Israel Sharply Escalates Gaza Assault; Ground Invasion Planned

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered Israel's military to further intensify brutal attacks on Gaza citizens. The Israeli Air force is quite full of itself, bragging they have hit more targets during the past 48 hours than they did during the week-long offensive of November, 2012. The macabre hunt is just gearing up, however. IDF Spokesperson Brig. Gen. Moti Almoz says Israel has in mind thousands of additional targets for strikes in Gaza.

Homes, refugee camps, coffee shops, sidewalks and streets make up the targets that have been hit. Nearly 100 human beings have been killed in the past two days, at least 18 of whom are children. Families huddle together in fear and darkness as sirens scream and bombs fall. In defense of its people, Hamas and associated forces have fired rockets into central and southern Israel, yet so far have not managed to kill anyone there.

A ground invasion of Gaza is being planned, confirmed President Shimon Peres earlier in the day, saying that it will happen quite soon. While the Obama Administration has been quite enthusiastic about the Israeli attacks, it has formally cautioned Israel against a ground invasion of Gaza, as if civilian deaths by ground troops are somehow less noble than flying over people and killing them with bombs. Hamas spokesperson Sami Abu Zuhri says they are ready to confront the Israeli "coward soldiers".

The MSM has also played its role in supporting Israel wholeheartedly in the killings, sans any degree of fact-checking. ABC News Diane Sawyer misidentifies scenes of the aftermath of Israeli missile strikes in Gaza as destruction caused by Palestinian rocket fire.

As Sawyer segues into the segment, she says, “We take you overseas now to the rockets raining down on Israel today, as Israel tried to shoot them out of the sky.” All the while video footage is rolling, though not of Israelis or even Israel, but rather of Israeli airstrikes on Gaza. Sawyer then blithely describes an image of a Palestinian family gathering belongings in the smoking debris of a missile-hit home in Gaza as “an Israeli family trying to salvage what they can”, and then goes on to describe an image of a Palestinian woman surrounded by destroyed homes as "one woman standing speechless among the ruins", implying she is Israeli.

Nonetheless, this marks an important moment in modern MSM, in that this is the first time most Americans have seen footage highlighting the wanton death and destruction of Palestinian citizens that our tax dollars are paying for.

Meanwhile, Israeli police are releasing to house arrest three of the six people who burned Palestinian boy Mohammed Abu Khdeir alive.