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When Will This Slaughter End?

On Tuesday, even as Arab and European diplomats were furiously working at the UN headquarters in New York to persuade Israel to end this war on a totally powerless and besieged people, Israel targeted a United Nations-run school in Gaza killing at least 42 people, most of them were children.

Which is understandable given the fact that the school in UNWRA compound has been a refuge and shelter for hundreds of Palestinian families uprooted by this war. The UN says Israel knew and was repeatedly informed that it’s a UN-run school and shelter for thousands of women and children.

If the UN facilities and shelters are not out of bounds for Israeli jets and tanks, where will the vulnerable people take refuge in this all-out war? Unlike Israeli population that has the luxury and protection of underground bunkers and shelters to protect itself from those rudimentary rockets fired from Gaza, the Palestinians have nowhere to run and no place to hide? Israel is not bending over backwards to defend its attack on the school either, just as it remains unapologetic about this whole campaign against a civilian population. Tel Aviv says the UN school might have stored rockets and other explosives and could have blown itself up when an Israeli shell ‘accidentally’ landed there!

When it comes to obfuscation of truth and distortion of facts, there’s no beating the Israeli propaganda machine. Just as Israeli jets mercilessly pound Gaza with its people incarcerated inside, its spinmeisters are all over the place — from Fox to CNN to Al Jazeera to BBC — holding forth on the pain and anguish of the Israeli leadership in fighting this war that it has to fight to protect its people. Listening to those pundits, you’d feel as though Israel was the greatest victim of Islamic terrorism and Palestinians were the aggressors and oppressors.

But you can’t fool all the people all the time, even if you have all the television networks, newspapers and think tanks in the world on your payroll.

Sooner or later truth shall prevail. The Palestinians may be at the receiving end today, just as the Jews themselves had been yesterday. But their struggle for justice and freedom and their great sacrifices over the past seven decades will not go in vain. Their time will come — with or without the support of the world community.