On Dresden and Gaza
What is the meaning of proportional response to the terrorist murderers who use their civilian population as cover?
As the Gaza situation receives renewed attention, it’s an appropriate time to acquaint many readers with events that took place 80 years ago. On Feb. 13-14, 1945, three months before the end of World War II in Europe, British and American air forces carried out a massive bombing of Dresden, a German city known as a center of art and culture, museums and beautiful architecture but lacking in military significance. The enormity of this operation can be appreciated by sheer numbers: 1,250 British and American bomber airplanes and 4,000 tons of explosives and incendiaries (700,000 phosphorus bombs) were released onto the city, which lacked minimal protection.
The British and American forces did not provide advance warnings, nor did they aim the bombing at potential military targets. On the contrary, all efforts and planning were made to maximize human death and structural ruin, not sparing hospitals or schools. Numerous incendiary bombs were dropped at the city center in a designed plan to create a huge firestorm that reached 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit. The melting roads burned the fleeing people’s feet. As planned, when the fire grew, more oxygen was sucked in, creating updrafts of “hurricane-like speed” that blew super-heated, poisonous air. The very strong vacuum created sucked people, cars and other heavy objects into the fire. Those hiding in cellars suffocated to death.
To inflict maximum casualties, the air raids were executed in three waves—one of which was a daytime operation so pilots could easily machine-gun people running in the streets, including evacuating hospital patients. Weeks later, the streets were still covered with bodies. Human death toll estimates range from 25,000 to 35,000 in a single day. Approximately 28,000 houses were destroyed.
What has made the Dresden bombing so infamous was the fact that it was specifically intended to inflict maximum death and destruction on a crowded civilian population, including the choice of killing methods: burning alive, carbon monoxide poisoning and asphyxiation. These were selected after observing the effects of a 1943 bombing of the city of Hamburg that killed an estimated 40,000 Germans. (In comparison, a total of 60,000 British civilians were killed during the entire war.)
Richard Crossman, then-assistant chief of the British Psychological Warfare, stated that all consequences of the Dresden bombing were “foreseen and planned with meticulous care,” noting that British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was very receptive to the plan. Crossman also said it was not a one-man decision, and “ … Churchill accepted the advice with the backing of his whole cabinet.” Consequently, priority was given to the production of a large number of bombers.
Still, the Allies’ strategy—to kill as many enemy civilians and destroy as many cities as possible while minimizing its own casualties—did not begin or end with Dresden. The cities of Cologne, Essen, Bremen, Kassel, Darmstadt, Pforzheim and Swinemünde were bombed from 1941 onward, resulting in civilian death tolls of between 15,000 and 30,000 per city. Only days after the Dresden operation, the bombing of Tokyo began, resulting in more than 250,000 buildings destroyed and between 80,000 and 100,000 civilians killed.
Hiroshima, Japan after the atomic bomb
Next came the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which also left the world a moral controversy. Western conduct in more recent wars has not been decidedly affected. Achieving military objectives through damaging the civilian population was employed again in 1999 by NATO forces in a prolonged bombing campaign of Serbia. More than 2,000 missiles and 10,000 bombs were dropped over areas that included cities. In addition to military installations, power plants and factories were bombed, resulting in the deaths of 500 civilians, including 100 children. Thousands were seriously injured. Schools, libraries, hospitals and historic monuments, as well as thousands of homes, were destroyed.
Only a dozen years ago, former President Barack Obama authorized drone attacks in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and other areas that claimed hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of civilian lives.
All of which brings us to today. On Oct. 7, 2023, in a brutally planned attack, Hamas, an internationally designated terrorist organization controlling the Gaza Strip, crossed the border into Israel and butchered with knives or burned alive more than 1,200 people. Many of these were youth attending an outdoor music concert, but there were also families in their homes, women and children, deliberately murdered in front of relatives or taken hostage. Hundreds of young women were savagely raped and then killed or dragged away into captivity.
Initially, Hamas’s attack was well-covered by the international press, but soon thereafter, mostly in passing, as the focus shifted to allegations against Israel and the destruction in Gaza. What is barely covered is the fact that the Gaza Strip was controlled by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023; Israel had withdrawn its soldiers and civilians 20 years earlier. What is also not covered by the media is that in the years since Hamas took control of the coastal enclave, it has committed thousands of acts of terrorism against Israelis and other civilians, and has continuously launched rockets into civilian populations in Israel. On Oct. 7, in particular, Hamas showered thousands of deadly rockets over the most populated areas of Israel.
Barely mentioned is that in sharp contrast to the historic events described above, the Israeli Defense Forces has gone out of its way to minimize civilian casualties while attempting to eliminate enemy positions from where rockets were being launched. These sites were mostly schools, hospitals and apartment buildings, making avoiding civilians impossible. Long before the bombings, the IDF made warning telephone calls directly to Palestinian homes notifying them to leave. They also dropped printed messages by airplane, advising people which buildings to evacuate, and even often dropped “cold bombs” as the last warning. Moreover, wounded Palestinian terrorists who were caught by the IDF were treated in Israeli medical facilities.
Israel has also erected special medical facilities at its northern border with Syria, where they treat Syrians wounded by their own government. Such efforts to protect civilians are unheard of in the history of wars of other nations. There were certainly no warnings for the residents of Hiroshima or Nagasaki.
Although this is all well-documented, what has the world’s response been? False accusations of genocide with barely any attention to the IDF’s behavior as compared to other militaries in recent history.
The Biden administration declared that Israel “should have taken all feasible precautions to prevent civilian casualties.” The United Nations condemned the Israeli response to Hamas’s missiles and mass murder of Israeli civilians as a “moral outrage” and a “criminal act.” Various European and American politicians have repeatedly criticized the IDF, with barely any attention paid to the atrocities of Hamas. The charge was even made that airstrikes against Gaza were “collective punishment.” Collective punishment for the people of Gaza is what can be charged against Hamas.
One might ask: What is the meaning of proportional response to the terrorist murderers who use their population as cover? What have we heard about the UN documentation of the deaths of more than 350,000 Syrians killed by their government, including using poisonous gas? Have there been widespread voices of rage from governments, local or national organizations—the very ones that go out of their way to condemn Israel?
The current civil war in Sudan has killed 150,000 people and forced more than 11 million from their homes, prompting the US government to declare a genocide—this one perpetrated by the ethnic Arab militia known as the Rapid Support Forces against non-Arab Sudanese. Nevertheless, organizations and groups focused on the alleged wrongs of Israel have been conspicuously silent. Even the pope, who has been outspoken about the Gaza conflict, has remained fairly quiet regarding the brutal persecution of Christians and Uyghurs in China.
Perhaps, what I have described can be best explained by the words of two European diplomats. In 2013, then-Dutch Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans, who, obviously forgetting about Dresden and the long history of European atrocities against Jews, said: “Even if Europeans do not say so, they judge Israel by different standards than they would judge other (Arab) countries in this area. Why? Because deep down, Europeans see Israel as a European country. So, they judge Israel in the same way they would judge other European countries … It means you are part of a community of values, whether you like it or not.”
Similarly, Jesper Vahr, the former Danish Ambassador to Israel, had the temerity to advocate a European double standard applied to Israel when judging its actions against Palestinian terrorists. As he said, “I think you have the right to insist that we apply double standards and put you to the same standards as all the rest of the countries in the European context. … You are one of us.” Keeping in mind Nazi atrocities, Russian pogroms against Jews, the bombings of Dresden and Hiroshima, and Western countries’ campaigns against civilians in Africa and elsewhere, it is difficult to come up with greater duplicity.
One wonders if it has occurred to these two hypocritical gentlemen and their likes in Europe and the United States that after observing the “lofty” standards demonstrated by Western nations in Dresden, Hamburg, Hiroshima, Tokyo, Serbia and elsewhere around the world, Israelis lack the enthusiasm to become “one of them” or to rise to their “standards.” We might argue that Israelis—and Jews, in general—are better off sticking to the values of their ancient Bible.
1 comment:
The stories I read said that the fire storm got so hot it melted cast iron cooking pans in pantries and even basements.
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