15,000 Bombs Equivalent to Two Hiroshimas

W.J. Astore

The Israeli Annihilation of Gaza

After dropping 6000 bombs in six days, the Israeli Air Force has now reached the staggering sum of at least 15,000 bombs dropped on densely populated areas of Gaza. The bomb tonnage is already equivalent to two Hiroshimas, notes Joshua Frank at TomDispatch. As he puts it:

[W]ell over 25,000 tons of bombs had already been dropped on Gaza by early November, the equivalent of two Hiroshima-style nukes (without the radiation). Under such circumstances, a nuclear-capable Israel that blatantly flouts international law could prove a clear and present danger, not only to defenseless Palestinians but to a world already in ever more danger and disarray.

Israel is the only power in the Middle East with nuclear weapons; it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that the right-wing government of Netanyahu would choose to use one or more if cornered.

Netanyahu’s goal seems clear: make Gaza uninhabitable to Palestinians through a combination of massive bombing, blockades (water, food, medical supplies, and other essentials), and invasion and occupation. Palestinians are to be “pushed” into the Sinai Desert, with Gaza absorbed into Israel. All this is being justified in the name of neutralizing Hamas, a terrorist organization that has no ability to hurt Israel in a major way. (The brutal attacks of October 7th were a one-off made more brutal by Israeli helicopter gunships whose counterattacks killed friendlies as well as the Hamas attackers.)

In the name of destroying Hamas, Israel is ethnically cleansing Gaza so it can be absorbed into Israel. Apparently, there are enormous gas reserves off Gaza, possibly worth $500 billion, which were to be shared between Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza. With the Palestinians either dead, severely wounded, or evicted from Gaza, Israel will likely claim total ownership over those gas fields. Israel may yet become a major gas supplier to Europe, replacing much of the gas lost when Putin blew up his own gas pipelines to Germany. (Just kidding: America did that, as President Biden promised he would.)

Meanwhile, Joe Biden penned an op-ed to the Washington Post equating Hamas with Putin as “pure, unadulterated evil.” Hamas is allegedly trying to wipe Israel off the map with its “ideology of destruction,” but of course Hamas has no military ability to do this, whereas Israel does indeed have the power to wipe Gaza off the map. So where does Biden see the future heading? Consider this passage:

There must be no forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, no reoccupation, no siege or blockade, and no reduction in territory. And after this war is over, the voices of Palestinian people and their aspirations must be at the center of post-crisis governance in Gaza.

As we strive for peace, Gaza and the West Bank should be reunited under a single governance structure, ultimately under a revitalized Palestinian Authority, as we all work toward a two-state solution.

He may as well wish for puppies and unicorns for everyone. Israel doesn’t want a two-state solution with a thriving Palestinian state. Netanyahu’s goal, to repeat myself, is clear: Gaza absorbed into Israel, with Palestinians displaced in another Nakba, along with the West Bank slowly absorbed into Israel as illegal Jewish settlements are extended.

This is, essentially, what Thucydides meant when he said: the strong do what they will; the weak suffer what they must.

What Biden’s op-ed was really about was justifying his $105 billion package in giveaways, mainly for Ukraine and Israel, with more than half that money flowing to U.S. weapons makers, the merchants of death or, as Biden calls them, job creators. In short, Biden celebrates the creation of a few jobs in America in the name of killing tens of thousands of Russians and Palestinians with American-made weaponry paid for by U.S. taxpayers.

Biden calls that “democracy” in action, the work of the world’s “essential nation” in contrast to the “murderous nihilism” of Hamas.

“Murderous nihilism”? Well, as we used to say as kids, it takes one to know one.

Speaking of murderous nihilism …

7 thoughts on “15,000 Bombs Equivalent to Two Hiroshimas”

  1. Collaborators in Conspicuously Cruel Cupidity

    There’s always more money for murder and maiming,
    the President, Congress, and Courts all agree.
    In War, we’re on target without even aiming.
    Our government kills whom it can’t even see:
    those “terrorist” women and children in Gaza,
    those hospital patients whom we’ve told to flee
    from land we regard as an Armaments Plaza
    conveniently near fields of gas. That’s the key.

    “Who cares if it’s genocide?” Zionists snicker.
    “Mowing the lawn,” they prefer as their screed.
    Let the U.N. and its nobodies dicker.
    “No Palestine!” Tel Aviv has decreed.
    Fascist regimes calling others illegal,
    US and Biblical “I” Place succeed:
    making apartheid sound perfectly regal.
    Just spell it “Jewish” to mask and mislead.

    Thieves have a “right to defend” what they’ve taken.
    Those that they’ve robbed have no claim on their land.
    “Facts on the ground” means the world has forsaken
    Truth for some platitudes pompous and bland.
    “Chutzpah” means shamelessness unmitigated:
    take what we offer, not what you demand.
    Or we’ll take everything. You get castrated.
    Options, you haven’t. There’s no other hand.

    Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright © 2023

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  2. Nothing particularly new about the post-October-7th Apartheid Zionist (pardon the redundancy) assault on captive Palestinians in their native land. Just another recurrent episode of . . .

    A War upon the Occupied

    A “war” upon the occupied
    Confined within their camp,
    Denied the chance to flee so that
    Upon them we may stamp;
    The U.S.A. and Israel:
    Two partners, whore and tramp.

    Those Arabs who once owned their land
    Can now just pack and go.
    Our reasons for decreeing this,
    They have no need to know.
    As far as they’re concerned, it’s just
    Because we’ve told them so.

    You see, once in the recent past,
    Some Jews thought they could take
    – with help from some Americans
    And propaganda fake –
    What Arabs had inhabited
    For centuries: a stake

    In their ancestral history
    That no conquest can kill;
    But persecution maybe might
    Conform them to our will,
    Which anyway has turned into
    Another poison pill.

    Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright © 2012

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  3. The heart of the matter since 1948:

    “Palestinians have carried the weight of the crimes of German Nazis against the Jewish Europeans for 75 years. And we’re sick of that. We don’t want to carry the weight of the Holocaust perpetrated by Europeans on us anymore.” — Laith Marouf, award-winning broadcaster and journalist based in Beirut, Lebanon

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      1. More quotes by Professor Juan Cole from his interview with Robert Scheer: Palestine’s Obituary.
        . . .
        As presidential candidate Mitt Romney said to some rich donors in Florida several election cycles ago:

        “. . . the only thing you can do with that [Palestine] issue is just kick it on down the road. So that’s been the policy of the United States: to kick the can down the road and to hope nothing bad happens. And Biden was very much part of that policy and still is. And unfortunately for him, the can, the thing they thought there was a can that they were kicking down the road, was a live grenade. ”
        . . .
        “The Israeli far right favors the ethnic cleansing scenario. But another possibility is that you just go on with apartheid, where the Israeli government is de facto in control of everything between the Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea. But the Jews have full rights in that state, whereas the Palestinians are either second class citizens or they’re stateless and have no citizenship. And that’s been the case now for a very long time. And I think the likelihood is that it will just go on having apartheid, but an apartheid that allows the far right in Israel to chip away at Palestinian rights and property and gradually steal the whole thing.”
        . . .
        “The Palestinians offer nothing. They they have been turned into refugees and powerless people, stateless people without citizenship in a state or rights. They don’t count and nobody’s going to go to bat for them in a big way.”
        . . .
        “Those of us who care about that have to stand up for Palestinian rights. But we’re voices in the wilderness, and the people who have their hands on the levers of power are fully with allowing the Israelis to get away literally with murder. And I don’t anticipate that that will change.”
        . . .

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