WRITTEN ELSEWHERE (Dr Heather Cox Richardson's letter)
ISRAËL. hamas, and IRAN: dirt on every side of the street.
Agonizing dilemmas and fragmenting opinion:
¿WHOSE NUMBERS COUNT?
"B.L.U.F. (bottom-line, up-front): though the civilian death toll is high in Gaza it is in the vicinity of some other recent urban conflicts. Israël is making an effort to contain direct casualties but creating conditions likely to expand the death toll greatly.
"Annie, I have also read that the number of hamas fighters is around forty thousand. Israël claims to have killed fourteen-to-fifteen thousand hamas fighters. The numbers are hard to nail down; I doubt anyone really knows. Best case is that slightly more than half of the hamas combatants (21,000) are not accounted for (i.e., not included in the number killed to date plus the four thousand said to be in Rafah).
"So, ¿where are they?
"And, ¿is Netanyahu proving to be hamas's most effective recruiter?
"Though the numbers are fuzzy and these guesstimates are, more likely than not, significantly off the mark, the civilian death toll relative to combatants in Gaza of 50-60% is higher than the nominal ratioes calculated for Viêt Nam (46%) and Afghanistan (30%) but similar to that in Iraq (66%). Like Gaza, Iraq entailed more urban combat than Viêt Nam or Afghanistan.
"The problem with these comparisons remains WHO is responsible for WHICH civilian deaths. The numbers cited above, I believe, count those killed directly by military personnel. They exclude the deaths attendant to a disruption or break-down of the civil society. That is the primary threat facing Gaza now as food and medical supplies as well as water and hospitals remain limited.
"In Viêt Nam, 600,000 civilians died from military fire with estimates of two million 'excess deaths'. In Iraq, some 100,000 civilians died by direct military violence while 'excess' deaths were roughly 450,000. In Afghanistan, some 50,000 died by direct military contact versus roughly 200,000 'excess deaths'. In theory, most or all of these 'excess deaths' would NOT have occurred BUT for war. AGAIN: these numbers are my guesstimates only, subject to my primary sympathy favouring Israël."
