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SvennoJ on 11 August 2024
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‘Too many’ civilians killed in Israeli school strike, says Harris

Speaking to reporters during a campaign stop in Phoenix, US presidential nominee Kamala Harris has reiterated calls for a “hostage deal and a ceasefire” in Gaza.

When asked for her reaction to Israel’s attack on a school compound in Gaza City, which has killed more than 100 people, the US vice president said, “Yet again, far too many civilians have been killed.”

At least “11 children and six women” are confirmed as being among the dead, according to Palestinian Civil Defence spokesperson Mahmoud Bassal.

Israel has claimed, without providing evidence, that it killed 19 Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters in Saturday’s attack, and that the death toll has been inflated.

I dare any reporter to ask here what an acceptable number of dead civilians is... Is up to 30 (August 4th Nassan and Hassan Salameh schools massacre) an acceptable number to the US? Or is that just too common now to be concerned about.

Israel, too, recognises its attack on Gaza school is a war crime

Kenneth Roth, a visiting professor at Princeton University, said Harris – the US vice president – did not “quite state international law correctly” when she emphasised Israel’s right to go after Hamas fighters in her response to the Israeli military’s latest deadly attack on a Gaza school.

“She’s partly right in that Israel has a presumptive right to attack Hamas fighters,” Roth said from New York, “but it is supposed to refrain from an attack if the foreseeable civilian harm will be disproportionate”.

“She said, ‘Oh too many civilian casualties’, but she doesn’t put two and two together. She doesn’t explain that it is wrong, it is a war crime to attack Hamas fighters in a way that is endangering so many civilians,” he said.

Roth, a former executive director of Human Rights Watch, added that he believes Israel, too, knows the attack “went wrong because they’ve now claimed to have killed 19 fighters from Hamas and Islamic Jihad”.

“Those 19 fighters were again presumptively legitimate military targets but not if many, many civilians also died. And when Israel received reports that 80, maybe 100, civilians were killed, they suddenly said, ‘Oh no, no, that was too many, our precision weapons wouldn’t have caused that many’ – as if to admit that if the number is that large this was a disproportionate attack.

“So this leads me to believe that even Israel recognises that this was a war crime. They’re just trying to cover it up and pretend it didn’t happen.”


Canada’s development minister condemns Israeli school attack

Canada’s Minister of International Development Ahmed Hussen has condemned Israel’s latest attack on a Gaza City school.

“International humanitarian law must be upheld to protect civilians,” he wrote in a post on X. “An immediate ceasefire and the release of hostages is desperately needed.”



Get sanctions through then... But he's just a lone voice in a government full of genocide enablers.