A brutal look at the hypocrisy of condemning Israel’s bombing of Gaza while ignoring America’s own long record of incinerating civilians—from Tokyo and Dresden to Vietnam and Iraq. Outrage, it seems, is selective, and hypocrisy has become global policy.
In 1937, Franklin Roosevelt thundered against the barbarism of bombing civilians, declaring that “without warning or justification of any kind, civilians, including vast numbers of women and children, are being ruthlessly murdered with bombs from the air.” At the time, he was speaking of atrocities in China, Ethiopia, and Spain. Americans were suitably horrified, congratulating themselves on their moral decency.
A few years later, that decency went up in flames along with Tokyo. In a single night of American firebombing, one hundred thousand civilians were roasted alive. Then Hiroshima and Nagasaki—two acts of nuclear butchery that incinerated over two hundred thousand more. Suddenly, the deliberate killing of civilians had become not a crime but a strategy. Roosevelt’s righteous indignation was conveniently shelved, replaced with the soothing lie that such slaughter was “necessary.”
And the British? They cheerfully joined in, reducing Dresden to an oven and roasting thirty-five thousand civilians, largely for the psychological thrill of it. The Soviets? Sixteen million civilians gone. Germany itself? Between half a million and two million civilians wiped out in Allied bombing raids. Korea. Vietnam. Napalm. Agent Orange. Villages turned to ash while the American public yawned. Again and again, the euphemism was invoked: collateral damage. The world grew adept at laundering mass murder into military necessity.
Now, Gaza. Civilians—yes, women and children too—are being pulverized. Israel insists it must be so, that Hamas leaves it no choice. And the world, suddenly finding its moral voice, erupts in indignation. How convenient. How selective. How utterly fraudulent.
Why, exactly, is Israel uniquely wicked where America, Britain, Russia, Japan, and Germany were not? Is it that the bombs fall from Israeli planes rather than ours? Or is it something more ancient, something uglier—the oldest hatred of them all, thinly disguised as outrage over Gaza?
Let us be clear: Israel is not innocent. But nor was Tokyo. Nor was Dresden. Nor was My Lai. Nor was Fallujah. If Israel stands in the dock today, so too must every nation that has rained fire upon the defenseless and then called it justice. Which means all of us.
The hypocrisy is almost impressive in its shamelessness. Roosevelt had it right in 1937—before we ourselves joined the ranks of the butchers. Since then, no nation has clean hands, least of all the ones now wagging their fingers at Israel.
So spare us the moral grandstanding. If you condemn Israel alone, you are not brave. You are not righteous. You are a hypocrite.
Why It Matters
If we condemn Israel without acknowledging America’s firebombing of Tokyo, the nuking of Hiroshima, or Britain’s destruction of Dresden, then we are not standing for morality—we are engaging in selective outrage. True justice requires confronting the full history of civilian slaughter, not weaponizing outrage for politics or prejudice.
Key Takeaways
- Roosevelt condemned bombing civilians, only for the U.S. to commit mass civilian killings in WWII.
- From Tokyo to Dresden to Hiroshima, deliberate civilian targeting became normalized.
- Gaza outrage is hypocritical when global powers have all engaged in similar atrocities.
- Condemning Israel alone without acknowledging historical context reveals bias.
- Civilian slaughter has always been rebranded as “necessary” or “collateral damage.”
Further Reading
- War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning — Chris Hedges. A powerful look at how war distorts truth, morality, and memory. https://civilheresy.com/war is a force
- Hiroshima — John Hersey. A groundbreaking account of the atomic bombing’s human toll. https://civilheresy.com/hiroshima
- A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide — Samantha Power. Examines U.S. responses to genocide and mass atrocity in the 20th century. https://civilheresy.com/a problem from hell
Fuel the fight—shop Civil Heresy! Bold t-shirts, tanks, caps, mugs, and stickers that turn rebellion into style
