Bombing people from the air is regarded as “surgical” and somehow less deadly and morally blameworthy than other forms of military homicide. From Caitlin Johnstone at caitlinjohnstone.com:
In reality, bombings are no less savage than attacks by guns, grenades, knives or machetes. In fact they actually allow for more savagery to take place.
Canadian online outlet The Breach has published a letter by CBC’s senior manager of journalistic standards Nancy Waugh which highlights perfectly the bizarre psychological relationship that westerners have with bombs and airstrikes in foreign countries.
In response to multiple complaints from a retired Humber College professor about the wildly biased language that Canada’s state broadcaster has been using to describe Israel’s war on Gaza, Waugh acknowledged that the CBC routinely uses words like “murderous,” “vicious,” “brutal,” “massacre,” and “slaughter” to refer to the October 7 Hamas attack while using far less emotionally charged words like “intensive,” “unrelenting,” and “punishing” to describe Israel’s actions in Gaza over the last three months.
Waugh defended this extreme discrepancy by saying that Israel’s attacks in Gaza differ from the Hamas attack on Israelis in that Israel’s killings are done “remotely”.
“Different words are used because although both result in death and injury, the events they describe are very different,” Waugh wrote. “The raid saw Hamas gunmen stream through the border fence and attack Israelis directly with firearms, knives and explosives. Gunmen chased down festival goers, assaulted kibbutzniks then shot them, fought hand to hand, and threw grenades. The attack was brutal, often vicious, and certainly murderous.”
“Bombs dropped from thousands of feet and artillery shells lofted into Gaza from kilometers away result in death and destruction on a massive scale, but it is carried out remotely,” Waugh continued. “The deadly results are unseen by those who caused them and the source unseen by those [who] suffer and die.”
