Rockets Land Near France 24 Reporter During Live Broadcast from Gaza

Following up on my Group Hug Initiative, here is my first honest attempt at a report on the situation in Gaza with no emotions – just facts backed up by links to sources.

The photo above is not related to the video below. It captures a bomb dropped from an Israeli aircraft moments before it struck a house on al-Jalla Street in Gaza City. It was a 2,000 lb GBU-10 Paveway II laser guided bomb, originally designed by the Texas Instruments calculator company. According to Washington Post (personal opinion – the link contains blatant pro Israel propaganda, photographer was probably planted there in order to capture these photos and distribute them with an intent to picture Israeli bombing campaigns as humane, as if to draw focus away from carpet leveling of entire neighborhoods), nobody was killed by the bomb.

According to the Occupied Palestinian Territory: Gaza Emergency Situation Report released by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on August 1, 2014, the latest Israel-Gaza conflict death toll is as follows:

Israel – 59 killed, of them 56 were soldiers, 2 were Israeli civilians and one was a Thai
Palestine – 1,373 killed, of whom at least 852 were civilians, of whom 252 were children and 181 were women

By applying simple math, I calculated the following:

5.08% of Israelis killed by Hamas are civilians
0% of Israelis killed by Hamas are children
62.05% of Palestinians killed by the IDF are civilians
18.35% of Palestinians killed by the IDF are children

The OCHA report however notes that it excludes individuals whose bodies were recovered during the pause but have not yet identified.

According to The Independent, as of August 1, 2014 the death toll on the Israeli side was: 63 Israeli soldiers, 2 Israeli civilians and a Thai national dead. By these numbers, only 4.5% of Israelis killed by Hamas are civilians.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian health ministry announced that death toll on the Palestinian side has grown to over 1,600 dead and 8750 wounded. UNICEF said Israel deliberately killed 264 Palestinian children in Gaza.

In related news – South African activist Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu joined global boycott campaign calling on firms profiting from occupation to withdraw funds.

The Times of Israel posted op ed titled “When Genocide is Permissible” in which Yochanan Gordon argued for killing all Palestinians. The Times removed the article after 10 minutes, but this article by a different author, which also calls for genocide is still up there. Here’s more from the same author.

Video below shows a France 24 correspondent reporting live from the Gaza strip when their broadcast was interrupted by what the correspondent said were rockets landing near them.