Comment by richardfeynman
1 year ago
So confident yet so wrong.
- Israel has not carpet bombed gaza. They've used a higher portion of smart bombs than any other military in history and use F16s to guide their dumb bombs. Israel has dropped more than 25,000 bombs, and according to the high estimates fewer than 25,000 palestinians have been killed, meaning each bomb kills less than one person. Israel also establishes humanitarian corridors, drops leaflets, sends evacuation warnings, allows in aid, establishes safe zones, and much more.
- Nobody knows how many Palestinian journalists have been murdered. Gaza does not have a free press. What we do know is that many militants posing as journalists have been killed. See: https://www.camera.org/article/using-journalists-lives-as-cu...
- You're upset that Israel imprisons minors like these guys? https://www.wionews.com/world/are-hamas-resorted-to-training... Save some of your outrage for Hamas using child soldiers. Also, plenty of other countries, including the United States, imprison minors.
- I can see you've been listening to lots of Norman Finkelstein? Israel does not just wake up one day and say "let's mow the lawn" - each time they bomb gaza it's been in response to something like a suicide bomb or stabbing, which has happened for decades in Israel.
- I see you think you're familiar with the Hannibal directive. Can you link me to the text of this directive? The principles are tactical rather than strategic and followed by many other militaries, including the US.
> Israel has not carpet bombed gaza.
This is a bold claim to make considering the evidence. We have satellite photos of Gaza and many estimates are that over 60% of the housing stock in the entire Gaza strip are damaged or destroyed[1] (some estimates up to 70% [2]; the lowest I could find was 45.3% [3]). Entire neighborhoods have been leveled in all parts of the Gaza strip. At least 29,000 bombs dropped on the strip have targeted residential areas. Over 65% of the population is displaced. More than 200 heritage and archaeological sites have been destroyed in the Israeli bombardment[2].
The bombings are not uniformly distributed, so if we focus on the most destroyed areas, which is norther Gaza and Gaza city, the numbers are much worse. Looking at this map[4] published by the BBC you can see that every part of Gaza city, Jabalia and Beit Hanoun have been targeted. Between 70% and 90% of all housing stock in these areas are damaged or destroyed[5]. Khan Younis south of the evacuation line has also had most of its areas targeted in Israeli bombardment and with an estimate 50% of all housing stock damaged or destroyed[5].
Here is what wikipedia has to say about carpet bombing[6]:
> Carpet bombing, also known as saturation bombing, is a large area bombardment done in a progressive manner to inflict damage in every part of a selected area of land.
You have to be extremely selective in you consideration of reports on the evidence to deny that Gaza has been—and is currently in to process of being—carpet bombed. So selective in fact, that you would not just be wrong, but obviously wrong.
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1: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/gaza-is...
2: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/31/israeli-bombardmen...
3: https://menafn.com/1107703299/ICJ-Should-Consider-Damaged-Ho...
4: https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/89CD/production/...
5: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-20415675
6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpet_bombing
Carpet bombing is what the allies did to Dresden. Carpet bombing is indiscriminate. For every bomb that israel drops there is a lawyer approving it. There is lots of damage, particularly in the north (which Israel did its best to evacuate before bombing), because Hamas had built military infrastructure virtually everywhere: under schools, UN buildings, under residential houses, hospitals, etc.
I'm not trying to say there has been little damage to Gaza. There's been lots. But that doesn't mean it's been carpet bombed. There's lots of damage because there was lots of military infrastructure.
You are arguing semantics, and I’m taking the bait. You can do the same with genocide (it is what the Ottomans did to the Armenians) or terrorism (it is what the Irish republicans did in England). But just like genocide, terrorism and apartheid the meaning has broadened outside of the initial conception and prototypical example.
In every explanation and definition of carpet bombing I find online the focus is on the destruction, not the method. Yes, historical examples of carpet bombing has used unguided bombs, and the targets have been indiscriminate. However what is important is the damage and the time period. That is, the damage has to be massive, involve every part of a large area, and it has to happen progressively (as opposed to all at once; this excludes the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima). The bombing of Gaza checks every one of this criteria.
What doesn’t matter is the bureaucratic process before a target is selected, whether the bomb is guided. If a military specifically targets over half of all residential building, many historic and cultural sites, civilian infrastructure, etc. runs this through lawyers, who approve the bombing, then uses precession guided bombs to destroy these targets, and does so over every area, than that is carpet bombing.
And just to hammer the point home. Hamas still to this day retains the ability to fire rockets over to Israel, despite this vast damage of civilian area. However Israel is picking their target, if they indeed intend on destroying military targets, than they are certainly doing a lousy job.
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