{"id":30777,"date":"2023-12-25T12:31:11","date_gmt":"2023-12-25T20:31:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=30777"},"modified":"2023-12-25T12:31:12","modified_gmt":"2023-12-25T20:31:12","slug":"israeli-bombing-of-gaza-ranks-among-most-devastating-in-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2023\/12\/25\/israeli-bombing-of-gaza-ranks-among-most-devastating-in-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Israeli Bombing of Gaza Ranks Among ‘Most Devastating’ in History"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A survivor of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza makes her way through the rubble of the al-Zahra neighborhood on October 19, 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0(Photo: Mustafa Hassona\/Anadolu via Getty Images)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Gaza is one of the most intense civilian punishment campaigns in history,” said a U.S. military historian as Israel’s use of arms including 2,000-pound “bunker-buster” bombs pushed the Palestinian death toll over 20,000.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

BRETT WILKINS<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dec 23, 2023 (CommonDreams.org)<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the Palestinian death toll from Israel’s 10-week annihilation of the Gaza Strip passed 20,000, warfare experts said this weekend that the retaliatory campaign ranks among the deadliest and most destructive in modern history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gaza health officials said<\/a> Friday that 390 Palestinians were killed and 734 others wounded in the besieged strip over the previous 48 hours, driving the death toll from 77 days of near-relentless Israeli attacks to 20,057, with another 53,320 people injured. More than 6,000 women and over 8,000 children have been killed\u2014approximately 70% of all fatalities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That’s more than twice the number of civilians\u2014and over 14 times as many children\u2014as Russian forces have killed<\/a> in Ukraine since February 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thousands more Palestinians are missing and feared buried beneath the rubble of the hundreds of thousands of buildings destroyed or damaged by Israeli bombardment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The scale of Palestinian civilian deaths in such a short period of time appears to be the highest such civilian casualty rate in the 21st century,” Michael Lynk, who served as the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories from 2016 to 2022, told<\/a>The Washington Post<\/em> on Saturday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/twitter.com\/adham922\/status\/1738076154030895440?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1738076154030895440%7Ctwgr%5E9ae7ecf56a9ec8d7f6774019d88c2e110fc823a5%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2Fbombing-gaza<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Robert Pape, a U.S. military historian and University of Chicago professor, told<\/a>The Associated Press<\/em> that “Gaza is one of the most intense civilian punishment campaigns in history.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It now sits comfortably in the top quartile of the most devastating bombing campaigns ever,” he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By comparison, the 2017 U.S.-led coalition battle for Mosul, Iraq during the war against the so-called Islamic State\u2014widely viewed as among the most intense urban assaults in recent decades\u2014killed approximately 10,000 civilians, around a third <\/a>of them from aerial bombardment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pape said that by some measures, Israel’s bombing of Gaza is surpassing the Allied “terror bombing<\/a>” of German cities during World War II.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He noted that U.S. and U.K. airstrikes obliterated about 40-50% of the urban areas of the 51 German cities bombed between 1942-45, and that around 10% of all buildings in Germany were destroyed. In Gaza, approximately 1 in 3 buildings have been destroyed. In northern Gaza, over two-thirds of all buildings have been leveled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Gaza is now a different color from space. It’s a different texture,” Corey Scher, who studies natural disasters and wars using satellite remote sensing at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center, told the AP<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Parts of Gaza look like a wasteland from space: Before and after | AP News https:\/\/t.co\/7r1p6lA67p<\/a><\/p>— Gabriel San Rom\u00e1n (@gsanroman2) December 23, 2023<\/a><\/blockquote>