Al Jazeera journalist Youmna El Sayed was reporting live from Gaza the moment the missile struck the Palestine Tower behind her
Israeli airstrikes destroyed a tower block in Gaza City after Hamas militants launched a rocket and air attack on Israel in the early hours of Saturday morning.
The Israeli army launched Operation Iron Swords against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, with Israel's president, Benjamin Netanyahu, saying the country, is 'at war'.
Al Jazeera journalist Youmna El Sayed was reporting live from Gaza the moment the missile struck Palestine Tower behind her.
Sources in Gaza said at least 198 Palestinians were killed in the strikes
So order of things in this video is wrong. First one is the reporter with explosion behind her. Explosion is suppose to make noise and do no damage. Israel calls this "roof knocking" as it gives warning and time for people to flee. Fifteen minutes later first part of the video happens and building is leveled to the ground. Building destroyed is a communication tower, which as you can expect is the first to go in such situations.
Are you sure it's a communication tower? If they flattened "Palestine Tower", then that's a mix of commercial and residential apartments. Apparently it had 14 stories and also housed clinics and media agencies.
No party has been innocent in this conflict but I would lean on the side that retaliation and attacks from israel are far more deadly and damaging than from Palestine.
Looks like that was updated half an hour before the comment you replied to was made.
And earlier this afternoon 22 was the official count for Israeli deaths, 220ish Palestinians.
So Israel has updated their number, and it looks like Palestine hasn't.
That being said, both sides can pretty much say whatever right now. There's no way to know what it actually is, there's too much chaos for anyone to know.
By the time this escalation ends up, the number would be quite disproportional as ever. And I can tell you for certain on which side the civilian casualties would be at least two times higher, as usual and I am pretty certain you can guess too.
Not supporting Hamas or any civilian casualties here on both sides, but what Israel is usually doing is not exactly diffusing the tension and usually it makes things even worse.
That's because Hamas is a terrorist organization with the goal of exterminating Jews. The founding documents of Palestine calls for the killing of Jews and repurposing any land they occupied for setting up a Sharia caliphate. No matter how many times you falsely call it apartheid, that doesn't change. They want to kill all Jews.
How is this a numbers "game" to come to a conclusion who is (more) problematic? Instead of, for example, the aggressor? The terrorists?
Do these numbers even reflect who was killed? Random civilians see to be worse than soldiers/terrorists.
Not to mention that Israel first does a "knock on the roof" strike to let everyone know they need to leave the area ASAP. This is nothing new to this strike.
So you think Israel should just accept that a genocidal terrorist organisation attacks its civilian population? Yes, Hamas uses civilians as meat shields but what are the Israelis supposed to do? Let themselves be slaughtered?
Jesus fucking Christ. Terrorist supporters all around here. I'm genuinely disgusted.
This is the same Israel with their elite mossad forces, yes? "Meat shields" are a poor excuse for indiscriminately bombing a city block when you have elite spec ops units. They don't do it because they have no other choice, they do it as a threatening show of force. "Fuck with us and we'll kill anyone even near you".
There's a middle ground that doesn't involve slaughtering innocents.
Quick question: why does the innocent victim state have (until today) roughly 20x the casualties of the genocidal terrorist organization?
Even with the updated estimates (as I type this comment, 232 Palestinians dead since the attack and 250 Israelis dead), Israel has killed over 10x the amount of people.
Gaza doesn't have anything else. It is not a country, it is a concentration camp and it in general is not permitted to have anything resembling an organized self defense.
It makes it easier to bulldoze over their towns on Ramadan and then act shocked when some of them retaliate during your high holiday.
Israel could simply stop settling the land that doesn't belong to them and exterminating Palestinians, and Hamas could stop lashing out and killing Israelis but the only way that happens is if the political leadership of those two selfishly monstrous regimes were to simply all die.
There can be no peace as long as one country is allowed to make another into an apartheid state while they ethnically cleanse the population from land they feel entitled to control.
Or maybe Israel could use all that money they have to remove the separation walls and allow Palestinians to integrate into society and return lands that settlers recently took. That's a start.
The correct answer is that Hamas purposely launches these attacks from city block, schools, hospitals, etc which is literally a war crime so when there is retaliation they can cry foul. Don't believe terrorist apologist.
"First" is very relative. If you count that as the first action, sure. But others might say it has been going on for decades with one side being oppressed by the other, being treated as sub-humans and expelled from their homes.