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Israel's destruction of U.S.-style school shocks Gazans
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| Contributor | Penguin |
| Last Edited | Penguin Jan 28, 2009 11:13pm |
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| Category | News |
| News Date | Thursday, January 29, 2009 05:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | When President George W. Bush visited the West Bank a year ago, Palestinian militants in Gaza vented their anger by ransacking the American International School here, smashing windows, stealing computers and torching a small fleet of buses.
It was just the latest episode in a decade-long string of bombings, kidnappings and lootings at the elite private school, which isn't connected to the U.S. government but has an American-style curriculum and coed, English-only classrooms, which have made it a favorite target of Islamic extremists.
On Jan. 3, the school finally was destroyed, but not by Islamist extremists. An Israeli airstrike flattened the two-story building and sprayed shards of steel and stone over the manicured lawns and soccer field. The night watchman was killed. Books, computers, science equipment and art supplies were crushed beneath the wreckage.
Within moments, Gaza's perhaps most pro-Western institution — a symbol of possibility in a sealed-off, war-torn land — was gone.
The Israeli army told McClatchy that its forces hit the school because Hamas militants had launched rockets from the grounds. School officials and neighborhood residents rejected that explanation, however, saying that the hilltop campus offered few places to hide and that the militants themselves often had attacked the campus.
"It seems that targeting our school . . . was one of the very few things that fanatic groups and Israel could agree on," said Sharhabeel al Zaeem, a member of the school's board of directors. |
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