Four Months. 247 Palestinians dead. 155 of them, “official” civilians. 57 children. 996 wounded. 337 of them are children.

You know that the slaughter of Palestinians has reached new heights when Israel actually apologises. It’s a rare event and it usually comes at a very high cost. This was the price tag:

Israel has apologised for an artillery barrage which killed 18 civilians including eight children in Gaza, as the Palestinian government declared three days of mourning to commemorate those who died. At least 13 members of one extended family died as they were sleeping when tank fire hit their home in Wednesday’s incident.

The killings happened a day after Israel started to withdraw its tanks from Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza after a week-long offensive in which dozens of people died. Tzipi Livni, the Israeli foreign minister, called the deaths in Beit Hanoun “a regrettable incident”.

“The Israeli military does not intend to harm civilians - that is never our aim. But in the framework of such things, incidents like these happen,” Livni said. Local residents spoke of horrific scenes after the Israeli tank fire hit several houses in Beit Hanoun.

“Five of my brothers have no heads … my father-in-law has lost his legs, he’s left with just shattered flesh,” one man told Al Jazeera following the attack. A 14-year-old girl identified as Athamna said: “There were wounded people when the shell fell on my uncle’s house, we went to help but when we got there another shell fell on us.” [source]

Clicking through the evening news over here in the western hemisphere, hardly a trickle of a mention for what’s going on over there. A poli sci professor of mine once said that during the conflict in Ireland the magic number was 10; kill 10 people and they’ll make the evening news. Which of course only makes me wonder: how many Palestinians does it take?

How many?

Wake up World