Experts say the besieged strip is unrecognisable and its bombing is the most destructive in modern history.
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.
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.
They're going to remove Palestine. Whether Hamas still exists afterward will be irrelevant, except maybe to serve as some nightmare boogeyman that Israel's leadership can use to justify literally anything.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.