GAZA, Nov 6 (Reuters) - Israeli fighter jets struck 450 Hamas targets in Gaza and troops seized a militant compound in the past 24 hours, Israel's military said on Monday, in attacks the enclave's health authorities said killed dozens of people.
A Reuters journalist in the Gaza Strip described the overnight bombardment from the air, ground and sea as one of the most intense since Israel launched its offensive in response to a surprise attack by Hamas on southern Israel a month ago.
Health officials in Hamas-controlled Gaza said more than 9,770 Palestinians have been killed in the war since Hamas killed 1,400 people and seized more than 240 hostages on Oct. 7.
We are seeing similar reports daily of the human casualties of this most current war. What we don't hear or read of is the incalculable impact of war on the environment. Look at just this one AP photo, of which there are no doubt hundreds if not thousands of.
This photo from a story that emphasized the challenge of Gazans seeking some safe place amid the shelling and bombing of their neighborhoods. Just think of all the energy and materials that went into the construction of Gaza and what it will take to someday clean-up and rebuild a city of 2 million souls. The numbers will be staggering and they will add greatly to the carbon emissions we are trying to slow and reduce.
Today, November 6, happens to be perhaps the most ignored UN International Day. It's the International Day for Preventing Environmental Exploitation in War and Armed Conflict. There is of course the total waste of energy and materials that war amplifies, but there are other "externalities" ignored in war that we will pay for - exposure to the toxicity for those who do the eventual cleanup and who live nearby; the extra toxicity from use of weapons like white phosphorus and depleted uranium; the contamination of soils, air, and water; the death of animals and destruction of plants and landscapes.
Each day the world community fails to impose a ceasefire, the tragedies grow and will ensure that future occupants inherent the costs. How many more have to die or be wounded; how much more destruction will satisfy the vengeance that war feeds? Will the human family destroy itself and the community of life via unleashing these weapons directly or through those weapons of war destroying the ecology that provides us all with life?
We need a Ceasefire NOW!!! Not just in Israel and Palestine, but Ukraine and Russia and all the other arenas of war. I am outraged that our government feeds this destruction and fails to call for an immediate ceasefire. It's a moral failure. As Edwin Starr so clearly noted
"War! What is it Good For? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING? "
Ok, maybe. weapon makers.
Totally agree!! You see all the smoke clouds after bombs are dropped, and for the less equipped with more advanced weapons, there is the burning of tires, and all that smoke going into the air. As The Earth is my Mother, it hurts my heart deeply to see all of this! and more, that it's never acknowledged. So thank you for this validation!
ReplyDeleteVery well expressed. Thank you!
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