by Tascha Shahriari-Parsa and Alon Lapid

On Tuesday, July 8th, 2014, the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) launched Operation “Protective Edge” , allegedly to “stop the terror Israel’s citizens face on a daily basis.” President Benjamin Netanyahu authorized the call-up of 40,000 reservists to supplement the Israeli Southern Command, and in no time struck 150 sites that were alleged by Israel to harbor Islamist fighters. According to the Gaza Health Ministy, as of 5:52pm Gaza time on July 9th, 41 Palestinians had been killed since the launch of the operation the day before, including 13 children.

On just the first day of Operation Protective Edge, a little more than an afternoon was ruined for the 6 children who died when an Israeli missile was fired at a building in Khan Younis, a city in the southern Gaza Strip. The children ― Abdullah Hamed Karawe, Seraj Abed al-Aal, Basem Salem Hussein Karawe, Mohammad Ali Faraj Karawe, Kasem Jaber Adwan Karawe, and Hussein Yousef Hussein Karawe ― were aged 6, 8, 10, 12, 12, and 13 respectively. Ahmad Nael Mahdi, aged 15, was also killed in an airstrike that day, and many others have been wounded and are in critical condition.  The name of 18-month old Mohammed Malakiyeh was added to that list with his 27-year-old mother on the campaign’s second day.

This recent wave of ruthless assaults by the IDF began when three Israeli settler teenagers were abducted and killed on the 12th of June, 2014. While Israel claims that Hamas committed these killings, no evidence has been found to prove that Hamas is guilty. In fact, since Hamas usually takes credit for killing civilians, it is unlikely that Hamas was behind the murders. What is clear, however, is that Israel used these murders as justification to extend its ruthless campaign of bloodshed on Palestinians.

As part of Israel’s search for the three teenagers, before they were publicly known to be dead, Israel arbitrarily arrested and detained hundreds of Palestinians and killed at least ten, including 3 Palestinian children . In the West Bank, cities like Hebron became completely closed off, with soldiers committing nighttime raids to arrest those deemed suspicious. Furthermore, the generally difficult to pass checkpoint system which disables Palestinians from freely travelling about their own land was made even stricter by the Israeli government.

Meanwhile, Israeli settlers squatting on Palestinian lands do not face any of these harsher restrictions: they are automatically exonerated from any role in the kidnappings on the basis of being Jewish.

By the end of June, Israel’s violence escalated further. According to international media sources, in just one night ― from the evening of Monday, June 30th until the dawn of the next morning ― the Israeli army carried out more than 35 air strikes against different areas in the Gaza Strip, particularly over densely populated refugee camps. The attacks have continued, and we can expect them to get worse as Operation Protective Edge and the Israeli state remains steadfast in its objectives; these latest attacks are part and parcel of the illegal occupation of Palestinian land and ongoing Israeli war crimes.

Beginning with its creation in 1948, Israel has forcibly occupied Palestinian lands, forcing Palestinians from homes and into refugee camps, sieging Gaza, making them go through brutal checkpoints, arbitrarily detaining Palestinians, and enacting policies of apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide.

There are currently 250 Palestinian children in Israeli jails without charge or trial. With the recent escalation of terror against the Palestinian people, the racist Israeli occupation forces show ― with their inhumane, unconscionable actions ― that they have no respect for human life or dignity and are merely using the deaths of the three settlers as a pretext to pursue pre-existing plans to annex further areas of Jerusalem, to imprison (and re-imprison) Palestinians who resist the occupation, and to reinforce the genocidal siege of G aza.

We need to stop labeling this as the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” It’s Israel occupying Palestinian land and terrorizing the Palestinian people, war crimes met with justified resistance from the Palestinian people who seek liberation from them. Yet because of Israel’s international power and the hegemony of its allies over the world media, the deaths of three Israeli teenagers ― which has never been confirmed to be the doing of Hamas ― makes the headlines everywhere while we rarely hear about the Palestinian children that are murdered day after day by the Israeli forces , including the 33 killed in the 8-day assault of November 2012.

In the search for three Israeli teenagers, three Palestinian children were killed. While Israel condemned the revenge-killing of a 16 year old Palestinian by the name of Mohammed Abu Khdeir, they made sure to continue their own killings of innocent civilians through their endless bullets and air strikes. It should be clear that the Israeli state neither cares about Palestinian children nor Jewish children ― what it cares about is the maintenance and extension of the Zionist settler state.

The repeated calls for violence among the Jewish population have further revealed the deeply reactionary nature of the Zionist state. This conflict is further justifying the colonialism in Gaza and Palestine by the Israeli government, much in the same way 9/11 enabled the Bush regime to invade the Middle East. To colonize an oppressed people: that is the underlying intent ― a deadly intent that will continue to be materialized in the moulds of occupation and oppression until the Zionist apparatus of colonialism is dismantled once and for all.

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