Footage and Eyewitness Accounts Show 'Horrific' Reality of Israeli Onslaught in Gaza

Videos posted to social media by people in Gaza since Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced a "complete siege" on the blockaded enclave on Monday have shown the reality of the assault on those Gallant called "human animals"—more than two million civilians, roughly half of whom are children.

Al Jazeera reported Tuesday that at least 830 people have been killed so far in Gaza as Israel launched repeated air raids, including on a seaport and the headquarters of the Palestinian Telecommunications Company, where explosions disrupted civilians' ability to communicate with one another amid the onslaught. The sole crossing point between the Gaza Strip and Egypt was also temporarily closed Monday.

"We can't reach each other, which is horrific," Al Jazeera reporter Jamileh Abu Zanoona wrote Tuesday. "We can't even go to our houses because there is a huge bombardment around us. People are fleeing to different places, to hospitals and [United Nations Relief and Works Agency] (UNRWA) schools, but no place is safe. There is no safe place in Gaza, especially after targeting the Rafah crossing point. We are basically in a closed box right now. It's a prison."

The outlet reported that hospitals in Gaza were overwhelmed, with more than 200 children among 3,700 people injured so far.

Although the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) reportedly told civilians in residential neighborhoods including Rimal to evacuate before razing at least 790 housing units and leaving at least 5,300 severely damaged, Rohan Talbot of the London-based aid group Medical Aid for Palestinians reported that in reality, there has been "no pretense of 'targeted strikes' on Hamas," but rather "wanton, indiscriminate destruction of whole neighborhoods."

"A world rightly horrified just a day ago by stories of entire families killed, or huddling terrified together for hours wondering if they would live, is... suddenly absolutely fine with it when it is a different family just a few miles away?" asked Talbot, referring to the unprecedented attack on Israel by Hamas on Saturday, which killed more than 900 people.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health reported Monday that at least 91 children had been killed in the Israeli military offensive in Gaza so far after the IDF fired missiles at residential buildings in towns and neighborhoods including Al-Zaytoun, Abasan Al-Kabira, and Al-Nasr.

"Like the last war in Gaza, the Israeli military is again destroying large residential apartment towers," said Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch. "Any claim of a 'Hamas office' or the like does not justify the massively disproportionate effect on people's homes."

Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCIP) said it was investigating the killing of children in the Gaza Strip, including in at least three refugee camps, where children as young as eight months old have been killed.

The youngest victims of IDF airstrikes, said Miranda Cleland, advocacy officer for DCIP, "never knew another life besides Israeli occupation, bombs, guns, and siege"—all of which has been "emboldened by the West."

Shahd Abusalama, a Palestinian academic based in the U.K., posted a video of the rubble left behind by an air raid on Jabalia refugee camp—her birthplace—where her family members "found themselves buried under the rubble of their home and escaped miraculously amid mass destruction."

WARNING: The below videos contain graphic imagery.

Writer and teacher Eman Basher said the "massacre," which killed and injured dozens, took place at a busy "crossroads" that connects UNRWA schools that shelter unhoused people with public markets.

Journalist and Gaza resident Muhammad Smiry shared several videos of fathers weeping as they carried their young children's lifeless bodies through medical facilities and destroyed neighborhoods.

The corporate media in the United States has focused largely on the civilian casualties in Israel, while the federal government on Mondayjoined Germany, France, Italy, and the U.K. in a statement pledging to "ensure Israel is able to defend itself" and only a small number of progressive lawmakers—Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), and Cori Bush (D-Mo.)—called for the U.S. to impose conditions on Israeli aid to prevent the IDF from further violating international law.

With internet access severely affected by the airstrikes—and Israeli authorities saying Monday they would cut off electricity to Gaza as well as supplies of food, fuel, and water—writer and analyst Yousef Munayyer warned "the conditions for genocide" would continue to grow.

"It is crucial for the world to be able to see what is happening INSIDE GAZA," said Munayyer.