Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,
The New York Times reported Saturday that Israel is killing Palestinian civilians in Gaza at a historic pace. The huge civilian death toll in Gaza is explained by the scale of the bombing campaign and Israel’s willingness to drop US-provided 2,000-pound bombs on densely populated areas that are packed with civilians.
Marc Garlasco, a former Pentagon analyst who advises the Dutch NGO PAX, told the Times that he’s never seen anything like it. “It’s beyond anything that I’ve seen in my career,” he said. Garlasco added that to find a historical comparison for so many large bombs in such a small area, one would have to “go back to Vietnam or the Second World War.”
Israeli officials have frequently cited the Allied strategic bombings of Japan and Germany during World War II to justify their onslaught in Gaza. The comparison includes the US fire bombings of Japanese cities, which killed around 100,000 civilians in Tokyo in one night in 1945, as well as the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Israel has also invoked the US air campaign against ISIS, which killed tens of thousands of civilians in Iraq and Syria. But even the most brutal battle of the ISIS war does not compare to Israel’s onslaught in Gaza. According to an AP investigation, between 9,000 and 11,000 civilians died during the Battle of Mosul. About a third were killed by US-led coalition airstrikes or Iraqi forces, a third were killed by ISIS, and the cause of death for the rest is undetermined.
The Battle of Mosul lasted for nine months, from October 2016 to July 2017. In less than two months in Gaza, the Israeli bombardment has killed at least 10,000 civilians, based on a conservative estimate cited by The Times.
The Times report said, “People are being killed in Gaza more quickly, they say, than in even the deadliest moments of US-led attacks in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, which were themselves widely criticized by human rights groups.”
The Israeli onslaught also dwarves the civilian casualties in the war in Ukraine since Russia invaded in February 2022. In one year and nine months of fighting, the UN estimates at least 10,000 civilians have been killed in Ukraine, including 560 children.
The last update released by Gaza’s Health Ministry on November 10, after just 35 days of Israel’s campaign, said over 4,500 Palestinian children had been killed in Gaza, which the US State Department acknowledged was considered to be a low estimate at the time.
John Mearsheimer: The Israeli for example, have killed more civilians in Gaza in one month than the Russians have killed over 18 months in Ukraine.
The idea that Vladimir Putin is waging a punishment campaign and killing on purpose, large number of civilians is simply not true. pic.twitter.com/joZWb9jnXV
— Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil (@ivan_8848) November 19, 2023
Despite the massive civilian and child death toll, the US continues to provide Israel with unconditional military aid. The White House has acknowledged that Israel is killing thousands of innocent people in Gaza but has said there are no “red lines” that would impact US support.
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