Providing less than an hour of warning, on May 15, in an apparent attempt to silence the messengers, missiles fired by the Israeli Defense Force hit the al-Jalaa Tower, an 11-story building in Gaza in which the Associated Press and Al Jazeera had offices. Commanding less attention than the media hit was the fact that the tower was a multi-use building and many families lived there. Although the rationale provided for hitting the building was that it was harboring Hamas militants, members of the press said there was never any evidence of that.

The tower was one of several apartment buildings and many other residential buildings turned into rubble in the most recent deadly assault on Gaza by Israel that lasted from May 10 to May 21. The Gaza-based Palestinian Health Ministry reported 256 people killed, including 66 children, and 2,000 injured in the 11 days of air strikes. UN human rights experts said that “over 74,000 people have been forcibly displaced, most of them women and children.” They also reported that six hospitals, nine healthcare centers and a water desalination plant supplying 250,000 Palestinians with clean drinking water were destroyed.[1]

U.S. President Biden spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu six times and reiterated that Israel has a right to defend itself, basically allowing the operation to continue[2] until a ceasefire had finally been negotiated while Gazans, handicapped by a lack of electricity and supplies, suffered under an onslaught of bombs and searched frantically for loved ones and neighbors buried in the destruction.