Arabs need 2 die

Israeli Settlers

Palestinian Child

Photos show young Israeli settlers watching the bombardment of Gaza, and a Gazan child.

Rory McCarthy in The Guardian:

Of all the horrors visited on the civilians of Gaza in this war the fate of the Samounis, a family of farmers who lived close together in simple breeze-block homes, was perhaps the gravest.

Around a dozen homes in this small area were destroyed, no more than piles of rubble in the sand yesterday. Helmi Samouni's two-storey house was one of the few left standing, despite the gaping hole from a large tank shell that pierced his blackened bedroom wall. During the invasion it had been taken over by Israeli soldiers, who wrecked the furniture and set up sand-bagged shooting positions throughout.

They left behind their own unique detritus: bullet casings, roasted peanuts in tins with Hebrew script, a plastic bag containing a “High Quality Body Warmer”, dozens of olive-green waste disposal bags, some empty, some stinking full – the troops' portable toilets.

But most disturbing of all was the graffiti they daubed on the walls of the ground floor. Some was in Hebrew, but much was naively written in English: “Arabs need 2 die”, “Die you all”, “Make war not peace”, “1 is down, 999,999 to go”, and scrawled on an image of a gravestone the words: “Arabs 1948-2009”.

More here. And Amnesty International finds “indisputable evidence of the widespread use of white phosphorus in crowded residential areas of Gaza City and elsewhere in the territory.” From the BBC:

The Amnesty group said one of the places worst-affected by white phosphorus was the UN Relief and Works Agency (Unrwa) compound in Gaza City.

Israeli shell fire set the compound on fire on 15 January, burning stocks of food and other humanitarian supplies in a warehouse and coming close to stocks of fuel.

The head of Unrwa in Gaza, John Ging, said at the time that “three rounds that emitted phosphorus” hit the compound.

The Israeli military said it had come under fire from Palestinian fighters inside the compound and had fired back.

Human Rights Watch also said it observed “dozens and dozens” of white phosphorus shells being fired by Israel at the Gaza Strip.

More here.