Israel’s relentless bombardment of Gaza for nearly three months has destroyed 70 percent of the homes in the besieged Palestinian enclave, according to the Government Media Office.
No further details were provided but an earlier report said more than 200 heritage and archaeological sites were destroyed in the Israeli bombardment considered the most destructive in modern history.
About 300,000 out of 439,000 homes have been destroyed in Israeli attacks, a Wall Street Journal report said. Analysing satellite imagery, the report added that the 29,000 bombs dropped on the strip have targeted residential areas, Byzantine churches, hospitals and shopping malls and all civilian infrastructure has been damaged to an extent that they cannot be repaired.
“The word ‘Gaza’ is going to go down in history along with Dresden [Germany] and other famous cities that have been bombed,” Robert Pape, a political scientist at the University of Chicago who has written about the history of aerial bombing, told WSJ.
Maybe I’m just getting soft, but I think it’s been pretty wild to watch a government murder tens of thousands of innocents real-time.
Those of us old enough to remember Rwanda have seen it before. I take issue with gov’ts who’ve also seen it before and still do sweet fuck all about it.
Rwanda, Serbia, Armenia, and still ongoing that everyone is ignoring, the Rohingya, Uyghurs and Sudan.
Russia is also marching 100’s of thousands of their minorities and people of the Donbas to their deaths, and slaughtering Ukrainians while doing it, they are double dipping sort to say.
World War 2 also had a little genocide issue…
The big difference is that we were supposed to be above this shit by now after 75 years of “never again”.
Instead we’ve once again stooped down to the same moral level with the Ubermensch trying to expand their Lebensraum shit. And Westen governments are actually supporting it.
When I saw the Uyghur camps I didn’t think “we could do worse than that” was an option.
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Perhaps it’s not quite as many as western media claims, but it’s definitely more than 0. I mean, governments kill more than 0 people even if they actively try not to.
Removed by mod
Where’s your evidence?
Removed by mod
Well ok. If we’ll look instead of an example where the government is actively trying to kill people, https://www.shahit.biz/eng/ lists about 77k victims in the Uyghur Genocide.
Removed by mod
The West only cares when it affects their geo-political interests such as access to natural resources or tying up another country in never ending war.
Edit: Hit submit way too early
Russia has murdered almost 20 000 civilians, perhaps around 500 000 soldiers in total (both sides) in its mindless war in Ukraine. Not all of them innocent certainly, but I’d guess at least 90%. And they’re not even trying to protect themselves from anything.
And if you’ve been paying attention, this has been going for almost 2 years now. And still goes on. One best case scenario that Estonia recently presented in a report was that Russia will lose the war in 2 years. So if the rate keeps until then, we’re looking at about a million deaths in total. Granted, Ukraine and Russia’s combined population is a lot higher than the Gaza strip. Senseless deaths still.
Article 2 of the Convention defines genocide as
… any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
© Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
—[United Nations] Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Article 2
If intent to destroy a group is required, how can you call anything a genocide? You’d have to prove that that is their intent, which will be pretty much impossible in the majority of cases.
I assume it works kind of like what’s called “possession with intent to distribute” drugs in the US, which really means possession of a sufficiently large amount to cross some legal threshold. I don’t think most reasonable people would dispute that destroying 70% of the housing shows an intention to make Gaza unlivable.
But in that case any sufficiently destructive attack on a city in a war (e.g. Dresden) would be considered genocide, no?
The thing here is that Dresden is just one of many german cities. Gaza is one of 2 Palestinian “containment” areas. Bombing gaza this hard would equatw to bombing about half of Germany to absolute rubble.
So it wouldn’t be genocide if Palestine was bigger?
If they were bombing 1-5 percent of the Gaza strip and only contained the fighting in that area at least I myself would not consider it genocide. But the systematic bombing of the whole enclave cannot be called anything else.
Genocide? No. War crime? Yes.
Is there anything Israel wouldn’t bomb? Just asking questions, here.
no
Making Gazans homeless stops terrorism how?
Oh that’s easy. You see they let Israeli Banks give all the loans for rebuilding. Then when the Gazans inevitably default because the IDF never left and everyone is still on food aid; they take the property back and sell it to Israelis. Then the IDF kicks them out and deports then under the color of law. Everyone pats each other on the back and they all declare mission Accomplished.
The actual figure is “70% damaged or destroyed”. Not a whole lot better, but there is a huge difference between a house with some broken windows and a pile of rubble. The article shouldn’t be hyperbolizing - the situation is bad enough as it is without lying to us.
To be fair, if someone blew out all the glass over the floor of my house and half of a wall is gone I think I would say
“Man, they destroyed my house.”
Not
“Man, my house is partially damaged”
It doesn’t have to be a literal pile of rubble, significant damage is enough to warrant (re)construction. Not being sure if the pillars are going to keep holding up your house doesn’t sound very appealing
Despite that I would love to see new comprehensible satalite imagery like they did for Mauriopol which according to western media would be described as “precision bombing on military targets” I guess
Israel has hit Gaza, which has an area of 141 sq miles, with 29,000 bombs. That works out to just over 205 bombs per square mile.
Just how many homes do you think only have broken windows and no major damage?
The ones that are buried under rubble are probably safe.
Both this comment and the reply to it are irrelevant. Bombs aren’t spread over average areas, bombs aren’t all the same power of explosive, nor can any math tell us much about the effect of the bombs.
All of that can only be done by looking at satellite or overhead footage, assessing the average damage to buildings in that area, and then generalizing each square to write off a percentage of homes as unlivable.
Like other comments have said, we have to be careful about this because I’d prefer the correct number and not the larger number.
I don’t know, but we can do some back-of-the-envelope math. Start with 2 million people total, averaging maybe 10 people per building, gives 200,000 residential buildings. Some of these are 100+ person highrises, but others are single family homes. If each bomb, on average, destroys a building, we get 25-30k destroyed using recent bomb estimates. Obviously some bombs destroy more, but others hit already destroyed buildings.
If we then take the 70% number as gospel, that is 140k buildings “damaged or destroyed”, so that would give us something like 30k destroyed, 110k damaged. This ratio is why the article in question is being disingenuous.
Of those 110k, you ask how many just have broken windows. As I said I don’t know, but just based on what I have seen, bombs can break windows a quarter mile away, especially when the overpressure is channelled down a city street. This is much farther than you’d see actual structural damage. If I had to guess, most of these damaged buildings will fall in the “broken windows” category.
The problem there is 2,000 pound bombs are being used regularly. They will destroy multiple buildings easily, especially in built up areas.
Agreed, dropping a bomb that large in an urban environment is frankly insane. My understanding is that only 2% of bombs dropped are 2000 pounders, and presumably they are mostly used against large, hardened targets, so we should keep in mind that they are at least a rarity. That being said they probably account for an outsized number of destroyed buildings and civilian deaths.
Israel said they were using them on tunnel entrances.
They then said they considered any hatch on the ground that they can see with a drone to be tunnel entrances.
I do not think they were as rare as you think.
A quick Google search seems to indicate 500-600 were dropped. This is inline with 2% of the 25-30k total bombs. It also lends credence to the idea that these were mostly dropped on already destroyed buildings, since only then would “tunnels” be visible.
Except respectable news organizations like CNN and NYT specifically report their use in still populated areas, including areas people were told to evacuate to.
Furthermore in terms of destroying housing, a 500 pound bombs might wreck a house. A 2,000 pound bomb will bring down an apartment building.
And finally, many maintenance hatches in urban infrastructure are on the exterior of buildings and right on sidewalks for easy access. We’re not talking about root cellars exposed by previous bombing.
Edit - Also, I’d love to see a link to your source on the number of bombs.
So many apologists.
It’s important to call out even minor misinformation, even when it’s for the “right” side. Especially then, because we need to keep ourselves disciplined, or we will fall into the same trappings as the opposition.
Literally just a fact-check, unless you’re disputing the original quote?
You are downplaying the human impact of a damaged home vs a destroyed one. Specifically, you categorized it as a huge difference. The effect of not having a home fit to live in is the same. Your comment heavily implies it’s not actually that bad.
“damaged” doesn’t actually equate to being unfit for habitation. It spans a wide range from broken windows to barely standing.
The article is deliberately overplaying the human impact to get clicks and make money. I find that gross since the destruction should not need hyperbolizing. All I did was cite the actual quote, and I did so while explicitly emphasizing how bad the true situation is.
They are creating the next generation of “terrorists”.
I was in the thick of it during the wars in Iraq (06-07) and Afghanistan (09-10) fighting and it was critical we avoid collateral damage to population and structures - you’re absolutely right, it creates terrorists.
When things kicked off in Israel, even the US Administration, states to be careful with strikes. It’s all of the hype surrounding Mossad and Israel’s claim to fame when it comes to counterterrorism, I am shocked that they didn’t utilize more strategic strikes and Special Forces to eliminate Hamas.
I definitely see them in a different light now.
Same here, 03/05 in Iraq and 2012 in Afghanistan. I was absolutely shocked because the place is only 7 miles wide. Their tactics are way overblown for such a small area, and then they seemed to take all the stuff we did in 2003 to mitigate civilian casualties and just toss it in the trash can.
I agree with you. Tragic loss of life on both sides.
Thanks for your service.
I don’t think it makes that much of a difference tbh.
Both Iraq and Afghanistan struggled with terrorism and extremism during and after the occupation.
Why is the world on fire?
Because Boomers can’t take it with them.
They just might.
So why did we have to get everybody vaccinated? The boomer remover could have solved so many problems.
I thought the name boomer came from “baby boomers” but maybe the boom was the sound of bombs this whole time
deleted by creator
blame hamas
These wouldn’t be like single family homes for the most part. More like concrete apartment block slums. Hamas has tunnels under the entire Gaza strip, weaving throughout civilian infrastructure and housing. When Hamas tunnels are blown or bombed, streets and buildings above further down the tunnels can be damaged or destroyed too. These tunnels range in size, from tiny crawl ways to large corridors multiple people could wall in for ferrying supplies and fighters. They are not conditions teams of soldiers can directly fight through. Israel tried different options like pumping in water or concrete to deal with the tunnels but Hamas has found ways to make these safer solutions ineffective. It’s not like a single tunnel system; it’s innumerable small tunnel systems. More are constantly being being made too.
Additionally, Hamas fights like Al-Qaeda, embedded in the civilian population without clear designation or uniform. They exploit humanitarian activity, diverting supplies intended for civilians for themselves. If they know IDF soldiers are approaching, they can just disperse and pretend to be civilians.
How would any of you approach this problem? Hamas IS a terrorist militant group, especially obviously so after the massive terror attack in October killing over a thousand innocent Israeli civilians.
The IDF seems to have run out of effective options that don’t hurt the civilian population, and gave up after the October events with their prior painstakingly slow and risky standard counterterrorism strategies. They just bomb the tunnels now, and they bomb wherever they find Hamas positions embedded above ground regardless of collateral.
How would I deal with this? By being kind.
Lmao that has worked very well in the past
You just lost thousands more of your population you swore to protect to the terrorists. They were tortured and raped to death. What do you do next?
Oh I did? Well, I would need the specific problems to provide specific solutions.
Why did terrorists kill my population? Let’s get problem solving.
No time, you just lost a thousand more. Everyone is looking at you wondering why you’re letting this happen to them. What do you do?
Lol. Ok. Easy, I declare peace. And immortality. GG. What’s next?
Doesn’t work because Hamas ignored your treaties and is continuing to rape and torture your people to death. What now?
They can’t, my people are now immortal. I give Hammas infinity raisins.
