Palestine pinprick
Israel's campaign to date has been far too conservative
Every day, lately, readers of the news are treated to the death toll from Gaza. It’s replaced the Dow Jones Industrial Average as journalists’ favorite number. It stands, as of this writing, at about 22,000. This number is provided by the Hamas-led Gaza Health Ministry which, to put it delicately, is not a source of information in which one should place a great deal of faith. This inflated, or more-likely made-up, number is meant to tug at the heartstrings of good people so that they will press for the cessation of Israel’s just and necessary war against Hamas.
To add to the pathos, we are informed that most of the dead are women and children. Apparently the Israeli military has deployed special ammunition that avoids killing men. That makes sense.
There is no question that the Hamas body count is bogus. But it may be safe to assume that it’s an upper limit on the actual body count. For purposes of discussion let’s cut it in half, yielding 11,000.
Every number, to be understood properly, must be compared to other numbers. We are told by Wikipedia that the population of the Gaza Strip in 2022 was approximately 2.4 million. Dividing 11,000 by 2.4 million we obtain 0.00458, or less than 0.5%. This is, at most, a pinprick.
If the proportion killed in Gaza is this low, then the “humanitarian catastrophe” that we keep hearing about is very likely a propaganda invention meant to put pressure on Israel to stop the war. I’d be absolutely okay with a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza; I just doubt that one exists. In photos from Gaza the people look all-too well fed and feisty.
Let’s consider another number. It is estimated by Wikipedia that Hamas fighters number 20,000–25,000. In addition to Hamas there are other terrorist organizations operating in the Gaza Strip. Their numbers are indeterminate. Let’s assume another 5,000 terrorists in addition to Hamas. This yields 25,000–30,000 terrorists in Gaza. Split this down the middle and we get 27,500 terrorists operating in Gaza.
These terrorists embed themselves and their weaponry, including rockets and rocket launchers, within the civilian population. In particular, they operate in densely populated, “sensitive” locations such as hospitals, schools, mosques, apartment complexes, and the like. It follows that to kill one terrorist it is necessary to kill a lot of civilians. Let’s assume, conservatively, a 10:1 ratio. It follows that to kill the 27,500 terrorists in Gaza it is necessary to kill 275,000 civilians, for a total of 302,500 killed. If this is anywhere close to accurate then, according to the (inflated) statistic provided by the Gaza Health Ministry, the Israeli military has been far too conservative to date.
I wish the Israeli military, following in the footsteps of the allies in World War II, would firebomb Gaza, incinerating every living thing. Why risk the precious lives of Israeli soldiers in house-to-house fighting? The allies firebombed German and Japanese cities, killing up to 100,000 people in a single night. That’s war. No doubt if Israel did this there’d be much clucking of tongues for a week or two, but also a huge sigh of relief that the noisy, terroristic Gazans had gotten their due.
These are the people, remember, who cheered when mutilated and raped kidnap victims from Israel were paraded through their streets. These are the people who voted for Hamas, support Hamas, and join Hamas.
There’s been much international hand-wringing over the war. Among those with their handkerchiefs out, teary-eyed over the plight of the Gazans, are such human rights luminaries as Russia, China, and Iran. It’s nice to know that these butchers can experience such tender emotions.
To get a true sense of how precious the lives of the Gazans are to their international fan club, consider this question. How many countries have offered to take in refugees from Gaza, even on a temporary basis? The answer is ZERO. Everyone knows that they are nothing but trouble. Big trouble. Egypt, Gaza’s neighbor to the South, wants nothing to do with these fanatical, murderous trouble-makers. Here’s a recent headline:
Egypt reinforces Gaza border with concrete barriers as it ‘indefinitely’ closes Rafah crossing
How about you? Would you like to be living next door to 2.4 million fanatical Gazans, among them tens of thousands of well-armed, sadistic, rampaging terrorists? Let us hope that Israel moves on from pinpricks to complete annihilation of the enemy.
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