Reuters: A total of 846 Palestinians and thirteen Israelis --- three civilians killed by rocket fire and 10 soldiers --- have been killed since the offensive began on Dec. 27.
Al Jazeera: The Palestinian death toll in the Gaza Strip has risen to 854 and more than 3,350 injured as the Israeli offensive entered its third week.
CNN: More than 800 Palestinians have been killed in the attacks, including 235 children, and about 3,300 people have been wounded, according to Palestinian medical sources. Thirteen Israelis, including 10 soldiers, have died since the operation began.
Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian doctor working at Shifa hospital in Gaza City, told Al Jazeera: "We have been to many war zones, but the special thing is that the 1.5 million Gaza population are completely locked in.
"The civilian population has no way to hide. The population density is so high you can not do attacks like this without knowing that you are attacking the civilians.
"Also, the injuries must come from extremely explosive devices. We suspect that Israel is using a new type of high explosive called Dime [dense inert metal explosive].
"We urge the world, stop the bombing of Gaza. Please stop it."
Reuters: Human Rights Watch has accused Israel of using white-phosphorus munitions and warned of undue suffering to Palestinian civilians through severe burns.
The Israeli military said it uses only weapons permitted under international law. It has accused Hamas of using civilians as human shields.
Meanwhile, back on Friday in Washington, in addition to explaining why the U.S. opposes a ceasefire, Secretary of State Rice discussed civilian deaths as follows:
"It is very difficult in a circumstance like Gaza, which is a very densely populated area," Rice said Friday when a reporter asked her whether Israel was meeting its humanitarian commitments. "I might note it's also an area in which Hamas participates in activities like human shields and using buildings that are not designated as military buildings to hide their fighters. So it's hard."
Does anyone have any actual video of Hamas soldiers using civilians as human shields? Or are we to accept it on blind faith, or because we (have been softened up so thoroughly by anti-Arab and anti-Islamic imagery and media over the years that we) just 'know' looking at Hamas that they do that?
Maybe we need the rest of the world to have a word with us. Of course they don't see things the same way most in Israel and the U.S. do. They tend to interpret an Israeli war that looks a lot like a massacre (they get to watch the real war on their TVs) as a display of U.S. and Israeli racism. Here's an editorial from Trinidad and Tobago:
The Obama administration-in-waiting was being out of step: leading US politicians and commentators had been falling over each other in their rush to denounce, not Israel's high tech murder of Palestinian civilians, but Hamas' puny defiance-never mind that Palestinian deaths were outnumbering Israeli deaths by a ratio of 100-to-1 (the ratio, incidentally, that has held for the past three years, during which Palestinians killed by Israeli forces have included 222 children).
Just as they'd done with Israel's failed invasion of Lebanon in 2006, GW Bush and Condoleeza Rice, the lost black woman who has aimlessly wandered the world on Bush's behalf these past years, repeatedly blocked a UN resolution calling for a ceasefire. Senate Leader Harry Reid thundered that 'this terrorist organisation, Hamas, has got to be put away.'
All this, while Arab television screens and the worldwide Web were filling up with photos of dead or disfigured Palestinian children.
Outside of the US, Britain and Israel itself, it's sobering to imagine the rage of the watching world at such essentially racist uncaring and bigotry.
I wonder whether and how soon before Barack Obama becomes the lost black man to the non-white world? Already hope is fading, but I'm sure folks worldwide will give him more than one chance to come through. Of course, maybe third world disillusion with Obama won't matter in the realpolitik scheme of things.
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