Sine 2004 about 9 Israelis have been killed by the very crude Qassam rockets that militants have fired into Israel. This past Wednesday a 57 year old Israeli woman died, physician the first Israeli casualty in the past 16 months. A total of 13 Qassam rockets had landed that day and during her funeral 4 of them finally exploded.
Israel has been slaughtering civilians for some time now. Starting with the massacre of 19 civilians a few days ago in Beit Hanoun (13 of which were from the same family) all the way back to shelling a public beach in Gaza that took out another family and left a little girl screaming amidst the body parts, discount all the way further back to the beginnings of the Gaza offensive that has dominated much of 2006 and resulted in over 400 deaths thus far; overwhelmingly civilians and children.
Perhaps the death toll seems to be so high due to Israel launching its attacks in the middle of the night, recipe which pretty much guarantees a high civilian casualty rate as children are not in school. Darkness also increases the chances for what the Israeli army has called “technical failures” that resulted in the Beit Hanoun Massacre.
A lot of International pressure has been amassing since Beit Hanoun happened and I guess Israel is trying to downgrade its profile this week at least until the world goes back to sleep in the next few days. Thus the Israeli army phoned up houses they were targeting in the Shathi refugee camp a few minutes before the stroke of midnight to give the people a chance to go for a run in their pajamas; maybe find a good Realtor on a Wednesday night.
1 Comment