As many as 200 Palestinian civilians have been either killed or wounded as a result of sustained Israeli bombing and artillery bombardment of the Gaza Strip, which started Friday afternoon.

Medical sources in Gaza said at least 23 Palestinians, including 5 children and elderly people, were killed and as many as 200 other civilians injured, many of them sustaining critical injuries.

A spokesperson for the Shefaa hospital in Gaza said that “in light of the serious nature of the wounds, the number of martyrs is likely to rise significantly.”

The same spokesman, who was speaking to Aljazeera TV Saturday afternoon, said some injured kids lost some of their limbs, which he said forced doctors to amputate hands or feet.

Ashraf Qidra, a prominent Health Ministry official said health services in the entire besieged Gaza Strip were collapsing due to several reasons, including a serious shortage of medical equipment, the high number of casualties, an electricity cut off, and Israel’s refusal to allow certain badly needed medical appliances and spare-parts into the seaside enclave, under a hermetic Israeli blockade for 15 years.

Murdered Palestinian Civilians
Among the dead was a four-year-old child whose home was destroyed by a high-flying F-a6 aircraft.

Eyewitnesses reported that at least five homes in various parts of Gaza, sheltering more than 35 people, have been either fully or partially destroyed.

Israel routinely targets civilians’ residential homes “to cause maximum anguish and pain” to ordinary Palestinians.

To justify the war crime, Israel usually claims that a member of the family living in the targeted home is suspected of being affiliated with one of the resistance groups in the Strip.

Another victim was a 68-year-old woman who was riding in a car, as she was preparing for her son’s wedding.

An Israeli army spokesman denied reports that the Israeli occupation army was targeting civilians deliberately.

However, the large number of civilian Palestinian casualties suggests that the spokesman was not telling the truth, since mistakes occur a few times, but in this case, disproportionate civilian casualties are the norm rather than the exception.

Targeting Palestinian worshipers
In the latest developments, an Israeli warplane targeted worshipers just leaving a Mosque at the Jabalya refugee camp north of Gaza around 9:00 pm Saturday. According to unofficial accounts, at least five worshipers, including three children, were killed and at least 15 others were injured. According to eyewitnesses, the murderous attack occurred minutes after the worshipers ended the night prayers, which suggests that Israel was intending to kill more Palestinians, taking advantage of international apathy.

Unprovoked aggression
Israeli officials and spokespersons were at loss, trying to find a single genuine justification for the latest murderous aggression.

Israel’s interim Prime Minister said that Israel was targeting the Islamic Jihad group, accusing it of “planning to harm Israelis.”

In the past rounds of aggression on the already-bombed our Gaza Strip, Israel used to claim that onslaughts were in response to rocket attacks by Palestinian resistance groups, although these attacks were themselves carried out in retaliation of murderous Israeli crimes such as the assassination of Palestinian leaders and activists.

This time however, there was no rocket firing from the Gaza Strip by any Palestinian resistance group, including the Islamic Jihad.

This fact leaves us with one and only plausible explanation, namely that the ongoing murderous onslaught is aimed first and foremost to spill as much Palestinian blood as possible under the circumstances, to score election points.

It is well known in Israel that murdering Palestinians, especially children, is the cheapest and most effective tactic incumbent prime ministers used to win more votes from the Israeli Jewish public. Many Israeli politicians and candidates for Prime Minister publicly bragged, even in a disgustingly graphic manner, about their murderous crimes. There is no doubt in this writer’s mind that the current round of bloodshed in Gaza involves this macabre dimension.

Israeli cowardice
Apart from targeting women and children, Israel is demonstrating real cowardice by using its overwhelming military power, supplied by the U.S., to murder innocent and impoverished people who can hardly feed their kids. I think that even the most hardened Nazis and anti-Semites must be quite satisfied with themselves watching the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of their former victims at Auschwitz, torment and incinerate innocent Palestinians. Certainly, watching Israel’s low-combustion holocaust in Gaza must have a strong soothing effect on the former tormentors of Jews, though retrospectively.

Reactions
Reacting to the latest murderous display of Israeli Nazism against the already thoroughly tormented Palestinians, the US, as usual, said that Israel has the right to defend itself.

The US, Israel’s guardian ally and guarantor of Zionist hegemony, seemed unwilling to distinguish between “defending one’s self” on the one hand, and knowingly, deliberately and callously murdering innocent men, women, and children trebling in fear in their own homes.

But that is America. It just takes a Putin to understand her.

Britain, which begat Israel through the Balfour Declaration, issued a terse statement, urging both sides to exercise self-restraint.

Even the EU, from which one would expect a modicum of fairness, issued a similarly routine statement, calling on all sides to avoid escalation.

As to Arab reactions, it was amply clear the bulk of Arab states, particularly those who have effectively betrayed the Palestinian cause by normalizing with the apartheid Israeli regime, reacted to bloody aggression with total silence.

In the past countries such as Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco used to issue routine statements denouncing Israeli aggression. Now, even such innocuous routine statements disappeared. This is the real outcome of the disgraceful normalization between these dictatorships and Zionist entity. Even Egypt, the largest Arab country, with a population of 110 million, remains mum as if the murderous aggression on Gaza was not taking place not 250 kilometers away, but occurring on a distant planet.

Algeria, Kuwait, Qatar and Jordan, which enjoy a semblance of freedom of speech, strongly condemned the aggression, calling on the international community to provide protection for the Palestinian people against recurrent Israeli barbarianism. Finally, the Israeli Prime Minister was quoted Saturday as saying that he would allow Jewish extremists to enter the Aqsa Mosque esplanade tomorrow to mark the annual anniversary of the destruction of the Solomon Temple. This step is likely to make an already incendiary situation even more volatile.