Geetika Rudra / ABC World News & Global Research News & Anthony Bellchambers / Global Research – 2014-08-24 02:00:38

http://abcnews.go.com/International/video-shows-israeli-bombing-gaza-apartment-tower/story?id=25098946

New Video Shows Israeli Bombing of Gaza Apartment Tower
Geetika Rudra ABC World News

GAZA CITY (August 23, 2014) — New video shows an upscale high-rise apartment building in Gaza City destroyed in a cloud of fire and smoke during an Israeli airstrike.

Israel bombed the 12-story apartment building, called the Zafer Tower in the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood, today as Hamas continued to fire rockets towards the Israeli border.

The Palestine Interior Ministry released footage of the bombing, showing the apartment collapsing after being hit twice by Israeli bombs. The building goes down in seconds as onlookers scream and rush the injured to hospitals.

The entire building held 44 residential apartments.

“People started shouting Allahu Akbar, and women and kids were screaming,” Maher Abu Sedo, an area resident, said. “This is crazy. The state of Israel has resorted to madness. In less than a minute, 44 families have become displaced. … They lost everything, their house, their money, their memories and their security.”

Israeli had fired a warning missile five minutes before the attack, allowing some residents to escape the homes in time. But 22 people were wounded, including 11 children and five women, according to Gaza hospital officials.

Israeli military officials said the two missiles were targeting a Hamas operations room in the building, but did not explain why all 44 apartments were destroyed.

The attack comes just as Egypt renewed its appeal for mediation between Israel and Hamas. It appears unlikely that truce talks will resume. Previous talks have ended in failure and an agreement between Israel and Hamas that would end the blockade surrounding Gaza has stalled.

Since the fighting erupted on July 8, Israel has launched some 5,000 airstrikes at Gaza, while Gaza militants have fired close to 4,000 rockets and mortars, according to the Israeli military.

More than 2,100 Palestinians, including close to 500 children, have been killed, according to Palestinian health officials and U.N. figures. Israel has lost 64 soldiers and four civilians.

Israel says it is targeting sites linked to militants, including rocket launchers, command centers and weapons depots. The U.N. says about three-fourths of the Palestinians killed in the airstrikes and fighting have been civilians.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Israeli F-16 Missile Attacks
Venezuelan Humanitarian Aid Mission in Gaza
Global Research News

(August 22, 2014) — Venezuelan ambassador to Egypt, Juan Antonio Hernandez, said Wednesday that an Israeli aircraft attacked the Venezuelan humanitarian delegation in Rafah along the border post between Egypt and Palestine. The delegation was delivering twelve tons of aid to the Palestinian people. No one was injured during the attack.

The F-16 airplane dropped a missile very close to the humanitarian site, though it did not explode. The ambassador confirmed that the missile fell approximately 50 to 70 meters from the site.

Hernandez referred to the action as “an act of intimidation, which is not a coincidence and it proves that Tel Aviv is trying to halt humanitarian aid, because right now Venezuela is an important beacon for the Palestinian people”.

In an open letter published yesterday in Cuban media, Fidel Castro praised Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro for following up quickly on his promise to send aid to Palestine.

“It made me extraordinarily happy that he [Maduro] came through with his visit so soon”, wrote Castro, “not only due to the honor that his presence implies and the prompt action, because of the very difficult task that it means to continue on with the epic battle of Hugo Chavez, but also because of the exceptional activities that he is carrying out with Palestine.”

El Universal reported that Roni Kaplan, the spokesperson of the Israel Defense Forces, asserted that “there was no attack by the Israeli forces on the Egyptian side of Gaza. The air force has not attacked nor launched sound bombs to any humanitarian convoy on its way to Gaza from Egypt.”

Maduro has proven himself as staunch a supporter of Palestine as Chavez, recently opening a shelter for children orphaned by the conflict named after the late president. (A full image set of the shelter can be viewed on VA.com here).

The Venezuelan leader also pledged to assist reconstruction efforts of the war-torn Gaza strip.

This article in its original form may be found at www.telesurtv.net/english. Additional reporting contributed by venezuelanalysis.com.

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Bombing Civilian Homes in Gaza Strip (Dair Elbalah City) by Israeli F16 Jet fighters, July 9th.

The Killing Fields of Gaza
Israeli troops fire into a civilian population
in acts of collective punishment
Anthony Bellchambers / Global Research

(August 22, 2014) — In the killing fields of Gaza where heavily-armed Israeli troops in Merkava tanks and US-supplied F16 strike aircraft, fire high-explosive missiles into a civilian population in acts of collective punishment — to date, over 2000 lives, the majority of which are unarmed civilians including hundreds of women and children, have been taken.

Meanwhile, in the skies above the 1.8 million souls who are crammed into the densely populated Gaza enclave, unmanned drones fly close overhead to the houses, schools and hospitals, 24/7, in an illegal act of terror to frighten and intimidate the civilian families who have been deliberately held by the Israelis at subsistence level for now over seven years by an illegitimate blockade of essential supplies.

In the hospitals, Palestinian doctors are denied the essential drugs and dressings to aid the hundreds of casualties that keep arriving by the hour. The dead are wrapped in sheets and buried as soon as possible as the families weep on the roadside by their destroyed houses. They cannot understand how the United Nations can be blind to such a gross violation of human rights, day after bloody day.

Meanwhile, in Tel Aviv, the pavement cafés and restaurants continue their busy trade as Israelis drink their lattes and eat pitta. Then, after an afternoon swim, many will again report for duty, as conscript soldiers, to destroy more lives and bulldoze more Palestinian homes — oblivious to the frightening parallels with the Germany of National Socialism, post 1933.

At night, after returning home to Bat Yam, or Herzlia, they will tuck their own children into bed; maybe make love to their wives before a last cigarette and then to sleep.

They are too far away to hear the sobbing of the bereaved at the side of the road a few kilometres away, or smell the pungent odour of death from the mangled, decomposing bodies still within the remains of the building that their armoured tank shelled just yesterday. In the heavily populated Gaza City, hundreds of newly orphaned children now weep silently whilst hundreds of others lie injured.

The killing fields in Gaza await a level of civilian death and destruction not witnessed in such silence and mute acceptance, since WW2. And still the killing continues; the stealing and settlement of land likewise proceeds apace despite world condemnation — whilst the cafés in Tel Aviv still do a roaring trade confident in the sure knowledge that their cousins in Congress will continue to fund and support these acts of atrocity.

Meanwhile, the ever-active propaganda machine disseminates its message thru the Israeli foreign ministry offices, worldwide, to the effect that the thousands of civilian deaths were ‘unintentional collateral damage’ and that the Israeli army is the most caring in the world. And, notwithstanding the incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, many gullible souls still swallow the propaganda, as the Israeli government spokesman tells us, on BBC News, that his country is the real victim — as he struggles to keep a straight face.

However, obviously David Cameron believes him as he continues to sign the export licences that help equip the planes that fire the missiles that destroy the schools that kill the children and their parents.

Many of us were proud to be British and to have served in our armed forces to defend freedom and democracy — which included fiercely protecting the lives of innocent women and children in war zones and areas of conflict around the world.

Now, we are an accessory to these atrocities. May God forgive us.

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