By Alice Cuddy BBC News, Jerusalem
The call to Mahmoud Shaheen came at dawn.
It was Thursday 19 October at about 06:30, and Israel had been bombing Gaza for 12 days straight.
He’d been in his third-floor, three-bedroom flat in al-Zahra, a middle-class area in the north of the Gaza Strip. Until now, it had been largely untouched by air strikes.
He’d heard a rising clamour outside. People were screaming. “You need to escape,” somebody in the street shouted, “because they will bomb the towers”.
At this point in time, I’m not sure that there is anything to be gained by discussing the conflict. It seems like people watching it see what they want, and refuse to consider that what they know or what they have been told about the conflict may not be accurate or factual.
Eh, I’m still learning a lot, and I’m sure other people are, too. Tbh, most people haven’t talked about this conflict, it was considered too “hot” and just a religious conflict. But I’ve learned more about the wrongs Israel has also committed from posts after the Oct 7 attack than I ever have before, and that it’s more than about religion, it’s about land and the quality of life for a peoples.
Although i wish more people would respond to criticism instead of downvote. For example, I think this person further up in the thread brings up a good point. At least this is better than just killing civilians unexpectedly and it lets them get at Hamas bases or rocket installations. Sucks that this person loses their house, but they need to get rid of Hamas who continues to threaten civilian lives, too. Maybe there’s some argument I’m not considering, but I wish people would say it instead of just downvote them.
How does blowing up someone’s home “get rid” of hamas?
He said, while doing the mental gymnastics to avoid remembering that Hamas does in fact use civilians buildings and the civilians inside as a human shields for his own subterranean tunnels under said civilians buildings.
Hundreds, possibly thousands of homes might have fighters underneath them. So they level square blocks to get to them. If only they had the best intelligence system in the world and could zero in on them.