Saturday, February 02, 2008

200:1 is the ratio - who cares?

When I wrote my previous post ("A thousand little eyes for an eye") I was looking for statistics on the number of Palestinians in Gaza who have died or been injured as a result of Israeli attacks since 2000.

Israel has always justified these attacks on the basis that its settelements were coming under fire without provocation and that it had to carry out targetted assasinations of "terrorist leaders". The total number of Israeli casualties in the last 7 years has amounted to 20 dead and 583 injured (
Israeli source).

I have now found statistics for Palestinian deaths in all occupied territories. They come from a reliable Israeli human rights organisation,
B'Tselem. Data for the Gaza Strip alone is not available but we can safely assume that the vast majority of deaths relate to Gaza. The table below shows how vicious, vindictive and fatal Israeli arttacks have been against the defenceless population of the Gaza strip since 2000. The shocking figures do not even take into account the number injured and maimed over that long period which must run into tens of thousands (why is no one keeping an accurate record of these when the Iraelis record momentary distress from a loud bang as a casualty?).

As per the table, Israel has killed nearly 4,440 people in the last 7 years, of whom 867 were children. As stated above, we aleady know from Israeli sources that only 20 Israelis have died as a result of shelling and rocket fire from Gaza. The number of Israeli deaths in all other areas therefore total 1,010. So, the ratio of Palestinian to Israeli deaths - excluding Gaza - is roughly 4:1. For Gaza the ratio looks more like 200:1. Enough said!

Click on image to enlarge