Moment Israeli airstrike hits Gaza tower block after Hamas attack – video
theguardian.com
Israeli airstrikes destroyed a tower block in Gaza City after Hamas militants launched a rocket and air attack on Israel in the early hours of Saturday morning.
The Israeli army launched Operation Iron Swords against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, with Israel's president, Benjamin Netanyahu, saying the country, is 'at war'.
Al Jazeera journalist Youmna El Sayed was reporting live from Gaza the moment the missile struck Palestine Tower behind her.
Sources in Gaza said at least 198 Palestinians were killed in the strikes
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Please explain like I'm 5 : why Israël doesn't go after military/strategic targets instead of destroying city blocks?
Because this was probably a military target.
A lot of militant groups use civilians as human shields to either completly prevent a strike or a least create bad publicity to spin their propaganda.
There were a lot of Israelis taken into Gaza by force, my guess is they are kept in the most important places to create a moral dilemma.
You either attack and kill your own civilians or let the enemy have undisturbed action.
Israel and the Occupied Territories: Shielded from scrutiny: IDF violations ... https://www.amnesty.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/mde151432002en.pdf
Palestinian children tortured, used as shields by Israel: U.N. | Reuters https://www.reuters.com/article/us-palestinian-israel-children-idUSBRE95J0FR20130620
I just thought I'd add this to counter the usual one sided view on the matter.
I honestly don't know why they do that because Israel clearly doesn't care and will shoot a child or journalist or doctor any day of any hour.
Gaza doesn't have anything else. It is not a country, it is a concentration camp and it in general is not permitted to have anything resembling an organized self defense.
It makes it easier to bulldoze over their towns on Ramadan and then act shocked when some of them retaliate during your high holiday.
Israel could simply stop settling the land that doesn't belong to them and exterminating Palestinians, and Hamas could stop lashing out and killing Israelis but the only way that happens is if the political leadership of those two selfishly monstrous regimes were to simply all die.
There can be no peace as long as one country is allowed to make another into an apartheid state while they ethnically cleanse the population from land they feel entitled to control.
Or maybe Israel could use all that money they have to remove the separation walls and allow Palestinians to integrate into society and return lands that settlers recently took. That's a start.
Hamas doesn't want to be part of Israeli society. These are not two groups that can co-exist peacefully.
City blocks are military targets when your goal is to get rid of people living there.
The correct answer is that Hamas purposely launches these attacks from city block, schools, hospitals, etc which is literally a war crime so when there is retaliation they can cry foul. Don't believe terrorist apologist.
Have you ever looked at a map of Gaza, the place is all civilian infrastructure, they have to operate from inside it there's no other choice the place is completely overpopulated. Which very much makes it not a war crime as the Geneva convention is about avoiding avoidable civilian casualties, not unavoidable ones.
Shooting rockets indiscriminately is definitely an avoidable action. They don't have to do it. Unfortunately people do need to defend themselves from Israel but the rockets are just to inflict suffering.
Palestine has all the right in the world to combat an occupying force. What are you going to say next "Ukraine doesn't have to shoot rockets at Russians"?
Then Gaza, in particular, has the right to defend itself against a blockade threatening the wealth, health, and indeed survival of its people. Don't want poor people to fight dirty? Don't oppress them, it's that simple. If Israel ever goes around stopping to do that (probably will require re-animating Rabin) they get the right to complain, but not before.
Let me know when Ukraine bombs civilian hospitals inside Russia or massacres Russian civilians at a music festival.
Let me know when Gaza has surgical strike capability. With the type of rockets they're using you can't really target hospitals because you can't really target them at all, they're ludicrously imprecise. Little better than a potato cannon.
People fight with what they have. The more desperate, the dirtier. It is way too easy to sit in your chair in front of your computer, presumably with a fully stocked fridge, reliable water, sewage, and electricity, technical marvels just a mouse click and next-day delivery away, and make moral judgements about people fighting for sheer survival with little more than sticks and stones.
Do I condone it? Nah. Both sides are invariably assholes, and not everything Hamas does is goal-directed enough to be categorised as "dirty war". There's lots of plain hatred in there. But then that hatred isn't exactly unfounded.
And at that point we're getting to a "If you deny me things, then I will deny you things" territory. The mutual assured destruction instinct: "Sure I may lose but I'll make sure that you lose, too". Eye for an eye. That, yes, means simply inflicting suffering. We're past morals at this point, this is human instinct, or one branch of the genome telling the other "yo, cut it out". It's bigger and way more natural -- in the metal sense -- than the quaint and lofty systems we build in our heads.
...which brings me to why I even replied to your comment: We wouldn't be in that situation, we could make moral judgements we'd actually feel good about, if Israel wasn't tightening thumbscrews to mush levels just to inflict suffering, like the whole water situation in Gaza. And there's no, absolutely no justification for that, as Israelis very much are not struggling for survival themselves.
So... terrorism.
No. That's inexcusable.
We would not be the social beings that we are without that underlying threat level. Our whole capacity to emphasise and be kind hinges on being able to tell when we crossed a line with others, and for that people have to have lines that can be crossed.
What's inexcusable is not the instinct, we all have it, but pushing people to a point where it breaks through. Be that to get rid of them, or to galvanise the in-group, as fascists do.
You mean like Hamas does with their murder, rape, and parading or civilian corpses?
Like Israel is doing by depriving Gaza of the necessities for life even though they themselves have plenty?
One side is actually doing it out of material desperation, the other out of political convenience, is all I'm saying.
The Hamas charter literally states that their goals are only attainable through jihad. The motivation is not "material desperation" but Israel's destruction. Israel's actions have helped radicalize people toward Hamas but Hamas goals are expressly not self defense.
My dislike of the policies of Israel's government is not relevant. Israeli citizens are not currently massacring Palestinians and parading their bodies through the streets.
This is not equal, this terrorism does not help Palestine, and excusing it is disgusting.