Israel steps up its barbaric military campaign in Gaza, reports Khaled Amayreh who also reviews a recently-released Human Rights Watch report On 29 September 2004, two militants from the Palestinian resistance group, Hamas, fired two home- made projectiles on the Israeli settler town of Sderot, just east of Gaza. Two Israeli children were killed. The attack was in retaliation for the killing by the Israeli occupation army of numerous Palestinian civilians, including many children, as well as the wanton destruction of Palestinian homes and property. Thousands of Palestinians, including some 600 children, were killed during the second Palestinian Intifada. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his military aides vowed to "teach Gaza a lesson". And so it was. On 1 October, thousands of Israeli soldiers, backed by as many as 200 tanks, Apache helicopter gunships and other state-of-the-art weapons of death and destruction, advanced toward the utterly defenseless Jebalya refugee camp in northern Gaza. From the operation's outset, code named "Days of Repentance", troops were instructed to have their fingers light on the triggers. The implication was very clear, namely to kill as many Palestinians as the world public opinion would tolerate. Indeed, for 17 consecutive days, the Israeli Defence Forces were busy carrying out Sharon's instructions to "teach the Palestinians a lesson". Israeli tanks worked overtime firing heavy artillery shells on crowded streets and civilian homes, killing and maiming entire families. Homes were destroyed on top of residents. Those who escaped were hunted down by helicopter gunships. And those who were locked down in their concrete boxes had to endure the cutoff of water, food and electricity. The stench of death was everywhere as many civilians had to choose between dying by artillery shells inside their homes or being brutally incinerated in the streets by hell-fire missiles from the sky. All in all, 149 Palestinians, among them 35 children, were killed and nearly 500 others were injured, many sustaining life-changing disabilities. By 17 October, much of Jebalya and northern Gaza looked very much as if it had been hit by a massive earthquake, with many impoverished victims searching through the rubble for their children's school books. Old women and men sat next to the rubble of their demolished homes, crying and lamenting their helplessness and the oppression being meted out to them although they had committed no crime. "That was our Ramadan present to the Palestinians," murmured one Israeli officer gleefully. Another soldier, quoted by the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, was even more brazen. "What more do the Palestinians want? We have erected 100 mourning tents for them in just two weeks," he said. In fact, even the mourning tents were targeted, killing more civilians and creating more mourning tents. The Israeli propaganda apparatus continues to deny that the occupation forces deliberately targeted civilians. Indeed, Israeli spokespersons have responded to charges of atrocities by throwing the ready-made but stale claim that civilians and children are killed in cross fire or when entering closed military zones. However, it was amply evident that the civilians were killed wantonly for the purpose of making the Palestinians suffer. "The fact that so many civilians have been killed by the Israeli army suggests that targeting civilians is a deliberate and conscious Israeli policy," said Mohamed Youssef, head of the disaster management unit at the Gaza Red Crescent Society in Gaza. When asked why he thought the occupation troops would kill civilians and children deliberately, he said: "They are taught to kill the Palestinians when they are very young. They are taught that another holocaust could happen if they don't destroy their enemies. That is why Israeli soldiers murder our kids without the slightest guilt." "The plain fact, which must be stated clearly, is that the blood of hundreds of Palestinian children is on our hands," wrote Gideon Levy in Ha'arez on 17 October. "An army that kills so many children is an army with no restrains, an army that has lost its moral code."
