Gaza is roughly twice the size of Douglas Island, with over three times the population of Alaska living there. That’s a lot of people packed into a small area. The Israeli Air Force has dropped over 29,000 bombs on Gaza in the past few months, the vast majority of them paid for and supplied by us. By comparison, the U.S. Air Force dropped 29,199 bombs on Iraq during the entire 2003 war.
Many of the bombs dropped on urban areas of Gaza are unguided, with an accuracy of roughly 300 feet. Nearly half are 2,000-pound GBU-31 variants, which can punch through 11 feet of concrete before creating a crater 50 feet wide and 36 feet deep, and sending lethal fragments out 1,200 feet from the crater. The U.S. military did not use these bombs in Iraq precisely because of the risk of civilian casualties.
Israel is flattening Gaza with bombs supplied by the U.S., demolishing nearly a quarter of the infrastructure and killing over 20,000 civilians in the process in clear violation of international humanitarian law. The Israeli government may claim that they are attempting to minimize civilian casualties while dismantling Hamas, but their weapons of choice say otherwise. Israel is using sledgehammers to kill cockroaches and claiming that they don’t intend to destroy the house in the process. It is time for us, the folks that supplied the sledgehammers, to demand a ceasefire and the entrance of humanitarian aid in Gaza.
Craig Wilson
Veterans For Peace, Chapter 100