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The Israel/Gaza situation continues to heat up.
There are at least 11 dead in Gaza. Two of them reportedly kids. Seven militants. Over a hundred wounded. (Note: Hamas has a nasty habit of deliberately putting strategic bases such as rocket launch sites and terrorist headquarters inside places like schools and hospitals, specifically so that Israeli counterstrikes will result in terrible civilian casualties. And if the people who run the schools and hospitals don't like it, well, one group has guns and rockets and the other doesn't...)
Egypt has withdrawn its Israeli ambassador.
And rockets and mortars have been fired from Gaza into Israel. Many of them have been intercepted by defense systems, but there are three Israelis dead.
This is only going to get worse.
I have relatives who live there. Random mortar strikes are a fact of life. Their grandkids' schools are built like military bunkers. They repeatedly tried to hire Palestinians to work on their farm, only to have them run away at harvest time, stealing all the tools they could carry on the way out.
But it's what they were taught. By a government that rules through terror. By a government that embezzles foreign aid and then tells its starving people that no one wants to help them. By an Israeli government that, when it feels generous, treats them as second class citizens. They deserve better.
Everyone has a right to be safe from this sort of thing. Not to have to worry about fiery death from above. Or car bombs. Or being stoned in the streets. Or...
Regular people on both sides just want to live in peace. But the people with the guns and the bombs have different ideas.
It breaks my heart. There has to be a better way.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/ML_ISRAEL_PALESTINIANS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-11-15-03-59-19
P.S. @IDFspokesperson, the Israeli Defense Force's official account, has been live-tweeting the strikes all day.
There are at least 11 dead in Gaza. Two of them reportedly kids. Seven militants. Over a hundred wounded. (Note: Hamas has a nasty habit of deliberately putting strategic bases such as rocket launch sites and terrorist headquarters inside places like schools and hospitals, specifically so that Israeli counterstrikes will result in terrible civilian casualties. And if the people who run the schools and hospitals don't like it, well, one group has guns and rockets and the other doesn't...)
Egypt has withdrawn its Israeli ambassador.
And rockets and mortars have been fired from Gaza into Israel. Many of them have been intercepted by defense systems, but there are three Israelis dead.
This is only going to get worse.
I have relatives who live there. Random mortar strikes are a fact of life. Their grandkids' schools are built like military bunkers. They repeatedly tried to hire Palestinians to work on their farm, only to have them run away at harvest time, stealing all the tools they could carry on the way out.
But it's what they were taught. By a government that rules through terror. By a government that embezzles foreign aid and then tells its starving people that no one wants to help them. By an Israeli government that, when it feels generous, treats them as second class citizens. They deserve better.
Everyone has a right to be safe from this sort of thing. Not to have to worry about fiery death from above. Or car bombs. Or being stoned in the streets. Or...
Regular people on both sides just want to live in peace. But the people with the guns and the bombs have different ideas.
It breaks my heart. There has to be a better way.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/ML_ISRAEL_PALESTINIANS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-11-15-03-59-19
P.S. @IDFspokesperson, the Israeli Defense Force's official account, has been live-tweeting the strikes all day.