Independent Thought ❇️

💢 Video, satellite imagery, and weapons analysis indicate the U.S. dropped a 2,000-pound on a family home in a densely populated residential neighborhood on Iran’s Qeshm Island overnight Thursday, The New York Times reported. The strike killed a husband, wife, and their 2-year-old son. Two other children, now orphaned, were pulled alive from the rubble. The report says evidence raises serious questions about why one of the U.S. military’s largest conventional bombs was used in a residential area and whether the use is consistent with international law.

NBC News reported Thursday that attacks by Jewish extremists against Christians, including clergy, nuns, and pilgrims in Jerusalem’s Old City, are sharply escalating. Sister Mary Meline, interviewed by NBC, described the routine humiliation faced by Christian clergy in the city central to their faith: “The spitting on the ground for me it’s every time I go to Jerusalem nearly.” Christian leaders and Israeli activists told NBC the attack is part of a broader pattern of harassment and physical assault targeting clergy and pilgrims — often carried out by ultra-Orthodox Jewish yeshiva students. Jerusalem’s Christian population has collapsed from roughly 25% to less than 2% of the city over the past century.

Israel returned to burning families alive in Gaza as they slept overnight. “Three women with severed arms and two men struck in the head and legs, all were severed.” Those were the words from a witness at scene of the Israeli massacre at Burj al-Moataz, a five-story residential building sheltering displaced families in Gaza City’s al-Rimal neighborhood. Israeli airstrikes targeted residential apartments in the building, igniting a massive fire and trapping families, including many women and children, inside. The strikes killed 8 people, and wounded more than 45 others.

💢 Gaza NGO coordinator Eyad Amawi told Drop Site that the Israeli bombing of central Gaza City on Thursday, which killed 8 people, wounded more than 45 others, and destroyed multiple residential apartments, reflects the broad Israeli strategy aimed at making Gaza unlivable and forcing mass displacement. Amawi said the destruction extends beyond airstrikes to the systematic collapse of living conditions through siege, blocked reconstruction, lack of shelter, disease, and deteriorating health conditions. Even temporary fiber tents allowed in after months of delay, he said, trap extreme heat and function more like “incubators” than humane shelters. “What is happening today is a continued process of transforming Gaza into a place unfit for human life,” Amawi wrote. 🎥 Video shows a child buried under the rubble today after the new strikes

An Israeli soldier involved in the killing of an Israeli captive during military operations in Gaza told the captive’s mother: “Males, regardless of their age, we don’t mess around, we kill them right away. They even told us, if it’s a woman or a child, make the judgment call yourselves, because things happen.” The account aligns with Haaretz’ reports on the rules of engagement guiding Israeli forces in their genocide in Gaza, where soldiers have been instructed to treat any male as an immediate target.