The Media Bombs Again
On the phony journalistic handwringing over the size of IDF bombs
Despite the fact that the New York Times carpet bombed its credibility last December with a biased and misleading story about Israeli air attacks in Gaza, the media’s at it again. The complaint then was that the IDF was dropping highly inaccurate “dumb bombs” that were killing innocent civilians. This time the complaint is that the bombs being used by the strike aircraft of the IDF are just too gosh-darned big—a whole 2,000 pounds! The narrative goes that the blast radius of these bombs is so large that they’re killing numerous innocent civilians. See? See?! Those wicked Jews are conducting indiscriminate air attacks in violation of the laws of war!
Writing in Commentary magazine, David Adesnik and Mark Montgomery call this “a fictional ‘war-crime’ narrative, and they debunk it in detail. Given the frequency with which the Hamas-hugging “anti-Zionists” of Substack parrot this and similar lies about bombing in Gaza, I thought it worthwhile to summarize their analysis, adding a few comments of my own.
The first relevant point is that the burst radius of an air-delivered munition depends on the altitude at which it detonates. A bomb fused for airburst will have a large blast radius, one fused for ground burst (point detonation) a smaller one, and one fused to penetrate the ground before detonating (delayed action) a much smaller one. How the bomb is fused depends on the characteristics of the target to be attacked. For instance, fortifications and tunnel systems are best attacked with bombs fused to penetrate before exploding.
A second point concerns the nature of the ground in the target area. Over flat, open terrain an airburst will deliver its full effects over the entire blast radius. But over hilly terrain, forest or urban areas, its effects would be diminished to a greater or lesser extent. In Gaza, a heavily urbanized area, buildings and other structures would provide considerable protection from shrapnel produced by an airburst.
A third point concerns the method of delivery. This is a more complex issue that encompasses points one and two. The fusing of the bomb and the characteristics of the target determine the method of delivery. For instance, a Hamas fighting position in a building requires a precision strike, not an airburst, which would be ineffective. The bomb would therefore be fused for point detonation or delayed action.
Point four is that contrary to what the media repeatedly imply, so-called dumb bombs are not inherently inaccurate. A state-of-the-art strike aircraft can deliver a 2,000-pound dumb bomb with high accuracy. From the tactical standpoint, indeed, area bombing is a waste of time and munitions. Precision strikes by missiles, aircraft and artillery are much more economical and effective.
Readers interested in further details should read the Commentary article, as well as this Wikipedia article on the US Mark 84 2000-lb General-Purpose Bomb.
The question, of course, is why the media is promoting this false narrative, and the answer seems clear enough. These repeated attempts to indict the IDF for “indiscriminate bombing” and “violations of the law of war” constitute prima facie evidence of bad faith.
None of these stories show proof that the IDF is engaged in the indiscriminate bombardment, by air or ground, of the Gaza Strip. This is not to say that many civilians have been killed and wounded. That toll is tragically large. But the responsibility for it rests with Hamas, which started the war and uses the civilians of Gaza as human shields. Hamas leaders have openly admitted that they seek to maximize civilian casualties: the more “martyrs,” the better. And Hamas knows that the “anti-Zionist” Western Left will swallow the line that the settler-colonialist Jews are committing “genocide”—and ask for seconds.
Hamas-hugging leftist activists are at least open about their anti-Semitism: They wear their hatred of the Jews as a badge of honor, proudly chanting their river-to-sea genocidal slogans. But Western journalists who generate fake news as detailed above add gross hypocrisy to their animus against the Jewish state. What’s their excuse for this shoddy reporting? Why are they striving to buttress the propaganda put out by Hamas? Do they really think that if Hamas survives to fight another day, the Palestinian people will benefit? How, indeed, can they go on calling themselves journalists, now that they’ve been coopted by a genocidal death cult?
As the National Inquirer used to put it: Inquiring minds want to know.
So many journalists are advocates now.
The problem is that many (readers of the NYT as an example) think that these propaganda organs are news sources.
I think that many "journalists" are both lazy and biased.
Fortunately, the internet has given us options.
We can all find writers who appeal to us - knowledge, intellectual curiosity, integrity, different perspectives.
We in turn can support with comments (to show that the articles are read) and subscriptions.
The third aspect of Thomas' commentary and the Commentary article concerns the variables of burst radius, terrain, and method of delivery: there's no getting over the science of it. The journalists were rightly criticised.
When the war is over, the forensic scientists will move in, and further clarity will be provided. If the evidence hasn't been destroyed, whether wilfully by Hamas, or by the sheer destructiveness of this war.
By the end of January 2024, a large minority of buildings in the Strip had been destroyed, that is, they were rendered permanently uninhabitable, and a large majority damaged. When my wife looked at pictures of merely "damaged" buildings, she exclaimed that she couldn't inhabit any of them. But maybe Corey Scher of City University of New York and Jamon Van Den Hoek of Oregon State University (who studied the satellite images - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-68006607) and Gazans have lower standards than my wife, because a report using 2021 data from Germany's Friedrich Ebert Stiftung stating that there were 334,710 housing units, also noted that about 8% of inhabited housing units in the Gaza Strip need to be urgently rebuilt to become habitable.
If, therefore, we take the science from Thomas' commentary and the Commentary article and apply it to the 144,000 and 175,000 buildings across the whole Gaza Strip that have been damaged or destroyed, then if you assume an efficiency of 1 munition to 1 building, (because of course the IDF has caused no collateral damage) then 144,000 - 175,000 munitions have been dropped on Gaza.
Understandably, Hamas terrorists move from building to building, necessitating the targeting of so many military targets.