Targeting Gaza’s Children with Sound Bombs

Mike Whitney

The photographs of bombed-out buildings, burned-down power plants, and blown-up bridges only tell half the story of Israel’s terror-war on the people in Gaza. Absent from the pictures is the screeching sound of the F-16s flying overhead day-and-night producing the explosive sonic booms that shatter windows and terrify children. Israel has been remarkably successful in its psychological war against the Palestinians; exacting a heavy toll against the people for whom it was designed, Palestinian children. As author John Pilger notes in a recent article "The War on Children": "Dr. Khalid Dahlan, a psychiatrist who heads a children's community health project, told me, 'The statistic I personally find unbearable is that 99.4 percent of the children we studied suffer trauma … 99.2 percent had their homes bombarded; 97.5 percent were exposed to tear gas; 96.6 percent witnessed shooting; a third saw family members or neighbors injured or killed.’" (...) Israel’s sonic blasts are part of a larger psy-ops war that is aimed at directly at children; it has no other conceivable purpose. The explosions have no military value except to attack the fragile psyche of the most vulnerable and sensitive...

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