World silent as Gaza bombarded for 9 nights in row

By Robert Inlakesh

The Gaza Strip came under attack by Israeli regime forces, for the ninth consecutive night last night, with many fearing that the same will continue in the coming nights. However instead of this becoming a headline issue, there has been almost complete silence from the Western media and no mention of the situation from the UN.

On the 11th of August, at early hours of the morning, Israeli warplanes began their ongoing campaign of bombing the Gaza Strip, in what they call response to “terror balloons” being flown over the separation fence into Israel. Every night since (early morning Palestine time), the Israeli military has chosen to bombard the Gaza Strip. By August 13th Israel had already closed off all fuel from entering the besieged coastal enclave, as well as closing the Kerem Salem humanitarian aid crossing. Israel also fired a munition the night before, from a helicopter, which hit a UN school in the al-Shati refugee camp.

Also, last Thursday, Israel struck agricultural sites in Gaza’s East which injured a pregnant woman and two small children, one of the children only three years of age. The wounds they suffered was due to shrapnel from the explosion.

The “balance” presented by Western media

Israel has used warships, artillery, fighter jets, helicopters, tanks and drones to conduct the attacks, all of which were initiated during the early hours of the morning, amounting to psychological warfare against the two million residents of Gaza. On the other side, the so-called Israeli counter argument, is that Palestinian youths have been flying burning balloons and kites across the separation fence into Israeli territory.

The groups of kids and young men, most of which have nothing to do with any armed group in Gaza, have been creating handmade objects, setting them on fire and attaching them to balloons, which are flown with the wind across Israel’s illegally built separation fence. Only a handful of the balloons have had anything that has exploded attached to them, yet the likes of the Guardian and other news outlets continue to refer to the balloons as “bomb balloons”. These “bomb balloons” or as Israeli hasbara would laughably term them “terror balloons” are not made with military equipment and there is nothing to suggest Hamas involvement in the balloon launches.

The balloons have burnt Israeli settler farm land, surrounding Gaza, as well as trees and grass, with some balloons landing on Israeli properties. The only injury dealt to an Israel from the balloons, had been the light injury of a soldier who was burnt whilst helping put out one of the fires.

In fact there was no response to any bombings until this Saturday, after Israeli snipers shot - with live ammunition - five Palestinian demonstrators, by any Gaza based armed groups. The response this Saturday coming in the form of two rockets fired into Sderot, which were allegedly shot down by Israel’s Iron Dome air systems. The only injury having been caused due to Israel’s missile systems having intercepted the rockets in mid-air, causing shrapnel to hit a home. The Israeli injuries - of which there were three reported - consisted of a small flesh wound and two panic attacks (because Israel counts this as an injury). Even this rocket fire, however, has been attributed to the Salah al-Deen Brigades, which is not Hamas’s armed wing.

On Tuesday a single rocket was also reportedly fired, according to Israeli regime sources, which hit an open field and was not attributed to Hamas. The rocket was allegedly fired in response to shootings that day and was fired within an hour after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened Gaza with a large-scale military escalation.

The deadly silence from the international community

According to experts at the United Nations, as of this year, the Gaza Strip is to be considered as uninhabitable. In Gaza the water is 97% undrinkable, 80+% of the population are dependent upon International aid to live, there is the highest unemployment rate in the world amongst the youth, the population is also 70+% a refugee population, 52% of which are children (under the age of 18) and are all packed into an area more densely populated than Tokyo.

Gaza has been under an illegal siege since 2006, reinforced in 2007, which the international community consistently demands Israel to end. Israel has committed eight large scale military operations against Gaza, thousands of smaller bombardments and three large-scale wars in which thousands of civilians have been killed, tens of thousands badly wounded and hundreds of thousands displaced. Gaza’s vital infrastructure, such as hospitals, schools, power plants, generators, sewage facilities, water storage units, government buildings, media buildings and more have been bombarded. This has left Gaza with barely the ability to even power sewage plants to even pump the sewage into the sea, meaning when there is a lack of electricity - as there often is - the streets flood with this waste. Gaza has one sole power plant left, which is semi-functional, due to several Israeli attacks on it. Israel could change all of this if it wished but doesn’t.

This is but only a brief summary of the horrors facing Gaza, and it would take much longer to explain the much more horrific aspects of Israel’s illegal siege. But this information is essential to understanding Gaza’s current crisis.

Instead of Israel, which proclaims itself to be a liberal Western style democracy, being rational and coming to the negotiation table with the elected government in Gaza, instead it chooses to punish Gaza’s civilian population.

Israel has not only bombarded, what it claims are Hamas strategic positions, but has gone a step further than this and has cut Gaza’s only life line, that being the sole humanitarian aid crossing into Gaza. On top of that, the prevention of fuel into Gaza, has resulted in 38 hour long blackouts, which of course is taking a toll on all areas of life as power is needed for everything including the almost completely packed ICU’s. Israel has also, on top of all this, cut off Gaza’s fishing waters, not even allowing Gazan’s to attempt to feed themselves with whatever they can fish in the limited waters Israel usually allows them into.

When desperate fishermen have attempted to ignore Israeli orders and take the risk of fishing anyway, they have been shot at. Even Palestinian farmers are being fired at indiscriminately, to the East of the Gaza Strip.

It is one thing to bomb targets which are claimed to be attributed to armed groups, but these policies of collective punishment are utterly appalling. On top of this, when Israel claims to be hitting “Hamas strategic positions” and claiming to be significantly reducing the offensive capabilities of Hamas, what they claim to be hitting is almost laughable. The dark-comedy produced by the Israeli regime when it comes to hitting “Hamas tunnels”, “Hamas rocket production and storage facilities” and “Hamas naval sites”, of which according to the regime it has effectively destroyed at least 500 such sites in the past years, is beyond ridiculous. The reason for it being utterly comical, is because if what they claim to be hitting was actually struck, Hamas would have been long ago on its last legs.

When Israel has bombarded Gaza the past nine nights, and tonight will undoubtedly be the tenth, it has been late and has been done in the pitch black environment as a form of psychological warfare against the people of Gaza.

Whilst the world still focuses on the non-Story publicity stunt, called “UAE-Israel normalization” - which happened long ago informally - the International Community remains completely silent on what is happening to the people of Gaza. The media also is almost completely silent and when it does mention Gaza’s suffering it repeats the Israeli regime propaganda talking points almost verbatim.

It is a shame what the world has done to Gaza, abandoning it when it is in the most need. It also begs me to think as a journalist, how the feeling those who are calling from the roof top now for Gaza and for the likes of Yemen, must feel like a very similar thing to those who were doing as such during the Nazi Holocaust and Slave Trade all those years ago. Not to compare the magnitude of the events, but simply the lack of action against tyranny from the world at large, who left their fellow brothers and sisters to perish.

Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer and political analyst, who has lived in and reported from the occupied Palestinian West Bank. He has written for publications such as Mint Press, Mondoweiss, MEMO, and various other outlets. He specializes in analysis of the Middle East, in particular Palestine-Israel. He also works for Press TV as a European correspondent.

(The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of Press TV.)

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