On Sunday morning, Israeli forces shelled the neighborhood of Shuja’iya in northern Gaza to the point of obliteration. At least 67 civilians were killed. Civilians’ bodies littered the streets as rescue workers struggled to aid the wounded amid continued bombing. 

The massacre did not happen because the neighborhood is a Hamas stronghold, as some Zionist media claimed. It was a mad act of revenge for a fact that would become clearer in the later days— the Palestinians are winning the war. 

The land invasion of Gaza has been a miserable failure so far. As of Thursday morning, 32 Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza, with one captured. This number of Israeli military fatalities, which occurred in less than a week since the start of the ground operation, is unprecedented in the history of land incursions on Palestinian territories.

While it is true that the death toll on the Palestinian side is about 20 times higher, slaughtering civilians en masse with a sophisticated air force and heave artillery is a sign of military failure, not success.

“Operation Protective Edge,” the Israeli war on Gaza, has not achieved any of its goals, except its understated one: to collectively punish Palestinians. 

Rocket attacks by the Palestinian resistance have not been stopped. International airlines halted their flights to Israel throughout the week because of Hamas’ rocket fire. 

Palestinians are now in a position to negotiate their own terms to end the blockade of Gaza, as Israeli losses exceed what was expected by the government of occupation and its supporters.

The Palestinian resistance has managed to prove that the injustices of occupation and siege cannot continue normally without a response from the victims.

But it is not only the war on the ground that Israel is losing. Palestinians are also winning the virtual media war. In the age of social media- driven citizen journalism, mainstream media outlets that generally favor Israel’s version of the truth no longer have an exclusive hold on information. 

Amateur videos captured with camera phones, tweets, Facebook photos and Palestinian solidarity hashtags are telling a side of the story that has long gone underreported. While a Pew Poll showed last week that most Americans still favor Israel, the criminal shelling of schools and hospitals and deliberate targeting of Palestinian civilians are starting to be shown to the American public. It is only a matter of time before U.S. public opinion starts shifting, which might pressure our elected officials to rethink their unequivocal financial, military and political support to Israel. 

A number of American public figures, including singers and athletes, have made statements in support of Gaza on social media. This was unthinkable 15 years ago. 

Parallels are already being made between the failure of the Israeli operation in Gaza and the Israeli defeat in Lebanon in 2006. July is not a good month for the Israeli war machine.

When Israel comes to the full realization that this war is not winnable, its allies in Cairo and Washington will come to its rescue by proposing a ceasefire plan acceptable to Palestinians. 

This war might change the nature of the conflict and make Israel and its backers rethink their racist policies against Palestine.