The recent Israeli military invasion into Rafah left 10 people dead and upwards of 80 injured, over 100 homes demolished and 2,000 people homeless, according to the United Nations' estimate. Most of the dead were teenage boys with more curiosity than fear who went outside just to see what was going on in the streets.

These facts make me sick.

Pavel Shostak writes about reading about the deaths of people in restaurants, and I read the same accounts. But what he fails to mention are the lives of Palestinians unjustly destroyed by Israeli forces. It is an unforgivable shame to shoot children or run thousands of people into refugee camps. It was only last week that 70 Palestinian farmers were detained by Israeli forces when they tried to access their land (blocked off by the new wall) in a struggle to maintain their livelihood and feed their children. Instead, writers to the DI choose to vilify Palestinians and create a double standard on who is allowed to have human rights. The strong response issued by Israel also marks a decision by Israel to disregard world opinion. The international community that formed the Geneva Conventions to protect the human rights of civilian peoples are the nations that Israel chooses to act against.

No one in their right mind can ask a country to sit back for three years and watch its kids, fathers and mothers die, yet, that is what we ask of brutally marginalized Palestinian people to do every day.