"Israel" resumed its genocidal war on Gaza following a brief pause, insufficient to address the plight of the thousands of missing children trapped beneath the rubble. Personally, I've been trying, since October 27, to reach a former colleague in the Bureij refugee camp. The unnerving lack of response echoes as ominous as a silent stone. I hesitated to contact others, afraid I might get the same silent treatment, or worse yet, discover the dreaded truth.

Then, it came from an unexpected corner. On November 23, I received the news of the tragic death of my relative, Mariam (Mary), her daughter and grandchildren in Nuseirat refugee camp. A day earlier, news outlets had covered a drone attack that obliterated a car, leaving charred bodies of women and children beyond recognition. Little did I know I had been watching the very car Mariam and her family had taken to escape their camp in a desperate attempt to find a "safer" shelter for her grandchildren. 

Mariam, who was born in Palestine in the year of the Nakba in 1948, and grew up in the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon. In the 1970s, she married a member of the PLO and was displaced in 1982, again, now from Lebanon. Subsequently, following the Oslo Accord, her family resettled in Gaza.

The last time I saw Mariam was more than a decade ago during my visit to our old camp, which happened to coincide with hers. She complained that I had been to Gaza without stopping by to see her. I explained that I was unaware she had relocated to Gaza. In reality, I had been to Nuseirat camp, and we could have crossed paths in an alley or at the small market. Nevertheless, the thought didn't occur to me that she could be there, and it was likely that after more than 20 years since our previous meeting, we wouldn't have easily recognized each other.

According to Benjamin Netanyahu’s interview with Meet the Press on November 12, Mariam and her family who heeded the Israeli military orders seeking a "safe" place, were "unintended casualties" and the 15,000 other murdered civilians were "collateral damage."

Arguing that a bombardment damaging 278,000 structures is simply "collateral damage" in a war fighting supposed "terrorists" hiding behind civilians, is "hogwash." Especially, since the Israeli army is the only party that has been shown to use civilians as human shields. In May 2002, "Israel's" High Court of Justice explicitly prohibited Israeli soldiers from using Palestinian "civilians of any kind as a means of 'living shield.'" Yet, even if one were to accept the prime minister's definition of "collateral damage," it would mean that Palestinian fighters must be physically and actively present (hiding) in or around the targeted 278,000 buildings throughout Gaza. This is an impossible reality given that the best estimates put the number of the largest group, Hamas fighters, between 30,000 to 40,000 or about 0.125 fighters at each building.

The targeting of civilian structures is so omnipresent it covers 50% of all homes in Gaza. For 59 days and counting, the Israeli army had murdered 15 civilians, injured 35, dropped 42 bombs, and destroyed 12 buildings, every hour of every day. This relentless bombardment replicated a military strategy known as "area" or "saturation" bombing, a tactic initially employed by Nazi Germany in Poland in 1939. The allies applied the same "area" bombing technique in their counteroffensive against Nazi Germany in 1945 dropping 3,900 tons of explosives on the city .

.....Assassination Factory in Gaza
https://english.almayadeen.net/articles/analysis/from-chongqing-to-gaza-s-mass-assassination-factory