TEL AVIV—Deadly health epidemics deployed as a weapon against Palestinians. Nuclear bombs dropped on Gaza. These are just two of the latest proposals being put forward by influential figures inside and outside the Israeli government as ways to accelerate Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war.
The knesset member who suggested nuking gaza is truly one of the dumbest nutcases israel has to offer. Not only will such an act be terribly cruel, it would also hurt places like tel aviv, which is just 50 KMs from the strip, and harm millions of Jewish Israelis (who are presumably the nationality he seeks to strengthen)
Nutcase and cruel yes, not necessarily dumb though.
Modern nukes that react all the fuel in the explosion, are not like the dirty bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that only reacted 10% of the fuel while spreading the remaining 90% around. Then again… if the alternatives on the table are chemical and biological weapons, why not add a dirty bomb, right?
Some think that having more martyrs is a way to strengthen their side. One could argue that the latest iteration of the original One Million Plan to populate Israel, consisted precisely in creating martyrs (inciting prosecution of Jews in Islamic countries, so they would immigrate to Israel).
Interesting to know. Although, ashkelon, one of Israel’s largest cities, is about 7kms from gaza and nuclear missiles are hardly safe to their invironment.
Also, while creating martyrs to manufacture consent for genocide is certainly not unthinkable for Israel’s goverment, it would probably require a little more elegance then nuking israeli civilians could provide
Nukes can have a yield anywhere from 10 tons TNT up to… well, turns out there is no upper limit, but this one would be of the smallest ones possible:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/W54
At that point it’s comparable to the largest non-nuclear bombs (10-40 tons TNT), but the point is, one could pick a yield that could be small enough to impact only the intended area. Furthermore… an underground explosion could be even more contained, and still demolish a sizeable chunk of anything built both above and under ground.
As for environment, the US nuked themselves over a thousand times, mostly on the Nevada desert. People in the 1950s used to go to Las Vegas to watch the explosions, nowadays they still go for the casinos, and that’s after many of the old dirtier bombs got exploded above ground.
So maybe Gaza itself would turn into a non-colonizable zone for a while, but as far as helping with the genocide, destroying infrastructure, and claiming the natural gas reserves under Gaza’s economic influence area of the sea… it could work.
I’m afraid a key part of Israel’s population is already fine with the idea of genocide, getting martyrs would be mostly to increase further that approval and save face in front of the international community.