Israel’s military began a heavy aerial bombardment of Gaza after nightfall on Friday and announced that it is “expanding” its ground operations into the territory—but did not declare a full-scale ground invasion that has been expected for weeks.Internet and phone service in Gaza has been mostly, if not entirely, cut off amid the bombing. The International Committee of the Red Cross cannot reach its medical personnel. A Washington Post reporter said the paper cannot reach its colleagues, either.S

Some people, communicating via satellite phones, have described the attack as the “heaviest bombardment yet,” according to independent journalist Sharif Kouddous.

“People can’t call ambulances or civil defense. We are being bombed in an unprecedented manner,” said an unidentified journalist at a Gaza hospital, according to a translation by The Nation’s Palestinian correspondent, Mohammed El-Kurd. “The sky around us just lights up [with explosions], and no one knows what’s going on.”

  • dumdum666@kbin.social
    338·
    1 year ago

    Yeah - we should be glad that weapons technology actually evolved to a point, where carpet fire bombings of cities like Dresden or Hamburg (WW2) are a thing of the past.

    • TinyPizza@kbin.socialOP
      284·
      1 year ago

      Don’t forget Tokyo! Those we’re all war crimes interestingly enough.

      Oddly the siege of Gaza may very well fall into that category with the amount of ordinance that’s been dropped, although the terminology would likely be different due to the guided aspect.

      Carpet bombing of cities, towns, villages, or other areas containing a concentration of civilians is considered a war crime[5] as of Article 51 of the 1977 Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions.[6][7][8]
      The term obliteration bombing is sometimes used to describe especially intensified bombing with the intention of destroying a city or a large part of the city. The term area bombing refers to indiscriminate bombing of an area and also encompasses cases of carpet bombing, including obliteration bombing.

      Perhaps it might even get it’s own unique term someday. I do find it quite similar from what I’m reading on the first instance of carpet bombing though, the bombing of Barcelona

      Along with the variance of the times between each individual attack, this had a demoralizing effect on the civilian population, which suffered prolonged anxiety quite out of proportion to the number of bombs dropped over a long period of time. Coupled with the fact that there was little discernible military value in the choice of targets within the city, and the cessation of the attacks for no apparent reason

      Edit: sorry meant to add this as well

      The Italian bombers dropped 44 tons of bombs.[7] Rather than aiming at military targets, the Italians intended to destroy industrial areas of the city and demoralize the Republican side, in what some authors have described as the first aerial carpet bombing in history.[1] Their targets and declared objectives were military warehouses, arms factories, trains with soldiers, and the port, but civil buildings, cinemas, consulates, and theatres were also hit or destroyed during the bombing.[8]

      • mea_rah@lemmy.worldEnglish
        82·
        1 year ago

        It’s probably worth pointing out that the Geneva Convention article you’re quoting was written a couple decades after both Tokyo and Barcelona events.

          • mea_rah@lemmy.worldEnglish
            41·
            1 year ago

            I’m not saying it’s not a war crime according to the definition. I was just pointing out that the specific crimes precede the definition by a couple of decades.

      • TheSanSabaSongbird@lemdro.idEnglish
        11·
        1 year ago

        But they weren’t war-crimes at the time and in fact, to the contrary, were very much in the spirit of war as it was being prosecuted by all of the belligerents.

        There’s been a lot of really good work on the history of air power and the logic that led to deliberately targeting civilians in WW2 on all sides. It wasn’t necessarily as nakedly bloodthirsty as it appears to us now looking back. If you honestly believed that targeting civilians would shorten the war and ultimately result in less suffering, it was actually a moral decision, or at least morally ambiguous.