitimate targets if militants use them to stash weapons.
Author Namoi Wolf made a powerful statement, originally on Facebook, and then shared on Philip Weiss’ Mondoweiss:
I mourn genocide in Gaza because I am the granddaughter of a family half wiped out in a holocaust and I know genocide when I see it. People are asking why I am taking this ‘side’. There are no sides. I mourn all victims. But every law of war and international law is being broken in the targeting of civilians in Gaza. I stand with the people of Gaza exactly because things might have turned out differently if more people had stood with the Jews in Germany. I stand with the people of Gaza because no one stood with us. I went to synagogue last Friday night and had to leave because I kept waiting for the massacre of Gaza to be addressed. … Nothing. Where is god? God is only ever where we stand with our neighbor in trouble and against injustice. I turn in my card of faith as of now because of our overwhelming silence as Jews…I don’t mean Israelis, a separate issue…about the genocide now in Gaza.
I want no other religion than this, that is, seeing rather than denying my neighbor under fire and embracing rather than dismissing those targeted with annihilation and ethnic cleansing.
William Saletan’s “How to Save Gaza” in Slate says that “the most plausible way to stop this cycle of violence is through internationally supervised demilitarization. He makes these observations (and elaborates on them):
-Gazans have no government to protect them.
-The absence of a protector in Gaza has worsened Israel’s behavior.
-Israelis have lost faith in a military solution.
-There’s an obvious candidate to take over Gaza.
-The pieces of a solution are in place