Campfires flicker in annihilated Gaza garden suburb

[Scurrilous]

<snip>

"The destruction is total, as if a terrible earthquake had struck. But this was no natural disaster.

Once there were citrus orchards and olive groves here, locals say, big homes with courtyards and scratching chickens.

Now there is nothing but shattered buildings, thrown up in the air and half-buried, tossed in a pitching sea of plowed-up earth, a bizarre vista of devastation.

They are the ruins left behind from a three-week Israeli assault, an offensive undertaken, Israel said, to stop Hamas militants firing rockets into Israeli towns and cities.

Palestinians on Monday surveyed the broken, blackened wreckage of East Jabalya, a neighborhood with the misfortune to occupy a high ridge above the city of Gaza.

Israeli forces wanted it. They pounded it with bombs, blasted it with tanks, then bulldozed the trees and gardens to get a clear firing platform overlooking the streets below.

Some parts of Gaza city look strangely normal after 22 days of non-stop bombardment by air land and sea. There are streets quite unscathed, apart from broken windows and rotting garbage.

But drive up into the suburb that once sat proudly on the ridge, and it's as if one had turned a corner of Stalingrad, a dark scene from some World War Two battle of annihilation.

Fighting was heavy here, say the locals. But most civilians had already fled to the shelter of U.N.-run schools in the city.

Now roofless, they squat among the twisted concrete of what used to be their homes, cooking scraps of food over camp fires in blackened living rooms missing their outside walls."

more

[lostnotforgotten]

1. Ah Yes - War - The Way American Israelis Always Imagined It - I Sure Hope They Are Satiated

So this can finally end.

[panader0]

2. On the eve of the inauguration, it is important not to forget Gaza.

I see that, even though Obama has not yet been sworn in, he has alreadi affected the withdrawal of Israeli troops. GOBAMA!