As Fadi accurately predicted, CNN finally posted a headline about the murder of 17 Palestinians in Gaza today by combining the deaths of those fighting their occupiers and the deaths of civilians at the hands of these same occupiers with the death of three Israeli occupation soldiers killed deep inside the Gaza Strip.

Check it out: Israeli-Palestinian fighting kills 21

Nothing too surprising there. However, I was pretty surprised that the BBC headline was ‘Israel Strikes after Hamas Raid’. Excuse me? Again, the Hamas attack targeted Israeli soldiers inside Gaza – therefore, it was the Israeli Occupation Forces that were conducting the raid, not the Palestinian resistance. That’s just a blatant attempt at covering for Israeli war crimes by painting the murder of Palestinians today as legitimate retaliation. Which, assholes, it isn’t.

The CNN report also claims that the five resistance fighters killed are part of ‘a new radical Islamic group called El Oma Army.’ At the risk of posing too many rhetorical questions for my own good in one post, which one of Mark Regev’s assholes do CNN pull this shit out from? Seriously, I’ve been watching local news out of Gaza and this is the first time I’ve ever heard of El Oma Army. The five killed were members of Hamas according to local sources and the Israeli media. And how the fuck do you judge on the radicalism of a group that you just invent-I mean discovered today. Give them a chance to do something radical next time!

Away from the Western media’s dickheaded approach to Israeli oppression, let us review the events of the day-a day where the death of 17 Palestinians wouldn’t have garnered much news had it not also featured the death of three Occupation soldiers. In the early hours of the morning, an Israeli force moved deep east of the Shuja’iyah neighborhood. Supported by tanks, armed bulldozers and fighter helicopters, the occupiers stormed civilian homes, arresting civilians and demolishing 4 houses at least. Four Hamas fighters were killed trying to resist that particular incursion, as well as a Palestinian farmer. The Israeli army also destroyed part of a local school and demolished large parts of a mosque.

Around the same time, an Israeli Special Forces unit entered Gaza from the east in pursuit of Palestinian fighters. The unit was ambushed by Hamas fighters, who left 3 of the occupation soldiers dead and managed to retreat. This ‘raid’ was carried out inside Gaza and targeted an Israeli unit that had crossed the border.

As the Israeli army is prone to do whenever its soldiers are killed in Gaza, it sets about targeting obvious civilian targets (see Jabalya, March 2008). As the airforce set about conducting a series of airstrikes and killing several Palestinians, the biggest attack occurred near the Juhr Eldeak area, where a tank shell hit a large number of civilians gathered near the mosque. 9 were killed, including two children and several teenagers.

It was following this event that perhaps the most shocking images of the day came out. As cameramen rushed to the scene, Fadel Shana’a, a 23 year old cameraman working for Reuters, was killed when an Israeli tank shell hit his car. TV footage showed his SUV engulfed in an inferno as his colleagues rushed to his side, many openly weaping.

Shana’a’s car was clearly marked as a Press vehicle, and his clothing also was similarly marked. As Aljazeera correspondent Jackie Rowland testified, the vehicle “…was even clearly marked on the roof, so it can’t be mistaken on the ground or from the air,” she said.”It is quite inconceivable that Israeli forces, who are looking over the territory with drones, helicopters and aeroplanes, were unfamiliar with this car.”

Reuters say that Shana’a had just gotten out of the car and begun filming when he was killed. The footage recovered from his camera shows an Israeli tank firing from several hundred meters away towards the cameraman, before going blank at the point of impact. Also killed in that attack were two civilians-a young boy and a man in his 60’s.

Gosh, imagine if CNN didn’t keep covering for Israel’s crimes. Maybe this shit will stop.

Related posts:

1. Just another day in Gaza
2. Not on CNN
3. Shoah Watch: Sudden Pullout
4. Shoah Watch: The fifth day
5. The Myth of Israel’s “Targeted” Killing