Image by Jeffery E. Stern. Yemen, 2018.
Image by Jeffery E. Stern. Yemen, 2018.

"Judgment Day" brings readers inside a remote village subjected to a brutal day-long aerial attack in which American bombs and rockets were dropped by American planes, with American logistical support, on civilians and the water well they were digging. The project is part narrative: introducing readers to the victims, and showing readers what it looks, sounds, and feels like to be in a village under attack by American weapons.

The specific attack this piece focuses on is an example of a Saudi-led aerial campaign targeting not just civilians, but critical civilian infrastructure—less than a month after this attack, a cholera outbreak caused by lack of clean drinking water hit the country.

"Judgment Day" seeks to render tangible, and tactile, an aerial campaign whose affects for many observers remain otherwise unfathomable: the worst cholera outbreak in modern history, the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, a famine threatening seven million people.

The project is also part investigative reporting: tracking one of the laser-guided bombs used in the attack from the moment it rolled of the factory floor at Raytheon Inc.'s Tucson, Arizona facility, until the moment it was dropped on civilians and civilian infrastructure in Yemen—reducing the disconnect between cause and effect and tying readers more viscerally to the affects of their country's policies.

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