https://thewire.in/history/israel-gaza-palestine-aerial-bombing
The bombing continues, and one question stands out: Why 1,200 people killed by guerillas matter more to Western governments than 12,000 – and counting – killed by bombs from the sky. Why one is a barbaric crime, and the other a civilised military action.
There are many correct answers to that. One of them is the history of bombing.
In a single line: From its beginnings, over a hundred years ago, aerial bombing was a technology meant for colonial powers to use exclusively against colonised, usually indigenous people.
For a hundred years, the West’s monopoly over that most lethal violence has conditioned how we see the victims of bombs – if we see them at all.
In 1920, the Royal Air Force carried out the world’s first systematic bombing campaign against Somalis. Thereafter, the first societies in to experience bombing were in Iraq, North and East Africa, and the North-West Frontier of India.
Every deflection and defence of Israel’s leadership – they’re not trying to hit civilians, Hamas is at fault for placing its fighters among civilians – is old news, straight from a hundred-year-old textbook for colonial collective punishment.
Meanwhile Israeli commanders have been saying it out loud, from day one: “The emphasis is on damage, not on accuracy.”
by Raghu Karnad
17/11/2023