Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Turkish news service TRT reports from wire services that an Israeli air strike on a Palestinian refugee camp in Khan Younis, where people had gathered to watch a soccer match, killed at least 29 persons on Wednesday evening. The weapon was an American-provided 250-pound bomb of the sort used for close air support against enemy troops, not for dense urban areas full of civilians.
It was a macabre reversal of the scenes at the Euro 2024 tournament, where England beat the Netherlands 2-1 on Wednesday, with nary an American missile in sight. Normal sports for white people, 250-pound bombs for brown people.
A young woman, Ghazal Nasser, an eyewitness in Abasan, said, “We were sitting around normally, people were running and playing, and others were buying and selling. Suddenly, without any drone of an airplane or any sound at all, the rocket fell on us. Everyone started running. I opened the door, and there was shrapnel. I got scared and slammed the door closed. But then I went out. I thought that my uncles were there, but thank God, no one was there. They were attending a match. But there were injuries and martyrs. I saw people torn apart… and blood.” (The abbreviated Reuters translation is here.).
Reuters reports that the Israeli military characterized the bombing as having been a precision strike against a Hamas fighter involved in the October 7 terrorist attack. The Israeli military is reportedly OK with 15 to 20 deaths of innocent civilians for every militant killed, astonishingly lax rules of engagement not acceptable in any military of any industrialized democracy.
Asmaa Qdeih, who lost relatives in the attack, confirmed, “We were sitting in the late afternoon, and suddenly a rocket landed. The schools were crowded with people, and the street was full. Suddenly, the rocket hit and destroyed the entire place.” She continued, “They were all corpses, scattered remains, and bodies flying through the air.”
Palestinians gathered at Nasser Hospital to say goodbye to their deceased loved ones.
Al Jazeera English Video: Shows moment of Israeli Strike on Packed Gaza School
On Monday, the Israeli military had bombed a shelter of the UN Relief and Works Agency in an area to which it had encouraged people to relocate, according to the UN Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights. Attacking refugee centers is a war crime in International Humanitarian Law.
The OHCHR wrote, “The UN Human Rights Office has repeatedly raised concerns that IDF’s [the Israeli military’s] evacuation orders are confusing, often instructing people to relocate to areas where IDF military operations are ongoing.”
On Wednesday, the Israelis bombed a school shelter, creating panic. Its air force has hit 4 refugee shelters this week.
The Israeli expulsion of thousands from Gaza City, again, is raising concerns among aid workers and UN agencies that Gaza’s stage 4 famine could slip into catastrophic stage 5 at any moment throughout the Strip. Some half a million Palestinians may be living in a phase 5 famine already.
The Israeli Air Force’s indiscriminate bombardment of Gaza has killed over 40,000 people and wounded over 87,000, not counting the estimated 10,000 under the rubble and those dead of disease, dehydration and hunger now and in the future, with the prospective death toll at 186,000. With so little care to avoid civilian casualties, and with evidence, cited by the United Nations, that there were no obvious military targets for some of the bombings, it is no wonder that the Israeli armed forces have committed numerous massacres over the past nine months. Some of them were so egregious that they were given names, such as the Great Flour Massacre, the bombardment of civilians gathering for food aid.
The March Flour Massacre was followed by several others. Each Israeli atrocity in Gaza has become a genre over time.
Now we have the Great Soccer Massacre, with no end in sight.
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