Genocide is the intentional killing of non-combatant civilians in an attempt to reduce or eliminate the numbers of a particular race, nation, or ideology. Hamas is genocidal, their charter demands the destruction of Israel. (They watered it down recently, but their intent is still clear) October 7th was an act of Genocide since it was motivated by Hamas' chartered intention and was indiscriminate in the brutality and targeting of the killings. Hamas must be stopped. Iran supplied weapons and training and financial support for Hamas, a clearly genocidal organization. Iran also regularly proclaims "Death to Israel. Death to America". Iran has genocidal intent. Iran, and its proxies, must be stopped. Israel concluded that they must stop Hamas. Hamas hides behind civilians. This makes Hamas doubly genocidal since the more civilians that are killed the happier they seem to be. Israel send leaflets, texts, phone calls to warn the population. They sent tons of food and supplies to support the population. They set aside refuges for the population. Genocidal nations don't do that. Yes, a lot of Palestinians were killed in the fighting. Terrible. 20,000+ Germans were killed in the Dresden fire bombing. Awful. 100,000+ Japanese were killed in the Tokyo firebombing. ~210,000 Japanese will killed by the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. None of those actions were genocidal. The attackers had no genocidal intent. Their goal was to stop their enemies from further attacks. There are "experts" for everything. The UN is full of "experts". But any "expert" that claims that Israel is committing a genocide is either horrifyingly ignorant or selling something evil.

According to an informed federal official, in the coming months the Trump administration plans to send a total of 40,000 Mark 84 and Blu-117 bombs to the government of Israel. Each bomb weighs 2,000 pounds. This appears to be the largest transfer of conventional explosive ordnance from the United States in modern history. How big is this shipment? It amounts to 40,000 tons of bombs. For perspective, the largest American air raid of World War Two was the Eighth Air Force’s attack on Berlin in March of 1945. Combined, the 2,023 Allied aircraft involved dropped about 3,000 tons of bombs. That’s 7.5 percent of what Trump is sending to Israel. That same month, March of 1945, the US Army Air Forces began the single most destructive bombing raid in human history, Operation Meetinghouse over Tokyo. More than 100,000 Japanese civilians were killed. By the end of that operation, the US had dropped 1,600 tons of bombs. That’s four percent of what Trump is sending to Israel. World War Two ended five months later, when the US dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima. The shipment Trump is sending to Israel amounts to more than three times the destructive power of that nuclear explosion. There is no precedent for what the Trump administration is doing. Nor is there a justification. The government of Israel is not fighting World War Two, or even a war. It is engaged in periodic skirmishes with a guerrilla force in Lebanon, and it is working to exterminate an unarmed civilian population in Gaza. Neither front requires modern 2,000-pound bombs. An American-made Mark 84 has a destruction radius of half a mile. It releases a thermal wave the temperature of the surface of the sun. Within 100 feet of the explosion, rock melts and human flesh turns to vapor. The bomb collapses apartment buildings and leaves craters thirty-five feet deep. Until the war with Iran, the US military generally avoided using the Mark 84 in urban areas. It kills too many civilians. For the Netanyahu government, that’s been the upside. In the weeks after October 7, the IDF dropped nearly six hundred 2,000-pound bombs on densely populated areas in Gaza, including on more than 100 officially designated civilian evacuation zones. The slaughter was so grotesque and embarrassing that for a moment the Biden administration paused a shipment of Mark 84s. Those shipments quickly resumed under Trump. Now they’ve accelerated. It’s hard to overstate the scale of the crime the Israeli government is committing in Gaza. Over the last three years, more than a quarter-million Palestinians have been killed or wounded by Israeli forces there. The majority of them have been noncombatants: women, the elderly and tens of thousands of children. Many thousands more remain missing, presumably entombed under the rubble of 200,000 collapsed buildings. So far the Israelis have destroyed 92 percent of all homes in Gaza, and 34 of the 36 hospitals. By comparison, the 1945 Allied bombings of Dresden, now acknowledged as a war crime, destroyed about half of the city’s inhabited buildings. By any definition, what the Netanyahu government has done in Gaza is genocide. The 40,000 new bombs the Trump administration is sending will be used to do the same in Lebanon, and likely in other countries in the region. If you wanted to extend the Iran war into the indefinite future, this is exactly what you’d do. So far none of this has received public scrutiny. At some point, inevitably, it will be described in media accounts as an “arms sale.” It is not an arms sale. It is a gift, funded by American taxpayers through the Foreign Military Financing program, an arrangement designed to disguise welfare as capitalism: Congress appropriates money to the executive branch, which transfers the cash to Israel to “buy” American-made weapons, in this case from General Dynamics. Politicians claim this is a win for America. Most voters have no idea they paid for it. The bill in this case is about $3 billion. Add that to the $352 billion the US Treasury has transferred to Israel since 1951. How did this happen? The request for 40,000 new high-explosive civilian-killing bombs originated at the US Embassy in Jerusalem, which is run by Christian Zionist Ambassador Mike Huckabee and his aide David Milstein, who is the stepson of Fox News host Mark Levin. From there it moved to the State Department, where Marco Rubio enthusiastically approved it. At this point, only four more people need to sign off before the bombs ship to Israel: Senators Jim Risch and Jeanne Shaheen, the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; and Congressmen Brian Mast and Gregory Meeks, the top two members of the equivalent House committee. All four are committed neocons. Collectively they’ve taken millions from the Israel lobby. In 2015, Brian Mast traveled to Israel to volunteer for the Israeli military. In 2023, Mast showed up in the House of Representatives wearing an IDF uniform. It’s hard to imagine any of them hesitating before sending more free bombs to Israel. Only public outrage can stop this.

This evening in Hiroshima, Deputy Chief of Mission Aaron Snipe had the privilege of hearing the testimony of Hibakusha Ogura Keiko, who was just eight years old on August 6, 1945. Her vivid and deeply moving account is a testament to extraordinary strength and resilience. Thank you, Ms. Ogura, for sharing your story. By listening to voices like yours, we honor the past and reaffirm our commitment to building a more peaceful future.

Japanese-Italian fusion Hiroshima-style Okonomiyaki. It layers savory ingredients like cabbage and noodles, is enveloped in an egg, and topped with a deep red sauce and aonori flakes. © japanesefoodcraftsman

After surviving the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, pastor Kiyoshi Tanimoto recorded the destruction he witnessed, and argued that the city had been condemned for Japan’s wartime aggression. Read this insight into his memoir ⬇️

DHM Ms Putniņa attended the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Ceremony, joining atomic bomb survivors, families of victims, Prime minister and local and international representatives. A minute of silence was observed at 8:15, the exact time the bomb exploded over Hiroshima 81 years ago.