The world woke at dawn on Saturday, August 10, to witness yet another horrific scene as Israeli occupation warplanes targeted Al-Tabeen school, in Daraj neighborhood, east of Gaza city. The airstrike that killed over 100 people and injured dozens of others, took place when many people were performing dawn prayers at the school, where thousands of displaced people were sheltering.
The Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) falsely claimed that the airstrike targeted a command center run by the Palestinian Resistance Movement (Hamas) within the school, which Hamas’s member of political bureau Izzat al-Rishq denied. Al-Rishiq, who confirmed that no resistance fighters were present at the school, accused the IOF of fabricating lies to justify the mass killing of Palestinian civilians.
The Palestinian Government Media Office in Gaza held the United States responsible for the massacre along with Israel, as it came hours after the US approved 3.5 billion dollars in military funds and shipments of new weaponry for Israel. This is part of the 14.1 billion-dollar supplemental funding bill for Israel, passed by the US Congress last April.
Commenting on the massacre, the White House stated that it was “deeply concerned” about the Israeli strike on the Gaza City school compound, and that it was reaching out to some Israeli officials to get further details about the massacre.
The Palestinian Presidency also blamed the United States for the massacre. Nabil Abu Rudeinah, a spokesperson for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, called on the United States to stop its “blind support that leads to the killing of thousands of innocent civilians, including children, women, and the elderly.”
Additionally, the massacre was condemned by many countries and officials across the globe. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova expressed Russia’s profound shock over the deadly Israeli airstrike on the Al-Tabeen School, emphasizing that such tragedies undermine international efforts to de-escalate the war and to achieve an urgent ceasefire and prisoners’ swap deal.
The High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, and Vice president of the European Commission Josep Borrell Fontelles wrote on X: “Horrified by images from a sheltering school in Gaza hit by an Israeli strike”. “At least 10 schools were targeted in the last weeks. There’s no justification for these massacres,” he added. Moreover, Saudi Arabia expressed its strongest condemnation of the Israeli occupation forces’ targeting of the Al-Tabeen school and called for an immediate end to the mass massacres in the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli occupation has not only massacred Palestinian people in a wholesale manner, but it has also been threatening journalists reporting about them. A few hours after the massacre took place, the spokesperson of the Israeli Occupation Forces Avichay Adraee took to the platform X to threaten Al Jazeera‘s journalist in Gaza Anas al-Sharif of being in contact with a number of Hamas resistance fighters, and of covering Hamas’s and Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s “crimes by hiding inside the school”.
Al Jazeera denounced Adraee’s statement on Saturday describing it as a blatant act of intimidation and incitement against Anas al-Sharif. “Such remarks are not only an attack on Anas’s character and integrity but also a clear attempt to stifle the truth and silence those who are courageously reporting from Gaza,” Al Jazeera stated.
By systematically targeting shelters of displaced people and journalists, who report on the ground from Gaza, Israel has been providing the world with compelling evidence that the main purpose of its continuous aggression on the besieged strip is to ethnically cleanse Palestinian people. Nevertheless, the world appears to remain powerless in front of a colonial state that is fully backed by the United States imperialist hegemonic policies.
