A Grim Reminder about Gaza Boombings:
100 Kilotons Is Roughly Seven Hiroshimas
Bill Astore / Bracing Views @ Substack

(April 23, 2925) — 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 US government has enabled this by supplying Israel all the bombs it needs to pulverize Gaza. The US 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 US 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 US governments, still eagerly perpetrating and defending this?

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