Here's just yer basic blindingly obvious summary:
First, they find a pretext.Max Ajl at Jacobin. I might, to get technical, prefer the term siege to occupation in relation to Gaza, but the point still holds. Media dissemblers might wish to explain how the Israelis can "retaliate" against anything, as by definition a military siege remains the opening act of aggression between combatants until such time as it is lifted.
In this case, that was an anti-tank rocket fired from the Palestinian resistance at an Israeli jeep on November 10, which Israel and its apologists in the US media described as the initial provocation in the latest round of hostilities.
We know, for three reasons, that this is a lie.
The first is because we read the news. We know that the occupying forces encircling the Gaza Strip murdered a mentally unfit man approaching the border fence on November 4... And we know that on November 8 Israeli forces shot at Ahmed Younis Khader Abu Daqqa, who was playing soccer with his friends 1500 meters from an Israeli military post when a gunman put a bullet through his abdomen. He died soon after. Ahmed was 13.
The second reason we know that this is a lie is because the assault occurred after a 24 hour lull in the violence, induced by an Egyptian-brokered truce. ... Israel... shatter[ed] the truce with the November 14 assassination of senior Hamas military leader Ahmed Jubari, continuing a long-standing Israeli pattern of deploying targeted killings ... to break cease-fires and ramp up the cycle of violence at strategically opportune junctures.
The third reason any explanation involving the word “retaliation” is a lie is because the category of Israeli “retaliation” does not exist. The occupation is constant terror, and it is what breeds the Palestinian violence Israeli leaders can adduce as a retroactive justification for the policies they pursue in purported pursuit of the chimera of “security.”