Gaza Bombing Comparable to Destruction of Dresden, Military Historian Says

In a Financial Times feature on Dec. 6, the City of London daily notes the tremendous destruction wrought by Israel’s intensive bombing of Gaza. “Military Briefing: The Israeli Bombs Raining on Gaza,” interviews Robert Pape, a U.S. military historian and author of Bombing to Win” a landmark survey of 20th-century bombing campaigns. Pape compares the bombing of Gaza to the bombing of Dresden by British Gen.Sir Arthur Traverse “Bomber” Harris. “Dresden, Hamburg, Cologne—some of the world’s heaviest-ever bombings are remembered by their place names,” Robert Pape told the FT. “Gaza will also go down as a place name denoting one of history’s heaviest conventional bombing campaigns.” Financial Times reports that of the cities in Gaza that Israel has bombed, more than 60-70% of those cities have been destroyed.