Israel/Palestine update: December 12

Gaza: the heaviest bombing campaign in history; after destroying northern Gaza, now Israel proceeds to do the same in the south; the plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza; the public humiliation of Gazans.

Hi everyone. Welcome to my latest update on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In today’s post I cover: why Gaza is the heaviest bombing campaign in history; after destroying northern Gaza, now Israel proceeds to do the same in the south; the plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza; the public humiliation of Gazans, and much more.

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Let’s starts, as always, with the death toll. Following the end of the ceasefire, as the war entered its second month, Israel immediately resumed its relentless pounding of the Gaza Strip. Around 3,000 people (including 1,000 children) have been killed over the past week alone, bringing the total death count to over 18,000 people, including almost 8,000 children and more than 5,000 women — which together represent 70% of all reported fatalities. There have also been almost 50,000 reported injuries.

Hundreds of people have reportedly been killed just in the past 48 hours, as Israeli airstrikes and ground shelling targeted multiple, already devastated locations across the Gaza Strip, such as Khan Younis, Rafah, Beit Bahia, Nuseirat refugee camp, Maghazi refugee camp and Jabalia refugee camp, primarily targeting schools, mosques, hospitals, and residential neighbourhoods and buildings.

Here’s an impressive visual representation by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the occupied Palestinian territory (OCHA oPt) of the death and destruction wrought upon Gaza.

By the way, we can put to rest the obscene polemic about the figures provided by the Gaza Health Ministry once and for all: a study just published in the The Lancet, one of the most prestigious scientific journals in the world, looked at the death figures reported by the ministry, which the Western media and political class, including Joe Biden, said were inflated, and concluded that the numbers are accurate.

It’s not the numbers that are inflated; it’s the mass killing perpetrated by Israel in Gaza that is unprecedented — as I have extensively documented in previous posts.

And the evidence keeps pouring in. A study published in Haaretz concluded that the aerial bombing campaign by Israel in Gaza is the most indiscriminate in terms of civilian casualties in decades, with a higher proportion of civilian deaths than the average in all the conflicts around the world during the 20th century — a stat that speaks for itself.

“The pulverizing of Gaza now ranks among the worst assault on any civilian population in our time and age”, said Jan Egeland, Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council.

The heaviest bombing campaign in history

The pace and scale of the bombing campaign in Gaza is truly unprecedented. In less than seven weeks, Israel has destroyed a comparable percentage of buildings in northern Gaza (around 70%) as that caused by the years-long carpet-bombing of German cities during World War II.

At least 50,000 houses have been completely destroyed in Gaza. The number rises to between 82,600 and 105,300 if we count buildings where at least half the structure was damaged.

The scale of the destruction is partly due to the sheer number of munitions used: in the first two weeks of its campaign, Israel dropped at least 1,000 bombs per day, compared to 600 bombs per week used during the most intense periods of the US/coalition air campaign in Mosul.

Indeed, it was estimated that by mid-November Israel had dropped more than 25,000 tonnes of explosives on the Gaza Strip, equivalent to two nuclear bombs.

Then there’s the type of bombs used. These include 2,000lb GBU-31 bombs, which are four times bigger than the 500lb bombs that were typically the largest ordinance used by allied forces in the battle for the Iraqi city of Mosul.

These bombs have a devastating impact radius, spreading lethal shrapnel up to more than 300 metres. That’s three times the size of a football pitch.