Amy Davidson responds to an IDF airstrike that unintentionally wiped out nearly an entire family in Gaza, including four children. She worries that Israel and the United States have bought into the "illusion of surgical war":
This was not some little bomb slipped in between the windows; according to the L.A. Times, “the force of the blast blew out windows blocks away and sent a charred mattress flying into the street.” (See Wasseem El Sarraj on the sounds of the bombs.) It is hard to see how, even if the bomb found who it was looking for, indiscriminancy wasn’t built in. The replies are that Hamas’s rockets don’t discriminate either, that war is always messy, and that the problem and the blame is with men who fire rockets and choose to live among children. But attempting to construct equivalencies is no way to feel better about the death of children; and the point about messiness is why one gets angry at wars, not why one shrugs at them. And it should be all the more jarring, given that the messaging of this war—at times boastingly via Twitter, and in stories about drones taking out motorcycle riders—has been about its supposed precision.
(Photo: Palestinian men gather around a crater caused by an Israeli air strike on the al-Dallu family's home in Gaza City on November 18, 2012. By Marco Longari /AFP/Getty Images)
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