{"id":1239,"date":"2015-09-14T13:04:22","date_gmt":"2015-09-14T20:04:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/?p=1239"},"modified":"2015-09-15T13:13:13","modified_gmt":"2015-09-15T20:13:13","slug":"witness-to-a-catastrophe-sandy-tolan-on-night-in-gaza-and-the-51-day-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/?p=1239","title":{"rendered":"Witness to a Catastrophe: Sandy Tolan on ‘Night in Gaza’ and ‘The 51 Day War’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"LARB_bk_480x172\"<\/a><\/p>\n

by SANDY TOLAN<\/strong><\/p>\n

ONE EVENING in July of 2014, near the beginning of Israel\u2019s assault on the Gaza Strip, several dozen Israelis pulled up couches and plastic chairs to a nearby hilltop to\u00a0watch the spectacle<\/a>. Some\u00a0munched popcorn<\/a>. Suddenly, there on the outskirts of the Israeli town of Sderot, a flash lit up the night sky, followed by a column of fire and an earth-shaking roar. As the missiles from Israeli fighter jets rained down on Gaza, the\u00a0crowd broke into cheers and applause<\/a>.
\n\"51<\/a>
\nOne of those missiles, from an American-made\u00a0F-16 fighter<\/a>, crashed through the\u00a0Fun Time Beach Caf\u00e9<\/a>\u00a0in Gaza,\u00a0killing nine young men<\/a>, also in plastic chairs, gathered to watch the World Cup on television. They would be among the early victims of a 51-day war that claimed the lives of nearly1,500 civilians<\/a>, including 521 children, and badly damaged or destroyed 18,000 buildings, including schools, hospitals, the\u00a0Gaza Power Plant<\/a>, water and waste water infrastructure, and more than 400 businesses.
\nClick here<\/a> to read the full review.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by SANDY TOLAN ONE EVENING in July of 2014, near the beginning of Israel\u2019s assault on the Gaza Strip, several dozen Israelis pulled up couches and plastic chairs to a nearby hilltop to\u00a0watch the spectacle. Some\u00a0munched popcorn. Suddenly, there on the outskirts of the Israeli town of Sderot, a flash lit up the night sky, more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1239"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1239"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1239\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1251,"href":"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1239\/revisions\/1251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}