The 50-day Gaza war last summer left over 2,000 Palestinians and 70 Israelis dead, along with 20,000 homes in the Gaza Strip destroyed. But one map may be more telling than the numbers.
The IDF inflicted "unprecedented and indiscriminate harm" against Palestinian civilians, according to a report by Israeli advocacy group Breaking the Silence. "We were firing purposelessly all day long. Hamas was nowhere to be seen," an anonymous tank sergeant said in the report.
A look at this Google map makes it hard to believe it was purposeless — the most damaged areas in the Gaza Strip were also the most populated, with some exceptions. (Nuseirat, central in the strip near Deir al-Balah, can be seen not circled on the map.)
Some of this damage may not have been inflicted during the Gaza war last summer, but much of it was; take a look at the Wall Street Journal's comparison of before and after neighborhoods within the same month of July 2014.
