IOF airstrike on a house leaves a family massacred - Dalou Family/As IDF strike kills entire family in Gaza, Israel is starting to get in trouble
News For Palestine
NOTE FROM SENDER: In sending our e-mail we here at NewsForPalestine try to keep a fair and balance approach in not adding comments to the articles and let our readers draw whatever conculstions but it breaks our heard when we seen the news reports of the Dalou family and the innocent children lose there lives. We are posting this quote from David Ben-Gurion to maybe in hopes of waking up our so-called Arab and Muslim leaders. Allah forgets no one. Your day will come.“If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti - Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault ? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?” | |
| David Ben-Gurion quotes | |
IOF airstrike on a house leaves a family massacred, Al Mezan condemns this crime; calls for immediate intervention to end killing of civilians in Gaza
Published: 20:00 Gaza Time (+2 GMT) In the worst attack since the start of its aggression on Gaza, an Israeli warplane fired a missile into
a four-story house in Gaza city, at approximately 2:35pm today, destroying it and killing multiple civilians. Most of the corpsesthat have been found are for children and women. Efforts to search for the victims were still on-going when this press release was published. Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights condemns this crime with the strongest terms, and calls for immediate investigation into the attack and prosecution of those who ordered and carried it out. Al Mezan also calls for immediate international community intervention to stop the killing of Palestinian civilians and children by the IOF.
According to initial investigations by Al Mezan, Palestinian civil defence crews have been able to find seven corpses for persons from the family of Jamal Al-Dalu, the owner of the targeted house, and two corpses of neighbors. Efforts are on-going to find more people under the rubble of the house, including at least three other civilians. It has been confirmed that the sudden attack killed the following civilians:
- Samah Ad-Dalu, 27, the wife of the house owner’s son, and her children:
- Jamal Mohammed Ad-Dalu, 6;
- Yousef
Mohammed Ad-Dalu, 4; - Ibrahim Mohammed Ad-dalu, 1; and
- Suhaila Ad-dalu, 73, who is the sister of the house owner;
- Tahani Ad-Dalu, 52, who is the wife of the house owner; and her daughter who has not been identified yet.
The civil defence also found the bodies of two neighbors: - Abdulla Al-Mzannar, 18; and
- Omniya Al Mzannar.
Neighbors of the bombarded house informed Al Mezan that the bodies of at least three other persons are expected to be under the rubble:
- Ranin Ad-dalu, 22;
- Sara Ad-Dalu, 9, and
- Mohammed Jamal Ad-Dalu, 29. Al Mezan is still following this case and will be able to verify the victims once the field investigation is completed.
Al Mezan condemns this crime with the strongest terms. This attack comes in the context of IOF’s increasing attacks on civilian targets during the past few days. Similar attacks also occurred multiple times in the past; including during the infamous Operation Cast Lead. Al Mezan asserts that such attacks are in fact encouraged by the continuing silence of international community, who has failed to secure protection for civilians or prosecution of any perpetrators of such crimes in the past. They are also encouraged by the statements made by several states condoning IOF’s aggression on Gaza during the past days.
Al Mezan emphasizes that the IOF has increased the use of tactics that seriously violate the rules of international law, such as the deliberate attacks on houses using the ‘roof-knocking’ tactic, and other violations such as extra-judicial killings, disproportionate attacks, and use of excessive force. The murder of a whole family in such an attack by an army who possesses the
highest level technology known to mankind dictates that international community, including the High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention, intervene immediately to protect civilians from war crimes and hold those who are responsible for them accountable for their acts.
As the past experience shows, it is civilians; including children, women, and the elderly, who are bearing the brunt of the culture of impunity that has persisted under international community’s failure to protect civilians or prosecute violators.
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While Hamas leaders hide in underground tunnels, the civilian population is exposed to strikes; the horrifying pictures from al Dalou family is liable to be Palestinian version of Lebanon village of Kafr Qana.
The horrifying pictures that emerged Sunday evening from the home of the al Dalou family in central Gaza are liable to be the Palestinian version of the Lebanese village of Kafr Qana. Just as the pictures showing the results of the Israeli bombing of Kafr Qana in July 2006 changed the face of the Second Lebanon War and turned world public opinion against the Israeli operation, in the same way the bombardment of the house in Gaza and the killing of all 12 of its residents is liable to elicit Arab, European and, above all, American pressure on Israel to stop the aerial attacks immediately.
Among those killed in the house were five women, four children and three men. Al Jazeera television repeatedly broadcast the pictures of the bodies of the four children, who were 2 to 5 years old, lying next to each other in the hospital in Gaza on Sunday.
The live broadcasts from the house focused on documenting the attempts to rescue survivors from the ruins, but the cameras recorded only the discovery of another body there. Those pictures were broadcast all over the Arab world, on the eve of the arrival of an Arab League foreign ministers’ delegation, which was supposed to bring with it a cease-fire agreement. We can assume that just as in 2006, when Hezbollah retracted its intention of agreeing to a cease-fire in the wake of the Kfar Qana incident, this event too will only cause Hamas to toughen its positions toward Israel, in light of very sympathetic Palestinian and Arab public opinion.
One indication that the campaign in Gaza is starting to get into trouble, as far as Israel is concerned, is the constant increase in the number of casualties among Palestinian civilians. Even before the al Dalou family, reports about casualties among children, women and the elderly have been increasing over the past two days, while harm caused to militants from Hamas or other organizations has been relatively limited.
There are several reasons for this: Hamas, of course, operates from within a civilian population and conceals its arsenals in built-up areas. The same is true of missile launchers, rockets and more. In addition, most Hamas militants make sure not to remain above ground most of the day. They stay in the network of tunnels built by Hamas beneath the Gaza Strip in recent years and, in effect, are at very low risk compared to the vast majority of the Gaza population. And the process of launching the rockets is extremely quick and is sometimes done by remote control, so that the ability to strike at those militants is very limited.
And still, no matter what the reason, the harsh pictures from Gaza of small children who are wounded or killed arouse very unpleasant feelings. On Sunday afternoon, for example, it was reported that aside from the al Dalou family, 14 Palestinians had been killed in Gaza so far that day. Among the dead were five children and three women, including Tamer and Jumana Abu Asaifan, two babies who were killed in a bombing in Jabalya; 9-year-old Tasneem Abu Nahhal; a 52-year-old woman, Nawal Abed al Ali; 18-month-old Eyad Abu Khousa; and a woman named Saadiyya al-Theib.
One possible explanation for the growing number of strikes against the civilian population is the decline in the number of quality targets available to Israeli intelligence and the Israel Air Force. In the afternoon, there was a report of the assassination of the head of the Hamas rocket program, Yahye Rabiya – of whom nobody in the Gaza Strip had ever heard and whose name for some reason was not even mentioned on the lists of those killed in Gaza.
But the attacks on empty facilities belonging to Hamas -- or what used to be called “bombing real estate” -- can also attest to a certain frustration in the Israel Defense Forces in light of the continued firing of rockets even more intensively, despite the innumerable aerial strikes and bombings in Gaza.
Another problem with which Israel has to contend is the fact that it is doubtful whether the large number of casualties among Gaza’s civilian population actually leads Hamas leaders to reconsider the firing of rockets. Perhaps even the opposite is true. Apparently the many pictures of women and children killed in the present campaign (a total of 67 dead so far, including the organizations’ militants) help to create especially supportive Palestinian and Arab public opinion for Hamas.
On the Internet and on the social networks, there is a clear call to take revenge against the Israelis and to bomb Tel Aviv, as though firing missiles at Gush Dan, the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, will solve the problems of the Strip’s residents. Hamas at this stage seems to be intoxicated by the support it is receiving from the public and especially from the Palestinian media, which cast no doubt and ask no questions, even for a moment.
Wrapped in the warm embrace it is receiving from Arab countries, Hamas seems to be in no hurry at all to end the fighting and is continuing to present very inflexible positions in the negotiations being conducted via Egypt regarding a temporary cease-fire.
At this stage it looks as though the organization sees Israel’s threats of a ground operation as empty posturing. A similar attitude was heard from the Hamas leadership a few days after the start of Operation Cast Lead in December 2008. Then, too, Hamas did not believe that Israel would enter the Gaza Strip on the eve of elections, and when the ground operation began, the Hamas members fled from the fighting and left the population to absorb the fire.
It appears that the organization’s leadership has not learned the lessons of that campaign. Thus, tracking the Hamas media and the arrogant words of the organization’s leaders sometimes gives you a feeling that Hamas is about to conquer Israel at almost any given moment. The most recent proclamations of the organization’s military arm, Iz al-Din al-Qassam, included claims of firing a missile that landed north of Herzliya, sinking an Israel Navy ship, downing an IAF F-16 and more.
The problem is that while Hamas members are claiming credit for nonexistent achievements and are continuing the “fighting” while they are hidden in fortified tunnels, the residents of the Gaza Strip will continue to be the ones to pay the price. And the bombing Sunday in the center of Gaza is just another painful example of that phenomenon