While reading the guest column published by the Burke Society (“Pre-disposed to prejudice,” Oct. 29), I was surprised to see their explanation of a comment made by David Horowitz. They try to explain Horowitz’s recommendation to carpet-bomb the Gaza Strip as an effort to force the “terrorists to move their rocket launchers away from the border, thereby placing Israeli cities out of range.” According to them, Horowitz was referring to carpet bombing the “small region from which the offensive rockets were being launched.”
First, we should ask how small really is this “small area”? The average range of the Qassam rocket that is fired from the Gaza Strip is anywhere from 4-10 km. Sderot the Israeli city that has seen the worst of the Qassam rocket fire is only 1-2 km from the edge of the Gaza Strip. The length of the Gaza Strip in the north-east corner, outside of which Sderot is located, is a maximum of 10 km. Thus in order to ensure that Sderot is safe from the Qassam rockets, the Palestinian terrorists would have to be pushed back by about 8km within the Gaza Strip, which means a distance of about 2 km from the edge of the Mediterranean Sea. As a fraction, we are talking about forcing the Palestinians to move back 8/10 of the length in the north-east corner of the Gaza Strip. The first city that needs to be bombed in order to make Sderot safe will be Beit Hanoun – which alone has a population of about 33,000. 33000 out of a total population of 1.5 million in the Gaza Strip approximates to around 2.2% of the total. This will proobably not qualify as “ethnic cleansing of Palestinians” to Horowitz, but let us try convincing the residents of Beit Hanoun otherwise.
To say the above is not to say that Horowitz called for ethnic cleansing. It is to show that statements calling for “carpet bombing” to force terrorists back from the border either demonstrate an extreme callousness bordering on the verge of cruelty, or a lack of basic understanding of geography and distances that a Middle East expert should not suffer from.
Juana Yunis
CLAS IV
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