The Big Lies About Israel’s Big Bombs

Excerpt

President Joe Biden says Israel is losing support because of its “indiscriminate bombing” in Gaza. He says that Israeli conduct in Gaza has been “over the top.” His secretary of state, secretary of defense, and vice president have all said Israel must do more to make the war in Gaza less destructive. Yet the White House has never laid out precisely what Israel is doing wrong on the battlefield. How does one wage a less destructive war when facing an enemy that has spent more than a decade building hundreds of kilometers of tunnels underneath densely populated areas, turning whole neighborhoods into human shields?

A growing contingent of journalists believes it has the answer to this question: Israel must stop using 2,000-pound bombs in Gaza and shift to smaller, less powerful munitions. Investigations by CNN, the Washington Post, and the New York Times all make the case that employing such large bombs in dense urban environments is inherently reckless, even criminal.

David Adesnik is a senior fellow and director of research at Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery (Ret.) is a senior fellow and senior director of the Center for Cyber and Technology Innovation at FDD. As a flag officer, he was deputy director of plans and policy at U.S. European Command and conducted numerous targeting exercises with the IDF.