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Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu

THE death toll in the Israeli offensive on Gaza, that enters its 14th day today, shot to over 425 with more than 87 people killed yesterday alone in the televised bombardment. Over 3000 people were reported injured since the beginning of the offensive. The number of fatalities and the injured was expected to significantly increase once all the dead and injured are taken out of Shuja’iya, Gaza’s eastern suburb, where some serious shelling occurred on Saturday night.
According to Al Jazeera TV, which quoted various UN agencies, over 70 percent of the people killed during the two-week offensive are civilians.

On the Israeli side seven people have died, five military men and two civilians who fell victim to the rocket attacks and mortar fire.
Israel launched the operation dubbed “Operation Protective Edge” on July 8 ostensibly targeting the Hamas movement, which controls the region, and its allied groups of Palestinian rebels.

Ten days later, the Israeli army switched to a ground offensive that increased casualties.
Palestinian militants are accused of launching more than 100 rockets daily at the largest cities of the south and centre of Israel. About five million people out of total population of eight million live in the zone of attacks.

The barbaric offensive on mostly unarmed men, women and children in Gaza received the tacit approval of US president Barack Obama who appeared on CNN yesterday defending Israel’s actions saying no nation should tolerate an attack on its soil.

Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu also appeared on CNN thanking the US for its support effectively confirming widely held sentiments that Israel would not be bloodletting if it did not have the support of the US that effectively stymies all action at the United Nations.

‘’I appreciate the support we have received from president Obama on our right to self-defence, ‘’ Netanyahu told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer last night.
Israel is the largest recipient of US military assistance and last year alone, Washington sent some US$3.1billion in military aid to Tel Aviv, supplemented by allocations for collaborative military research and joint training exercises.

The actions of Israel, which was established in 1948 the year apartheid was adopted by the racist National Party in South Africa, have been rapped as the worst attack on a people since the formal end of apartheid South Africa in 1994.

Ironically the assault on Gaza has not been condemned as much as the downing of a Malaysian airlines plane, MH17, that had 295 people on board with western media trying to build a case against Russia for reportedly supplying Ukrainian separatists with weapons, surprisingly the US that openly assists Israel with billions in military aid every year has not been similarly rapped by the same media organisations.

The world is still baffled at why the Western countries are putting pressure on the United Nations Security Council to hold an emergency meeting on the Ukraine crisis this Friday following the shooting down of a Malaysia Airlines jet which killed 298 people, while giving a blind eye to the crisis in Gaza.