As a general rule, it’d be better if media accounts of war did not stress the surgical precision of the weapons being used. It’s a fixture of U.S. reporting on U.S. wars, but the same rhetoric is used when U.S. allies are dropping bombs.
Photo: PCHR
According to Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen (11/19/12):
Israel has gone out of its way to avoid civilian casualties. Its air force has used new, highly accurate ammunition aiming for rocket-launching sites and government installations. For the most part, it has succeeded.
Aron Heller of the Associated Press (11/17/12) had this description of the Israeli military:
Israel, armed with precise intelligence and newly developed munitions, has carried out hundreds of surgical airstrikes in a campaign meant to hit militants hard while avoiding the civilian casualties that have marred previous offensives.
AP‘s Ibrahim Barzak (11/20/12) later reported:
Israel has killed dozens of wanted militants in surgical strikes throughout the operation, the result, officials say, of intelligence gathered from its collection of high-flying drones overhead and a network of informants.
Before dawn Monday, a missile struck a three-story home in the Gaza City’s Zeitoun area, flattening the building and badly damaging several nearby homes. Shell-shocked residents searching for belongings climbed over debris of twisted metal and cement blocks in the street.
The strike killed three adults and a 2-year-old boy, and wounded 42 people, al-Kidra said.
That’s a peculiar kind of “surgery.”
According to the Palestinians Centre for Human Rights (11/19/12), 87 Palestinians had been killed, 57 of them civilians. Another tally finds that 72 percent of the casualties are civilians.
It could be argued, as defenders of Israeli military attacks have done before, that this ratio of civilian-to-combatant deaths is more humane than recent U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But calling airstrikes that kill civilians more often than fighters “precise”—well, perhaps there’s a more precise word than that.
Israel’s killing precisely whom they intend to.
This has no impact on rocket fire from Gaza, other than to increase it.
It’s meant to terrorize the population, to make life unbearable, all for the sake of Netanhayu’s political ambitions, and to ensure that any “peace” deal that may eventually come to pass is wholly on Israel’s terms.
And it’s all done with unswerving US support, diplomatically and financially.
Hundreds of Egyptians have crossed into Gaza, risking their lives to bring supplies and show solidarity with the victims of these war crimes.
Isn’t the least we can do is demand that our tax dollars not go toward the commission of those crimes?
I heard a defender of Israel use this line on Democracy Now this morning, and it suddenly occurred to me that if I’m supposed to be impressed by lower casualty numbers, the Gazans who are firing missiles at Israel should be praised to the skies, because their unsurgical, low-tech weapons have killed even *fewer* Israelis than the high-tech, surgical Israeli weaponry has killed Palestinians. But he thought that the Gazans were evil and barbaric, and that they had only “slogans” to defend themselves — as he reeled off one slogan after another. Very through-the-looking-glass.
Precise my ass, there is no “precise” bomb, when it blows up, it kills everything and everybody around.
I’m no fan of war and I’m sure I’m a member of a huge majority of pacifists.Unfortunately,there is a large enough minority in the world who are filled with enough hatred or desire for power,that they desire death and destruction.They don’t ask their desired enemy if they want to participate in a war,they simply attack.President Obama has to deal with terrorists who would murder innocent Americans given the unopposed opportunity.Israel’s Netanhayu has to deal with Hamas with the same intentions against Israelis.Drones and Precision munitions attacks against military targets and leaders is the most humane method ever used in war.It would be absolutely wonderful if all civilian casualties could be eliminated,but even with today’s technology,it’s impossible.Terrorists love to use civilians as human shields and propaganda tools.Constantly criticizing our best efforts to limit civilian casualties and unnecessary destruction only encourages the public relations campaigns of terrorists.You should be criticizing the terrorists for murdering innocents and using them to further their political ambitions.
Just think what Hitler could have done if he had invented the term “surgical precision” — The guy must roll in his grave with jealousy every day.
The weapons deliver their load exactly as aimed. Zionist Israel is killing for no reason other than Palestinians still exist.
When the love for power is changed to the POWER of LOVE, there will be peace. When Israel grants to the Palestinian people the same Rights it grants to the Jews, there will be NO need to fight; until then, we shall have to tolerate the lie that Israel has DEMOCRACY.
Notice that all three of the quoted reports came from Jewish reporters. I don’t expect news organizations controlled by Zionists to hire very many Arab reporters, but can’t the Post or the Associated Press find a Baptist or a Presbyterian once in a while?
that word is “massacre” what the zionist and illegitimate state of israel is involved in since the very beginning of it’s creation in 1948 is an ethnic cleansing of the native population using the same means that america used to conquer this country.
I read that Gaza has a million.6 people lliving in an area the size of D.C. It doesn’t sound like surgical strikes would be possible with such a packed in area of civilians. This must be what the expression “shooting fish in a barrel” means; civilians don’t seem to matter. The dead all seem to be called militants, and Israel seems to be Goliath in this time around.
We heard all this nonsense about “pricision bombing” during the Vietnam war. It was all perfect baloney. Perhaps it is also a mark of cowardice, since the murderers never even see their victims.
Did fair look into what Israel was aiming at?Was there a missile battery on the roof for instance?Israel does often release this info along with film. Seldom if ever reported by the mainstream press.And NEVER reported in FAIR.
Oh, bullshit.
To William M. Edwards –
The author of the AP report seems to have an Arabic (not Hebrew) name. This is also true for 2 of his additional 3 contributors. Aside from the headline (possibly supplied by an editor) and the unfortunate use of the term ‘surgical strike’ (semi-quoting an Israeli source), I thought that the piece was pretty even-handed. It clearly expresses the difference in scale between the sides’ assaults, casualties and military capabilities. Perhaps more importantly, Mr. Barzak iterates that the purpose of the Gazan resistance is not ‘to destroy Israel’, but rather to end the siege and blockade.