As absurd as it sounds, a conventional “war” with boots on the ground at least grants the perpetrators some sort of cover. If they killed the entire population with this method or with a nuke or something, they could no longer frame the genocide as a war between two standing armies. It would dispel any illusions that Israel is embattled or persecuted by the Palestinians and is only reacting to a threat. As dumb as that logic is, it is the veil of plausibility that the general public uses to willfully maintain their ignorance.
Also, flooding the earth with seawater makes the land harder to inhabit for settlers afterward, and could fuck up the water table in adjacent areas as well. This is likely the same reason Israel is reluctant to use nukes – They want that land to be worth stealing at the end of the day.
To add to this, a huge part of the Israeli propaganda machine focused on Evangelicals leans heavily on the idea that Israel ‘makes the deserts bloom’ via magic irrigation techniques only white people could figure out so polluting the land specifically with sea water might be too bad a look for them on that front
Lesson the US military eventually learned in Vietnam after camera and television technology had matured to the point the general public got to witness weapons of mass destruction in use. Until that point there was no real backlash whenever the US military fire bombed entire cities. In the WW2 Pacific theater the US killed over a hundred thousand civilians at a time fire bombing Japanese cities and no one gave a fk but when the public watched on their living room televisions the same tactics being used in Vietnam there was backlash.
I guess the lesson learned was that after the advent of video mass media you gotta only kill hundreds of civilians at a time and if you do shit like depoy a weapon that kills tens to hundreds of thousands at a time the public starts getting squeamish.
It does probably help that japan were on the side of fascists and (north) vietnam were decidedly not. But yeah, widespread video and color photos of atrocities probably is a bigger factor
As absurd as it sounds, a conventional “war” with boots on the ground at least grants the perpetrators some sort of cover. If they killed the entire population with this method or with a nuke or something, they could no longer frame the genocide as a war between two standing armies. It would dispel any illusions that Israel is embattled or persecuted by the Palestinians and is only reacting to a threat. As dumb as that logic is, it is the veil of plausibility that the general public uses to willfully maintain their ignorance.
Also, flooding the earth with seawater makes the land harder to inhabit for settlers afterward, and could fuck up the water table in adjacent areas as well. This is likely the same reason Israel is reluctant to use nukes – They want that land to be worth stealing at the end of the day.
To add to this, a huge part of the Israeli propaganda machine focused on Evangelicals leans heavily on the idea that Israel ‘makes the deserts bloom’ via magic irrigation techniques only white people could figure out so polluting the land specifically with sea water might be too bad a look for them on that front
(Conveniently ignoring Gaddafi)
Lesson the US military eventually learned in Vietnam after camera and television technology had matured to the point the general public got to witness weapons of mass destruction in use. Until that point there was no real backlash whenever the US military fire bombed entire cities. In the WW2 Pacific theater the US killed over a hundred thousand civilians at a time fire bombing Japanese cities and no one gave a fk but when the public watched on their living room televisions the same tactics being used in Vietnam there was backlash.
I guess the lesson learned was that after the advent of video mass media you gotta only kill hundreds of civilians at a time and if you do shit like depoy a weapon that kills tens to hundreds of thousands at a time the public starts getting squeamish.
The major lesson the Pentagon learned was to co-opt the media. See The Gulf War Did Not Take Place
I should re-read this. it was fascinating the first time and I’d probably get more out of it a second time
It does probably help that japan were on the side of fascists and (north) vietnam were decidedly not. But yeah, widespread video and color photos of atrocities probably is a bigger factor