Israel Ups the Ante in Gaza: 9 Palestinians Killed & 91 Airstrikes on Gaza in Just 3 Days, and the Killing Doesn't Stop

Israel inches closer to all-out war on Gaza: In Just 3 Days, Israeli forces killed 9 Palestinians in Gaza & carried out 91 airstrikes over the weekend, shooting to death a 10th Palestinian on Monday, bringing Gaza death toll to 227 since March 30.

(Screenshot: Google Images, source. Israeli airstrikes pound the Gaza Strip early on Saturday morning, Oct. 27, in the largest Israeli offensive on the besieged coastal enclave since August.)

Following open preparation for all-out war on Gaza amidst threats of the same, Israeli snipers killed five and injured 180 Palestinians with live fire during the 31st weekly March of Return Palestinian border protest in the Gaza Strip on Friday, October 26. A total of 232 Gazans were reportedly injured, including those treated for tear gas injuries. This was followed by exchanges of fire between militants in Gaza and Israeli forces which culminated with Israeli fighter jets pounding Gaza with at least 87 airstrikes in an overnight series of attacks early Saturday morning which destroyed some 80-90 targets, according to Israeli media.

Earlier in the week on Tuesday, Israeli forces had already killed another demonstrator in Gaza, 17-year-old Muntasir Muhammad Ismail al-Bazz, making him at least the 34th Palestinian minor to be killed by Israeli occupation forces since the weekly border protests first began seven months ago. Just 4 days prior on the previous Friday's border protest on October 19, over 200 Palestinians were wounded by Israeli gunfire, including medics, journalists, and 27 children; while shrapnel from an Israeli missile strike carried out near the demonstrations reportedly wounded 4 more. No one was killed during this protest, but it followed a deadly Friday the week before which saw 7 Palestinians killed, and was followed by last week's Friday protest which saw 5 Palestinians killed.

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Also on Friday, in addition to the 5 protesters killed in Gaza, Israeli soldiers in the West Bank who opened fire on a group of stone-throwers killed one Palestinian, shooting him from behind, critically injuring another with a shot to the head. The man killed was identified as Othman Ladadwa by medical sources, who succumbed to an abdominal gunshot wound in which the bullet had pierced vital organs.

The spokesperson for the Gaza health ministry identified those killed on Friday at the Gaza border as: Mohamed Abdul Nabbi, 27, Nasser Abu Tayem, 22, Ahmad Abu Lebda, 22, Ayesh Shaath, 23, and Nassar Abu Teem, 19.

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According to an Israeli military spokesman, Hamas first responded on Friday by launching 14 rockets towards Israel, 10 of which were intercepted, promptly followed by Israeli airstrikes on three Hamas targets in Gaza according to the Israeli army. Hamas does not appear to have taken responsibility. In retaliation for the five Palestinian protesters killed earlier that day, the smaller Gaza militant group Islamic Jihad fired a barrage of 34 rockets towards Israel, claiming responsibility for the attack.

"The resistance will not accept the equation imposed by the enemy on the basis of killing on their part and silence on our part," the group said in a statement. - MEE

Israel then commenced with its largest scale bombing campaign carried out against the Gaza Strip since August, allegedly targeting Hamas positions across the Strip with at least 87 airstrikes, and notably also targeted a hospital in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip. Israeli airstrikes targeted the perimeter of the Indonesian Hospital and caused material damage to the building, the Gaza Health Ministry reported. Locals also told Middle East Eye that "one four-storey building in central Gaza City that was turned to rubble overnight had hosted charitable institutions and research centres." No casualties were initially reported as a result of the strikes.

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Islamic Jihad announced on Saturday morning that they had accepted a ceasefire brokered by Egypt, but also signaled their readiness to continue retaliatory rocket strikes if Israeli attacks continued.

"If the aggression and bombing continued, we will respond to each incident," the movement said in a statement Saturday. - AP

Then on Sunday Israeli forces carried out another airstrike on the Gaza frontier near the border fence, killing three Palestinian boys, two aged 13 and one 14 years old, bringing the death toll of Palestinian minors killed by Israeli forces since March up to 37. Israel said it had hit suspected militants trying to blow up part of a border fence, according to Reuters, while the Israeli military said in a statement that an Israeli aircraft struck “three terrorists adjacent to the fence who were trying to sabotage it and were apparently planting a bomb.”

(Photo: Khalil Hamra, AP. Relatives mourn over the bodies of three teens, wrapped in Palestinian flags, who were killed in an Israeli airstrike on Sunday, during their funeral in the town of Deir el-Balah, central Gaza Strip, Monday, Oct. 29, 2018. The victims are: Khaled Abu Isied, 13, Abdel-Hamid Abu Dahur, 13, and Mohammed Assatri, 14. Hundreds of Palestinians laid them to rest, with their families insisting they had no militant ties and calling on Gaza’s militant groups to retaliate.)

When they say - suspected militants apparently planting a bomb - this isn't exactly the assurance of guilt the world would like to hear, especially considering medics reported retrieving the dead bodies some 200 metres from the very border fence they were allegedly in the process of sabotaging.

The mother of one of the slain said her 13-year-old son Abdel-Hamid had "nothing to do with resistance." Another, Khaled Abu Isied's mother said that it was normal for the children to go to the border area "and that's why we did not expect them to be martyred." Meanwhile local residents confirmed that the children in the small central Gaza farming community "often go to the border area to plant traps used to catch birds, to forage for food for livestock or tend to crops," the AP reports. The border area in which the attack occurred had not been used for any of the border protests.

Additionally on Sunday, Israeli occupation forces carried out two other separate attacks on Palestinian farmers in the Gaza Strip near the border fence. PressTV reports that Israeli forces opened fire on farmers east of the town of Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza, and also opened fire on farmers east of Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza, forcing the farmers to flee their lands. At least one man was injured in the northern Gaza attack, and was rushed to Beit Hanoun Hospital for gunshot wound treatment. And as the PressTV article points out:

Farmers are not the sole target of Israeli fire. The military regularly shoots at unarmed Palestinian fishermen and shepherds near the fence separating Gaza from the occupied territories.

Independent journalist Eva Bartlett who lived in Gaza for years confirms that Israeli forces routinely and indiscriminately open fire on Gaza fishers, often labeling Palestinian fishing boats as Hamas navy vessels in an attempt to justify their unprovoked attacks.

Palestinian frustration over the deaths of the three boys killed on Sunday near the Gaza border fence was seen as hundreds of Palestinians took to the street late Sunday, burning tires and demanding militants retaliate with rocket strikes on Israel. Thousands more gathered on the beach on Monday to protest the 11-year military blockade and inhumane siege of Gaza, some reportedly throwing stones and firebombs at the fence near the beach in northwestern Gaza, while a 27-year-old Palestinian man, Mohammed Abu-Abada, was shot dead by Israeli forces. As many as 15 boats flying Palestinian flags also attempted to break the naval blockade, but Israeli forces responded by firing tear gas at the peaceful protesters.

According to the Middle East Monitor:

In response to the Israeli aggression on the peaceful protesters, a spokesman for Gaza’s National Committee for Breaking the Siege, Bassam Manasra said that “Gaza is still challenging the odds, facing the dangers, fighting for Palestine and confronting the worst forces of evil while paying the lives of its sons a price for dignity”.

These recent Israeli actions, though abhorrent to many, should not come as any surprise, considering the long history of Israeli leaders dehumanizing Arabs while openly calling for the genocide of all Palestinians:

It's Not War, It's Slaughter

As of October 18, at least 217 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli forces since the weekly Gaza border protests began in March, according to the UN, while Palestinian deaths on Tuesday October 23 through Monday October 29 now brings that total up to 227 Palestinians in Gaza including at least 37 (& up to 44*) minors killed by Israel in the last 7 months, with only one Israeli soldier killed during the same time period and no civilian fatalities with 40 injuries on the Israeli side. To put that into perspective, in Gaza, from the start of the border protests until now, Israel has killed an average of just over 1 Palestinian a day for 220 days now, and over 1 child a week for 31 weeks, meaning at least 7 Palestinians have been dying every single week at the hands of the Zionist occupation for over 7 months in a row.

(UN-OCHA) * 37-44 children: UN data indicates 40 children killed through Oct. 18, and 4 additional minors have been reported killed since, 1 last Tuesday and 3 on Sunday, which would bring the total up to 44, however most media outlets covering this are reporting 37.

Furthermore, well over 23,000 Palestinians have already been injured in the Gaza protests since March, and the UN data released on the 19th also indicates that most of those 22,897 injured Palestinians were wounded by live ammunition shot by Israeli forces. In the 2 Friday protests since the 18th, over 400 more Palestinians in Gaza have been injured, bringing the total number of those injured in the March of Return protests up to over 23,300. So the number of Gazans injured from Israeli violence during the 2018 March of Return protests has now well surpassed double the total number of Gazans injured during the 2014 Gaza War, and most of these injures are gunshot wounds. In 2014, 10,626-10,895-11,100 Palestinians in Gaza were injured and 2,202 Palestinians killed in the 50-day Israeli assault on Gaza that summer...

Israel calls this war, just liked it called "Operation Protective Edge" in 2014 a war, but this is not war, it is slaughter, and the extremely disproportionate number of casualties on each side clearly indicates this. The Israeli-Gaza violence which took place Friday through Monday saw 9 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces and 181 wounded by Israeli gunfire, with many dozens more sustaining tear gas injuries, while militant rocket fire from Gaza was initially reported by an Israeli source to have caused minor injuries to just 6 Israelis; however the AP declared "there were no reports of injuries on either side," and cited a military spokesman who said all the non-intercepted rockets over Israel fell in open spaces. No Israelis were killed in these 4 days of 'war' and none were injured in the border protest 'clashes' which took place in the same time. Include the West Bank and count the seven day period from last Tuesday through this Monday (Oct. 22-29), Israeli forces have killed 11 Palestinians in 7 days.

The recent Israeli violence through Monday also brings October's death toll of Palestinians in Gaza up to 24, making this the deadliest month for Gaza since May when 80 were killed, and making September the 2nd deadliest month since May with 23 Gazans killed. Same with injuries, October saw the most wounded Palestinians since May, also just surpassing September's numbers. This shows a clear and recent trend of increasing Palestinian casualties indicating increasing Israeli violence in the last two months, which is interesting because these are the two months since August, which is when Israel really first began showing signs indicating preparation for more of an all-out war on Gaza in the style of 2014.

7 Palestinians including 1 child killed & 780+ injured every week in Gaza by Israeli forces for 31 weeks in a row is not okay! Just 4 weeks into the March of Return protests, on April 20 4 children had been killed, the kill rate at 1 child a week from the very beginning, and now 31 weeks in and it's up to over 37 and counting, the same steady rate slightly increasing over time. It's not getting better, it's getting worse, so why do the Palestinians still continue to keep protesting, knowing Israeli occupation forces will only continue to shoot them by the hundred and kill them by the dozen?

March of Return - Why Palestinians continue to protest despite the great loss of life and limb: It's about the inhumane criminal military blockade & siege of Gaza, not Hamas

While Israeli leaders continue to blame Hamas for all Palestinian resistance emanating from the Gaza Strip, both violent and nonviolent forms of protest, as well as holding them responsible for all retaliatory rocket strikes coming from Gaza, it is becoming increasingly clear that this is but a ruse, the Israeli facade. There is a reason the Palestinians in Gaza continue to protest despite increasing Israeli violence and the deadly cost of doing so, and this reason is quite obviously the 11-year Israeli siege of Gaza which is creating one of the largest humanitarian crisis in the world, surely second only to the US-backed Saudi genocide on Yemen.

Israel blames Hamas for organizing and perpetuating the border protests, even accusing the militant group of paying all of the tens of thousands of protesters to take part in the demonstrations, however the Palestinian protesters themselves deny these claims, insisting they are participating in the demonstrations of their own free will and protesting out of frustration at the 11-year siege on Gaza responsible for creating the quickly deteriorating miserable living conditions the 2 million residents are currently subject to.

The protesters have two demands, that the inhumane Israeli siege of Gaza be lifted and the right of return for Palestinian refugees to lands and homes seized in 1948-1968 be granted; and if only just the first demand were granted - that the siege be lifted - this would surely be enough to ease the tensions considerably. For its part, the Israeli side has committed itself to continued attacks on Palestinians in Gaza unless its demands are met, that protesters stop flying incendiary kites or balloons into Israel and that the protests be brought to an end. The organizers of the March of Return insist that the protests will continue until the siege is lifted, while Israel insists on continuing to impose the blockade so long as Hamas is running Gaza.

Considering the blockade on Gaza is creating a humanitarian crisis so dire the besieged enclave is projected to soon be unlivable, it is entirely reasonable to acknowledge it is for the most part these wretched living conditions behind the Palestinian rage fueling the border protests as opposed to just Hamas. Then take into account that Hamas military wing is only 30,000 fighters strong, whereas over 2 million Palestinians are forced to suffer under the daily oppression which comes with life in Gaza under siege, along with the fact that hundreds if not thousands of women and young children have taken part in these demonstrations, and a more accurate picture of why the Palestinians in Gaza continue to protest at the cost of the lives of their sons and daughters begins to emerge.

You can only lock up 2 million people in the world's largest open-air prison with ever-deteriorating living conditions caused by a military blockade you refuse to lift for so long before the people reach a breaking point; and the population of Gaza has now reached that breaking point, and they are reacting. You cannot punish an entire population for over a decade with daily oppression imposed by a military siege for the sins of the Hamas terrorists who rule the population by force while at the same time denying escape to the people, and then not expect the civilian population to eventually rise up in resistance and revolt. Likewise, you can only treat an entire population of human beings as rabid beasts to be locked in a cage awaiting extermination for so long before they eventually storm the gate in an attempt to tear down the prison bars locking them in.

(source) Opening day of the great March of Return protests, March 30.

Imagine living in a place where you are unemployed and hungry, internally displaced with only a few hours of rationed electricity a day and a lack of clean water, widowed or orphaned because Israeli violence took your family, depressed and hopeless with raw sewage pouring into the sea you can no longer swim in, a farmer or fisherman who cannot go to work without fear of being attacked by soldiers, fenced in with nowhere to go, internally ruled by a militant terrorist faction and surrounded by soldiers who shoot anyone who tries to escape - Would you get angry and protest, throw stones at soldiers as an act of resistance, maybe even get so desperate you'd try to escape or send flying incendiary objects across the fence to try and get the world's attention?

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This is the reality of civilian life in Gaza, and while Hamas is busy using the Palestinians as cheap political bargaining chips at the expense of civilian life in Gaza, Zionist Israeli policy has doomed these 2 million souls to a life of suffering in this de-facto extermination camp with no escape in sight. The Israeli oppression caused by the siege incites Palestinian resistance of all kinds, and continues to perpetuate conditions favorable for Hamas recruitment and radicalization of Palestinian youth.

Israel claims every Palestinian in Gaza attempting to breach the border fence is a Hamas militant to be shot on sight, but what will the Zionists do when it is 10,000 or 50,000 or 100,000 or more Palestinians rushing the fence en-masse in an attempt to escape their miserable conditions? Something's gotta give, for if the humanitarian conditions in Gaza do not quickly begin to improve, then the desperate and frustrated Palestinians trapped in Gaza will surely only continue to engage in more and more desperate acts of resistance. Israel can't keep millions caged forever, as George Galloway pointed out in an RT interview last Thursday:

Shattering the Israeli Facade - This is not 'war on Hamas'

Israel refuses to lift the 11-year blockade imposed on Gaza for the same reason they claimed to impose it in the first place in 2007 - Hamas. The stated goal of the blockade is to cut off military supply to Hamas, but after 11 years under siege, Hamas still has weapons, fighters, and is still quite capable of launching a variety of attacks on Israel, albeit largely ineffective and often via terrorist acts such as rockets fired on Israeli civilian population centers. It seems abundantly clear that the siege on Gaza has been largely ineffective at stopping Hamas terrorism while it is at the same time crippling the entire civilian population, with the ongoing attacks on border protesters only further stoking the flames of Palestinian resistance. Israel has also waged three so-called wars on Hamas with the stated goal of crippling and destroying the militant group, however Hamas appears to be far from crippled and much further from complete destruction.

Quite clearly Israel is either entirely incapable of dealing a truly crippling blow to Hamas which would lead to their defeat, or the Zionists are unwilling to do so. Many have argued that Israeli forces are simply unable to defeat Hamas in a ground war (or too scared to really try), and thus the reason they often resort to opening fire on crowds of protesters full of women and children or to carpet-bombing the Gaza Strip, while others opine that it is in Israel's best interest to keep Hamas alive but relatively weak in order to perpetuate the constant state of war which Israel and Hamas both seem to thrive on at the expense of the Palestinian people. Hamas is certainly no Palestinian hero of the day: For example in the 2014 Gaza war, both Hamas fighters and Israeli forces were caught using civilians as human shields, a heinous war crime; and while brutal Israeli occupation does not justify these acts of terror or war crimes, neither does Hamas terrorism and crimes of war justify Israeli war crimes or acts of terror against the Gaza population.

It is interesting that Israel helped create Hamas, and many believe Israel is still pulling their strings in order to help perpetuate the endless cycle of conflict in Gaza which both groups thrive on. Whether Israel is incapable of crushing Hamas or simply unwilling, one observation remains painfully obvious:

They [Israel & Hamas] are "two parties who can't seem to live with one another — or apparently without one another either." - WP

Hamas is not the problem Israel makes them out to be, but is rather just one of the symptoms of a much bigger problem, and that problem is Zionist hatred, oppression, and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians realized under the Israeli occupation of Palestine beginning in 1948, reinforced further in 1968, and currently seen particularly clearly in the Gaza Strip. Hamas is far from innocent, but it is becoming more and more obvious every week that Israel's policy of blaming and holding Hamas responsible for all resistance and violence coming out of Gaza is a blind policy not entirely rooted in reality.

A recent example found in this story, is that it was Islamic Jihad who both launched and claimed responsibility for the 30+ rockets fired into Israel in the exchange of militant fire over the weekend, and yet Israel's response was to target over 80 Hamas targets. The AP puts it quite bluntly:

Although Islamic Jihad often acts independently of Hamas, Israel holds Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007, responsible for all fire emanating from the territory.

Whether it is accusing all Palestinian protesters of being in the pay of Hamas or retaliating against Hamas for an attack it didn't even carry out, Israel's two-faced hypocrisy is on full display, and the Zionist warmongering words of deception cannot be trusted. After all, Hamas has become Israel's big bad boogeyman to blame all of its Palestinian problems on, and without which it would not have the constant 'justification' to continue its never-ending war on Gaza; and one thing is certain, both Zionist Israel and the Rothschilds' who gave Palestine to the Zionists thrive on perpetual war, and may also be making mega-shekels on international weapons deals in which the weapons are first 'battle-tested' and 'proven' on the Gaza slaughter-field.

There is however one far bigger and badder boogeyman than Hamas which Israel has been after for decades, and not being ones to let any good crisis go to waste, the Israeli response to this Islamic Jihad rocket attack was of course not only to strike Hamas but also to jump to blame the biggest, baddest boogeyman on the planet - Iran - and of course Syria too, because Syria's been whooping some Zionist proxy-terrorist ass lately, coming close to defeating the whole power of the Zionist US Empire's war machine in its 7-year proxy war against the same.

From the AP:

Conricus [an Israeli militery spokesman] said Islamic Jihad, an Iranian-backed militant group, had fired the rockets under instructions from Iran's "Al Quds" force based in Syria and said that Israel was considering taking action against the Iranians in response.

"We have seen and established a clear link between Gaza and Damascus," he said. "We know that the orders, incentives were given from Damascus with the clear involvement of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Quds Force.

"From our perspective, part of the address by which we will deal with this fire is also in Damascus and the Quds Force," he added. "Our response is not limited geographically."

Islamic Jihad spokesman in Gaza promptly denied the seemingly absurd accusations, reiterating that the rockets were fired in retaliation for the Palestinians killed by Israeli forces at the border protests on Friday.

A spokesman for Islamic Jihad, Daoud Shehab, denied that the group had acted on orders from Iran’s Quds Force or any other outside force. - NYT

It is no surprise that Israel is attempting to lay the blame for the weekend Islamic Jihad rocket attack from Gaza on Iran and Syria, as well as Hezbollah indirectly, for it is this anti-Zionist/anti-imperial Arab alliance combined with popular Palestinian resistance and international pressure rather than the poorly equipped Hamas terrorist faction which poses the biggest real threat to Zionist control of and hegemony in the region, as I detailed in the conclusion of my last post on Israel's preparations for war on Gaza. However, Gaza militants - both Hamas and Islamic Jihad - have been lobbing rockets at Israel on and off since May, so why exactly is it only after this one particular retaliatory attack that Israel jumps to blame Iran and Syria, threatening war on them both?

To be continued. The rest of story will be in a follow-up post.

Maybe when Americans decide that the US giving $10.5 million/day to pay for Israel's missiles is not okay, then there will be hope for a Free Palestine.

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