Last Sunday, the Israeli army absolved itself of any wrongdoing for its 2014 attack on Israel-occupied Gaza Strip. During that brutal 51-day military offensive, in which Israel bombed the besieged, blockaded Gaza Strip, Israel’s army killed 2,251 Palestinians, including nearly 1,000 women and children. Israel’s bombs wiped out entire families with more than 160,000 homes, mosques, shelters (including a shelter for people with severe disabilities) and buildings destroyed. Israel’s bombs targeted more than 250 schools, 78 hospitals and clinics and vital water infrastructure. Children playing football on a beach were blown into pieces, while others feeding pigeons faced the same fate. And yet, Israel’s military found that all of these incidents were legitimate. Yes, for Israel, the killing of more than 500 children was legitimate.

To be clear, this is not the first time that Israel has dismissed charges levelled against it. Whether the 2008-2009 attack on Gaza, its assault on the Gaza-bound humanitarian flotilla in 2010, its repeated assault on Gaza in 2012 or the thousands of complaints filed by Palestinians, Israel’s army still finds a way to claim that its killing of an occupied, stateless, army-less population is “justified.”

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