A gut-wrenching, heart-breaking clip on the real victims of idiot war (h/t tweet Susie):

People need to watch this video.pic.twitter.com/j0QXDZIS4s

— Don Winslow (@donwinslow) May 15, 2021

Tragedy of the latest Israel/Palestinian conflict are the children, as it is in all fucking wars, and they pay the heaviest price for being caught in the middle of some half-ass excuse for humans to kill each other. As long as Israel continues with a one-state rule over the Palestinian people, there’s always going to be shit and death.
Since the possible eviction of some Palestinian families in East Jerusalem near 10 days ago, the violence has only escalated, and right now no end in sight — more than 200 Palestinians have been killed, including 59 children; Israel has reported 10 dead, as well as two children.
And like the 10-year-old in the video clip above (whose passionate plea is well articulated), even the time between the shelling is non-equitable (ABC News):

Even the moments of quiet in Gaza City come with their own psychological toll.

“They’re so precious,” Najla, who did not provide her surname for safety reasons, a Palestinian humanitarian worker in the city, told ABC News.
“But at the same time, they’re so frightening because … preparing yourself for the next attack is as horrible psychologically as it is experiencing it in itself. Every minute there are continuous airstrikes and explosions all across the Gaza Strip and several of them were close by.”

And with the bombing of the high-rise housing media in Gaza, a striking clash of realities of what is actually going on — Al Jazeera this morning:

United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken says he has not seen any Israeli evidence of the Hamas operating in the Gaza building that housed residences, offices and media organisations — including Al Jazeera and The Associated Press – that Israel destroyed on Saturday.

Blinken said on Monday he has asked Israel for justification for the strike.
The Israeli military, which gave journalists and other building occupants about an hour to evacuate, claims that Hamas used the building for a military intelligence office.

“Shortly after the strike we did request additional details regarding the justification for it,” Blinken said from Copenhagen, Denmark. He declined to discuss specific intelligence, saying he “will leave it to others to characterize if any information has been shared and our assessment that information”.

But he said, “I have not seen any information provided.”

Israeli military spokesman Lt Gen Jonathan Conricus told CNN on Sunday, “We’re in the middle of fighting. That’s in process and I’m sure in due time that information will be presented.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would share any evidence of Hamas’s presence in the targeted building through intelligence channels. But neither the White House nor the State Department would say if any American official had seen it.

However, this report via The Jerusalem Post, also this morning:

Israel shared intelligence with the US showing how Hamas operated inside the same building with the Associated Press and Al-Jazeera in Gaza, officials in Jerusalem said on Sunday.

Officials in more than one government office confirmed that US President Joe Biden’s phone call to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday was, in part, about the bombing of the building, and that Israel showed Biden and American officials the intelligence behind the action.

“We showed them the smoking gun proving Hamas worked out of that building,” a senior diplomatic source said.
“I understand they found the explanation satisfactory.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed the source’s remark, when asked about The Jerusalem Post’s reporting in an interview with US TV show Face the Nation.
“We share all the intelligence with our American friends,” he said.
“The intelligence we had is about an intelligence office for [Hamas] housed in that building that plots and organizes terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians. It is a perfectly legit target.”

Understanding this conflict goes back years including taking into account a double whammy of extremists on both sides of the rocket-launching aisle, plus Israel now in the strangle-hold of a T-Rump-clone-like Benjamin Netanyahu, one corrupt, nasty incompetent.
Latest on the shit via The New York Times live updates, last revision mid-afternoon today:

As the grinding and increasingly bloody conflict between Israel and Hamas militants moved into the second week, the violence showed no signs of abating as Israel pounded targets in Gaza overnight and Hamas continued to unleash a barrage of rockets at towns across southern Israel.

Diplomatic efforts appeared stalled as the level of destruction was quickly escalating to the kind of violence not seen since the last major conflict in 2014.

President Biden told reporters on Monday afternoon that he would soon discuss the crisis with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.
“I will be speaking with the prime minister in an hour and will be able to talk to you after that,” he said.
…
Israeli experts often describe periodic campaigns as “mowing the grass,” a kind of routine maintenance of the militant threat with the aim of curbing rocket fire, destroying as much of militant groups’ infrastructure as possible and increasing deterrence.
Critics say the use of such terminology is dehumanizing to Palestinians and tends to minimize the suffering inflicted, including the toll on civilians.

And the dangers of the strategy became evident on Sunday, the deadliest day of the fighting, with at least 42 people killed, including at least 10 children, after an attack on a tunnel network caused three buildings to collapse.

A good kind of primer for this long-time circle-horror of continous conflicts comes via Julie M Norman, lecturer in Politics & International Relations, University College London, at The Conversation last week. Seemingly, it’s a no-win situation, especially the Palestinians — some snips:

The deadly escalation of violence across Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, in which at least 40 people have been killed and hundreds injured, has demonstrated how the core fault-lines of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians still run deep.
But the dynamics of the violence also underscore internal divisions and crises of leadership on both sides.

For Israelis, this has manifested itself in four elections in two years that have so far failed to end in the formation of a stable government.
The most recent election, held on March 23, is still mired in wrangling between various parties and factions. Coalition talks were frozen on Monday after violence exploded in Jerusalem and Gaza.

For Palestinians, meanwhile, the ongoing crisis of leadership has been encapsulated in Hamas commandeering the resistance, further sidelining Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party and the Palestinian Authority, of which he is president.
…
In the lead-up to the election, Hamas cleverly sought to link its movement with protecting Jerusalem, an issue with high political and religious resonance, especially during the month of Ramadan. They planned to run an electoral list of candidates named “Jerusalem is our destiny”, and fired rockets as a show of force and solidarity with Palestinians who were protesting against Israeli police restricting access to Damascus Gate. Damascus Gate is one of the main entrances to Jerusalem’s Old City, and a popular meeting place for Palestinians, especially during Ramadan after the evening prayer.
…
Hamas doesn’t need to “win” wars in the traditional sense to be victorious. By simply resisting, it affirms its legitimacy and popularity, which has tended to surge after such escalations in the past. This is especially in comparison to the Palestinian Authority, which is seen as weak at best and complicit at worst in terms of relations with Israel.

Go read the whole piece, examined the Hamas shit near-clinically without actually coming right out and saying the group is an Islamist militant, extremist organization, as it is been called: ‘Hamas as a whole, or in some cases its military wing, is designated a terrorist group by Israel, the United States, European Union and United Kingdom, as well as other powers.‘
Coupled that with the docile Palestinian Authority rolling over and appearing to go to sleep, the poor people caught in the rocket-bomb-pincers pay the ultimate price. And the fate of thousands in the hands of a shitty douchebag, where even an Israel success is meaningless:

This will be a hollow victory, however, as it will only return Israel to a status quo of ever-present tension and threat: in Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza, and every Israeli town where Jews and Arabs live in close proximity. The only real winner here is the man who sold Israelis on the idea that this state of permanent war and occupation is acceptable: Netanyahu himself.
…
It is ironic that the current violence should benefit Netanyahu politically, because it graphically illustrates his failures. He has buried the peace process, foreclosed the possibility of a Palestinian state, brought virulently anti-Arab Kahanists into his government, and opted to “manage” the conflict rather than resolve it.
His message to Palestinians in the occupied territories and to Arab citizens of Israel is that they will always be treated as the enemy, that their rights will always be secondary to the rights of Jews, and that the state that rules over them (directly or indirectly) will never value their lives.
His message to Israeli Jews is equally bleak: The conflict is existential, the Arabs will always despise you, and so you must fortify against them and accept a perpetual state of war or ceasefire, but never actual peace.

Asshole! And the real victims are those like that 10-yeal-old girl: ‘“It’s not fair.”‘

(Illustration: Salvador Dalí’s ‘Galatea of the Spheres,’ found here).