TITLE: ‘Children were carrying other injured children’: Witness describes aftermath of Israeli strike on Gaza refugee camp
https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/31/middleeast/jabalya-blast-gaza-intl/index.html
EXCERPT: Eyewitness Mohammad Al Aswad described a “horrific scene” in the aftermath of the strike, telling CNN that he ran to the refugee camp to check on family after hearing the missiles land.
“Children were carrying other injured children and running, with grey dust filling the air. Bodies were hanging on the rubble, many of them unrecognized. Some were bleeding and others were burnt,” Al Aswad told CNN by telephone.
People in the area were hysterical, he added. “I saw women screaming and confused. They didn’t know whether to cry for losing their children or run and look for them, especially since many children were playing in the neighborhood.”
Images from the scene showed a huge crater among rubble and damaged buildings. Palestinians and rescue workers are seen attempting to find victims, some using their hands to scoop the detritus away.
Casualty figures from the airstrike are not yet clear and the communications blackout in the Strip has made it difficult to establish the full extent of the toll. Officials in Hamas-run Gaza, as well as medics who treated the casualties, say the attack caused “hundreds” of deaths and injuries.
Jabalia is a densely populated refugee camp established shortly after the Arab-Israeli war of 1948, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were expelled from territory that encompassed the newly established State of Israel, and later denied return.
The camp is a crowded built-up area with houses, shops and apartment buildings jammed up against one another, the roads between them in many areas barely wide enough for a car to pass.
Speaking to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Richard Hecht accused Hamas of “hiding, as they do, behind civilians.” Reminded that there are many innocent civilians in the camp, Hecht responded, “This is the tragedy of war” and urged civilians to move south.
Southern Gaza has also seen lethal airstrikes, and aid organizations have repeatedly warned that there is no safe place in the isolated enclave.
TITLE: Israel leans into World War II rhetoric to justify Gaza war
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/11/01/israel-historical-comparison-world-war-two-ii/
EXCERPT: With the war in Gaza entering its second phase, Israeli officials have leaned further into history for justification. Pressed by foreign journalists on civilian deaths in Gaza during a news conference Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pointed to a British bombing raid almost 80 years ago that killed children.
“In 1944, the Royal Air Force bombed the Gestapo headquarters in Copenhagen. It’s a perfectly legitimate target. But the British pilots missed and instead of the Gestapo headquarters, they hit a children’s hospital nearby. And I think 84 children were burned to death,” he said. “That is not a war crime. That is not something you blame Britain for doing. That was a legitimate act of war with tragic consequences that accompany such legitimate actions.”
Historical analogies have hung over this conflict since Oct. 7, when Hamas led a brutal and unexpected attack on Israel. But increasingly, Israeli officials have mentioned not only the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts or the attacks in 2001 on the United States that sparked the “War on Terror,” but one of the most devastating conflicts in all of history: World War II.
At the same news conference, Netanyahu rebutted calls for a cease fire by pointing to the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941. Similar rhetorical points have been made by other Israeli politicians, the New York Times reported this week, with some reportedly referring to “how the United States and other allied powers resorted to devastating bombings in Germany and Japan during World War II — including the dropping of the two atomic warheads in Hiroshima and Nagasaki — to try to defeat those countries.”
TITLE: Lindsey Graham Says No Amount of Palestinian Deaths Would Make Him Question Israel: ‘There Is No Limit’
https://www.mediaite.com/tv/lindsey-graham-says-no-amount-of-palestinian-deaths-would-make-him-question-israel-there-is-no-limit/
EXCERPT: Appearing on Tuesday’s CNN NewsNight, Graham was asked if it is acceptable to carry out air strikes in densely populated urban areas.
“Is it acceptable to drop bombs on a densely populated civilian area where there are refugees, where people are living, where there are children?” host Abby Phillip asked.
The senator responded by invoking the Holocaust before rattling off some of the graphic details of the Hamas terror attacks.
Phillip responded by asking how much death and suffering Graham is willing to accept.
“Is there a threshold for you?” she followed up. “And do you think there should be one for the United States government in which the U.S. would say, ‘Let’s hold off for a second in terms of civilian casualties?'”
“No,” Graham replied.
“Is there a point [where] you would start to question tactics?” she asked.
Graham responded by saying the body count is limitless as far as he is concerned:
No. If somebody asked us after World War II, “Is there a limit what would you do to make sure that Japan and Germany don’t conquer the world? Is there any limit what Israel should do to the people who are trying to slaughter the Jews?” The answer is no. There is no limit.