A Grim Reminder About Gaza
100 Kilotons Is Roughly Seven Hiroshimas
The annihilation of Gaza is staggering.
Israel has dropped more than 100,000 tons of bombs on Gaza. That’s 100+ kilotons. The Hiroshima bomb was roughly 15 kilotons. That means the small area of Gaza has been punished by bombing that is the equivalent in explosive force to seven Hiroshimas.
More than 60,000 Palestinians in Gaza are confirmed dead; the actual number of dead may be twice or three times that number. The number of wounded is likely more than 100,000. (Who can say, exactly, given the level of destruction and disruption in Gaza?)
How is this level of destruction in any way justifiable or defensible?
Gaza is already almost destroyed. The Israeli government’s intent is clear: after rendering Gaza uninhabitable, the Palestinians remaining there will be pushed out, displaced, removed. Or they will die, in place, from more bombing as well as starvation and disease.
The U.S. government has enabled this by supplying Israel all the bombs it needs to pulverize Gaza. The U.S. government has also provided diplomatic cover as well as military protection as Israel implements its final solution to the Gaza question.
Some claim this isn’t genocide because Israel isn’t marching Palestinians to gas chambers. But there are many forms of genocide, many ways to kill massive numbers of people.
In The History and Sociology on Genocide (1990), Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn define genocide as “a form of one-sided mass killing in which a state or other authority intends to destroy a group, as that group and membership in it are defined by the perpetrator.”
One-sided mass killing: yes.
Intent to destroy a group: yes.
Gaza and its people are being destroyed before our very eyes. A large part of the effort is being funded directly or indirectly by U.S. taxpayers. Yet we are told it is all the fault of Hamas. That Hamas is making the Israeli government kill and wound hundreds of thousands of people.
One thing is certain: The Israeli government couldn’t perpetrate this genocide without massive military support from the United States.
Perhaps one day, as Omar El Akkad wrote, “everyone will have always been against this” [the ongoing genocide in Gaza]. The question remains: Why now are so many, especially in the Israeli and U.S. governments, still eagerly perpetrating and defending this?
Here are two of the most accurate, wise observations ever made about the USA: 1.) "The business of America is business"; 2.) "America has no permanent friends, only permanent INTERESTS." Those interests, of course, are precisely the business interests. We observe Trump shedding (crocodile) tears over casualties in the Russia-Ukraine war. His interest there now is in rare mineral resources. And Gaza?? Where are his tears, even fake ones, for the victims of Israeli heinous crimes? The US interest in the Middle East is, and has always been, in OIL. O-I-L. And so Israel is retained as a heavily armed ally in helping maintain control in the region (with self-serving cooperation from oppressive regimes like the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia). Does the Trump crowd love Jews? Are you kidding me?!? This man is surrounded by adoring Neo-Nazis!! And no, I don't think I exaggerate. When did Nazis start loving Jews???
That words on that image ring hauntingly true.
After WWII, an ironic term arose in Germany - "good Germans", meant to refer to those who supposedly opposed the Nazis and claimed they knew nothing about the death camps. Of course, neither was true - how could they be? With the disappearing of neighbors and the other evidences facing them daily.
Outright opposition would have been impossible (e.g., the murders of the White Rose members), but they could at least have acknowledged publicly after the war what they had seen. Shame was no excuse.
When the term "Good Americans" arises after the end of Gaza, what excuse will they give?