𝐄𝐔’𝐬 𝐓𝐨𝐩 𝐃𝐢𝐩𝐥𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐭: 𝐃𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐢𝐧 𝐆𝐚𝐳𝐚 𝐌𝐚𝐲 𝐁𝐞 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐬𝐞 𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐆𝐞𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐢𝐧 𝐖𝐖𝐈𝐈

 

Israeli officials have invoked the allied strategic bombing campaigns of World War II to justify its mass slaughter in Gaza

 

by Dave DeCamp, Antiwar. com, December 11, 2023 

 

 

Josep Borrell, the European Union’s top foreign policy official, said Monday that the destruction in Gaza as a result of the Israeli bombing campaign could be “even greater” than the damage to German cities during World War II, AFP reported.

Borrell called the situation in Gaza “catastrophic, apocalyptic” and noted that the Israeli onslaught has resulted in “an incredible number of civilian casualties.” Discussing the destruction of buildings in Gaza, he said it is “more or less or even greater than the destruction suffered by the German cities during the Second World War.”

Borrell made similar comments on Friday, saying the Israeli bombing campaign in Gaza was “one of the most intense in history” and said the destruction is “comparable, if not higher, to levels of destruction of German cities during World War II.”

A report from Financial Times found the damage to northern Gaza was comparable to the most heavily bombed cities of Germany in World War II. “Dresden, Hamburg, Cologne — some of the world’s heaviest-ever bombings are remembered by their place names,” Robert Pape, a US military historian who focuses on air power, told FT. “Gaza will also go down as a place name denoting one of history’s heaviest conventional bombing campaigns.”

Israeli officials and their supporters in the US have invoked the allied strategic bombing campaigns of World War II to justify the mass slaughter in Gaza. “There were many, many civilians [that] got attacked from your attacks on German cities,” Tzipi Hotovely, the Israeli ambassador to the UK, told a Sky News anchor in October, according to The Grayzone.

“Dresden was a symbol, but you attacked Hamburg, you attacked other cities, and altogether it was over 600,000 civilian Germans that got killed … Was it worth it in order to defeat Nazi Germany? And the answer was yes,” she added.

The Israeli bombing campaign has also been compared to the US bombing of Japanese cities during World War II, which includes the fire bombings of Tokyo that killed around 100,000 civilians in one night in 1945, as well as the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has said Gaza is “going to look like Tokyo and Berlin at the end of World War II when this is over. And if it doesn’t look that way, Israel made a mistake.” He made the comments in an interview where he said there was “no limit” to the number of civilians Israel kills in Gaza, which is the policy of the Biden administration as it continues to provide unconditional military aid despite the massive civilian death toll.

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Author: Dave DeCamp

Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com