Photo Credit: Abed Rahim Khatib / Flash 90
The perfect 'photo op' - sadly - female family members at a funeral for those who died in an IAF air strike after a terrorist's family chose to participate as human shields rather than take cover after an initial warning was given by the Israeli pilot.

As usual, Gaza officials are starting to generate their graphic media photo ops, even at the expense of their own civilian populations. How many around the world will buy their sad, tainted wares this during this conflict?

The Gaza Interior Ministry has issued a notice to its residents ordering them to ignore the Israeli Air Force procedure known locally as the “knock on the roof.”

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The “Knock on the roof” is a procedure in which fighter pilots first fire a small blank shell at the roof of a terrorist’s home in order to warn occupants to leave, just before a strike. It is intended to reduce — if not entirely avoid — the terrorists’ ability to force their people to become human shields.

But instead, Gaza officials have told their people, “Messages and phone calls from the IDF are intended to cause panic and weaken the internal front.

“We urge citizens not to cooperate with these messages, not to leave their homes and to keep a low profile,” they said.

It is interesting to note that past shipments of concrete and metal for construction in the region had to be terminated because it was discovered that terror groups were confiscating them and using them to build bunkers and weapons instead.

Such shipments were only resumed within the past couple of years, and that under strict international supervision, in order to ensure the supplies reached their intended destination and were used for the projects they were meant for. Even now, sewage treatment facilities are woefully out of date due to the emphasis of the ruling Gaza terrorist organization on the annihilation of Israel, rather than the improvement of the quality of life of its own population.

Concrete and metal has never been used to build things like public bomb shelters — let alone private shelters within homes or apartment buildings. Why should they?

By staying in their homes and ignoring warnings by the IDF, Gaza civilian deaths add up, providing graphic images for international and local journalists to beam around the world.

These images have been used in the past — and will be used again — in the propaganda war to claim that Israel is deliberately attacking “defenseless Palestinian civilians” in its war to silence the rocket fire aimed at its own civilian families.

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Hana Levi Julian is a Middle East news analyst with a degree in Mass Communication and Journalism from Southern Connecticut State University. A past columnist with The Jewish Press and senior editor at Arutz 7, Ms. Julian has written for Babble.com, Chabad.org and other media outlets, in addition to her years working in broadcast journalism.