According to a new report in Haaretz by Nir Hasson, as the death toll in Gaza reaches 40,000, it's time to face facts: "the numbers show" that the Gaza war is "one of the bloodiest in the 21st Century."
For many who hear this claim, its veracity will seem obvious. For nearly a year, the world has been consumed by this war. There must be a reason. Surely the absolute numbers justify the riots, the self-immolations, and the accusations of that most vile crime against humanity - genocide.
But reading the report, one sees how quickly it disproves its own claims. Let's look at the numbers, cited by Hasson himself:
In Syria, 405,000 dead.
In Iraq, 210,000 dead.
In Yugoslavia, 100,000 dead.
In Ukraine, 172,000 dead.
All of those numbers appear to be much higher than 40,000, so how is Haaretz claiming that this is one of the deadliest conflicts of the century? Well, they don't go by absolute numbers. Instead, they go by pace and by percentage of population.
40,000 is 2% of Gaza's population, and this number of fatalities has occurred in less than a year.
The Syrian war also claimed the lives of 2% of the population, but took 13 years.
The Iraq war claimed the lives of 1% of the population, but took 20 years.
The Ukraine war has only claimed the lives of .45% of the population, in 2.5 years.
This is not usually how we evaluate the size of a war. But it is how we evaluate the size of this war. In December, the Washington Post called the war "one of this century's most destructive," again citing pace rather than absolute numbers. It is as if these reporters are starting with the assumption that the Gaza war is the worst in recent history, and then working backwards to find out how.
But beyond this dishonest analysis, it's unclear what exactly they are implying. Is a war that lasts decades better than one that lasts a year? Is it less "bloody" or "destructive"?
After all, everyone knows that the war in Gaza won't last for two decades like America's wars. Israel is already winding down in Gaza, and while Netanyahu and Gallant may bicker over the exact nature of the end, we all know that it's going to end, and that the lion's share of the IDF's mission in Gaza is done. As for percentage, where did we get 2%?
40,000 is 2% of Gaza's population, but there are also millions of Palestinians in the West Bank and as far as I know, every Palestinian from Gaza and the West Bank considers themselves to be a single people.
So yes, 2% of the residents of the region held by Hamas have died in this war. In fact, nearly half of them were Hamas themselves. But it's not true that 2% of the Palestinian population has died. Far from it.
If this is how people want to analyze this war, so be it, but let's be fair and let both sides use the same metrics. For instance, on October 7th, around 70,000 people lived in the region of Israel known as the Gaza Envelope. By nightfall, 1.7% of them had been slain by merciless invaders.
None of this is to say that 40,000 is a small number. Indeed, reporters ought to be curious about why this number is as high as it is, considering Israel's well-documented efforts to minimize civilian casualties.
There are a number of reasons. For one, generally, when there is a war, people are allowed to flee to safer areas. Palestinians are not. The Egyptians have sealed their border with little to no international scrutiny or condemnation. As for "safe zones" within Gaza, Hamas has a habit of taking them over and turning them into battlefields.
When Mohammad Deif was killed by an Israeli strike, many were outraged that the strike was in a so-called "safe zone." They should have been outraged that Hamas' second-in-command was in a "safe zone" to begin with when he knew that his presence rendered the area a legitimate military target.
There are other ways in which Hamas guarantees civilian deaths. For instance, not wearing uniforms so as to confuse between the civilian population and combatants; or using hospitals as bases; or UN buildings, or hiding Israeli hostages in dense urban areas. People would rather blame Israel. For instance, in January, the Washington Post called the displacement of Gazans "the largest displacement in the region since 1948."
But it's not. Not even close. 1.9 million people live in Gaza. 13 million were displaced by the Syrian civil war. 4 million in Yemen. 9 million in Iraq. So why claim that this is the largest displacement? And why say "since 1948"? Simple: to make it seem like the existence of Israel is the problem. None of this is to minimize the devastating tragedies caused by this war, or the horrifying situation in the Gaza strip.
Yesterday, I saw a gut wrenching video of a Palestinian man whose wife and newborn twins had died in an Israeli airstrike. There is no quantifying such grief and I pray, for his sake and for others like him, that this war ends speedily with a deal that brings the hostages home.
But the world is insisting that Israel is bloodthirsty - that it is doing something other than what any country would do after suffering the kind of invasion that Israel suffered on October 7th.
This isn't true, and despite what Haaretz says, it's not "what the numbers show."
