Another day, another accident.
That is the inevitable fate of Palestinians in the bleak, dystopian wasteland that is Gaza.
It is inevitable because no matter the scale, nature or form of the outrages, Palestinians have been, and always will be, considered disposable human flesh by Israel's army of unrepentant apologists and enablers.
Of course, they are working hard to try, as they are conditioned to do, to find an explanation, an excuse, a justification to absolve Israel of responsibility for the crimes against humanity it has committed with impunity in Gaza and beyond.
In their myopic calculation, Israel is never to blame, never responsible, never the perpetrator, never guilty. Admitting that Israel is the culprit, responsible, perpetrator or culprit would mean, in effect, also admitting its guilt.
The usual palette of lies, distortions and obfuscations is being deployed, at just the right moment, by the usual suspects in the capitals and usual newsrooms to deny or obscure the obvious.
Blindness is a necessary extension of their complicity. They refuse to see what the rest of us can see. Their evangelical loyalty to Israel trumps truth and decency. Always has been. It will always be.
This now familiar pantomime is being played out in the shocking residue of a massacre of more than 100 desperate Palestinians who descended upon aid trucks carrying the livelihoods denied them by a fanatical regime determined to kill them quickly or slowly.
This time, the terror took place on al-Rashid Street, on the southwestern outskirts of what remains of Gaza City, where thousands of homeless Palestinians had gathered in the open air of the night. Cold. Sick. Thirsty. Hungry.
What happened in that place and at that time was not an “incident” or a “chaotic scene.” It was, instead, more lethal evidence of the genocide being committed by a ruthless occupying power against an imprisoned and powerless people with deliberate and malignant efficiency.
We know what happened in that place at that time because Al Jazeera's Ismail al-Ghoul was there. He was not in Tel Aviv or occupied East Jerusalem. He was not in a television studio in Washington, DC, New York, London or Paris, based on the account of a proud Israeli spokesman. He was there.
This is what al-Ghoul reports he witnessed.
Dozens of Palestinians learned that trucks loaded with flour were about to arrive. As they waited in anxious anticipation early Thursday morning, Israeli soldiers began shooting. You can hear the crackle of gunfire in the video that captured the murderous madness.
“We went to look for flour. The Israeli army shot at us. There are many martyrs on the ground and up to this moment we are removing them. There is no first aid,” a witness told Al Jazeera.
Another witness added that: “The Israelis just randomly opened fire on us as if it were a trap.”
Then, after strafing the Palestinians, Israeli tanks advanced and ran over the dead and wounded, al-Ghoul said.
What witnesses appear to describe is the military tactic known as “double tap.” The initial blow hits the intended target. A second attack is aimed at passers-by who come to help the dead and wounded.
In any case, by the time the carnage ended, the staggering toll of Palestinian dead and wounded had risen as it has every day for the past five months with relentless ferocity.
When daylight came, the true magnitude of the gruesome carnage became clear.
Ambulances could not reach the dozens of dead and disfigured because the roads, like much of Gaza, had been destroyed.
The dead were loaded onto the bed of one of the aid trucks converted into a mobile morgue, their limp, lifeless bodies intertwined in a grotesque heap of humanity.
The avalanche of wounded Palestinians who survived the attack fell on overwhelmed hospitals and the caregivers who still populate them.
“Hospitals can no longer accommodate large numbers of patients because they lack fuel, much less medicine. Hospitals have also run out of blood,” al-Ghoul said.
A Palestinian doctor preparing to help the wounded amid the bloody chaos admitted there was little he could do.
“Most cases need surgery and operating rooms,” he said. “To be honest, I don't know what we can do. “The situation is…horrendous.”
The situation has been “horrendous” for a long time. But the so-called “international community” hesitates. Worse still, he spouts meaningless platitudes that “ask” Israel to stop killing civilians.
It is clear that hesitations and platitudes are not working. Crimes against humanity go on and on.
At first, Israel said the Palestinians were responsible for killing and harming Palestinians.
Palestinians were crushed and trampled, Israel said, as they ran toward aid trucks. It's not our fault.
Unsurprisingly, this sick line of “reasoning” does not address why hordes of Palestinians have to charge at aid trucks.
Israel's stated goal is to force the Palestinians to capitulate by depriving them of food, water, fuel and medicine.
Then Israel turned. We had no intention of starting shooting at unarmed civilians. We only started shooting because our heavily armed soldiers felt “threatened” by unarmed civilians.
Israel knows that these blatant absurdities will work. They have worked before. They will work again.
Israel knows it has a license to kill as many Palestinians as it wants, whenever it wants, for as long as it wants, by any means it wants, and “the international community” is not going to do anything tangible. to stop it.
Instead, you will nod in approval and agreement. He will accept Israel's original and exculpatory version of what happened.
The “outrage” will last a day or two and then the “international community” will continue on its merry and delirious way.
Meanwhile, Palestinians will have to bury more of their dead in hand-drilled graves as they wait for Israel's insatiable “murderous rage” to end.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.
