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Israel’s relentless bombardment destroyed over 70% of Gaza homes
(www.aljazeera.com)
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this post was submitted on 31 Dec 2023
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The actual figure is "70% damaged or destroyed". Not a whole lot better, but there is a huge difference between a house with some broken windows and a pile of rubble. The article shouldn't be hyperbolizing - the situation is bad enough as it is without lying to us.
To be fair, if someone blew out all the glass over the floor of my house and half of a wall is gone I think I would say
"Man, they destroyed my house."
Not
"Man, my house is partially damaged"
It doesn't have to be a literal pile of rubble, significant damage is enough to warrant (re)construction. Not being sure if the pillars are going to keep holding up your house doesn't sound very appealing
Despite that I would love to see new comprehensible satalite imagery like they did for Mauriopol which according to western media would be described as "precision bombing on military targets" I guess
Israel has hit Gaza, which has an area of 141 sq miles, with 29,000 bombs. That works out to just over 205 bombs per square mile.
Just how many homes do you think only have broken windows and no major damage?
Both this comment and the reply to it are irrelevant. Bombs aren’t spread over average areas, bombs aren’t all the same power of explosive, nor can any math tell us much about the effect of the bombs.
All of that can only be done by looking at satellite or overhead footage, assessing the average damage to buildings in that area, and then generalizing each square to write off a percentage of homes as unlivable.
Like other comments have said, we have to be careful about this because I’d prefer the correct number and not the larger number.
The ones that are buried under rubble are probably safe.
I don't know, but we can do some back-of-the-envelope math. Start with 2 million people total, averaging maybe 10 people per building, gives 200,000 residential buildings. Some of these are 100+ person highrises, but others are single family homes. If each bomb, on average, destroys a building, we get 25-30k destroyed using recent bomb estimates. Obviously some bombs destroy more, but others hit already destroyed buildings.
If we then take the 70% number as gospel, that is 140k buildings "damaged or destroyed", so that would give us something like 30k destroyed, 110k damaged. This ratio is why the article in question is being disingenuous.
Of those 110k, you ask how many just have broken windows. As I said I don't know, but just based on what I have seen, bombs can break windows a quarter mile away, especially when the overpressure is channelled down a city street. This is much farther than you'd see actual structural damage. If I had to guess, most of these damaged buildings will fall in the "broken windows" category.
The problem there is 2,000 pound bombs are being used regularly. They will destroy multiple buildings easily, especially in built up areas.
Agreed, dropping a bomb that large in an urban environment is frankly insane. My understanding is that only 2% of bombs dropped are 2000 pounders, and presumably they are mostly used against large, hardened targets, so we should keep in mind that they are at least a rarity. That being said they probably account for an outsized number of destroyed buildings and civilian deaths.
Israel said they were using them on tunnel entrances.
They then said they considered any hatch on the ground that they can see with a drone to be tunnel entrances.
I do not think they were as rare as you think.
A quick Google search seems to indicate 500-600 were dropped. This is inline with 2% of the 25-30k total bombs. It also lends credence to the idea that these were mostly dropped on already destroyed buildings, since only then would "tunnels" be visible.
Except respectable news organizations like CNN and NYT specifically report their use in still populated areas, including areas people were told to evacuate to.
Furthermore in terms of destroying housing, a 500 pound bombs might wreck a house. A 2,000 pound bomb will bring down an apartment building.
And finally, many maintenance hatches in urban infrastructure are on the exterior of buildings and right on sidewalks for easy access. We're not talking about root cellars exposed by previous bombing.
Edit - Also, I'd love to see a link to your source on the number of bombs.
Not contesting any of that, although personally I doubt they aimed a 2000 pound bomb at every visible manhole cover. Source, which was the first result for "how many 2000 pound bombs has Israel dropped on Gaza", is here. Could be an undercount of course.
Interesting the NYT did the same thing and said there was a very good chance they couldn't find them all and there could be hundreds more.
But I also find it interesting that you doubt they dropped one on every suspected tunnel entrance when they had no problem putting schools inside the kill radius of these bombs. If they aren't willing to stop at bombing kids, what are they willing to stop at?
Oh I just meant logistically. There must be thousands of manhole covers and only so many planes. Also at no point in this thread did I defend any of Israel's actions just so we're clear.
So many apologists.
It's important to call out even minor misinformation, even when it's for the "right" side. Especially then, because we need to keep ourselves disciplined, or we will fall into the same trappings as the opposition.
Literally just a fact-check, unless you're disputing the original quote?
You are downplaying the human impact of a damaged home vs a destroyed one. Specifically, you categorized it as a huge difference. The effect of not having a home fit to live in is the same. Your comment heavily implies it's not actually that bad.
"damaged" doesn't actually equate to being unfit for habitation. It spans a wide range from broken windows to barely standing.
The article is deliberately overplaying the human impact to get clicks and make money. I find that gross since the destruction should not need hyperbolizing. All I did was cite the actual quote, and I did so while explicitly emphasizing how bad the true situation is.