Opinion: Even Hamas's likely inflated casualty count is in line with other wars in the region
Sunday marked 100 days since fighting erupted between Israel and Hamas, sparked by the barbarous Oct. 7 terror attacks in southern Israel. While casualty counts are, at present, impossible to pin down with any precision, there can be no question that the physical and human costs of the three-month-long conflict has been staggering.
The grim milestone arrives just as ubiquitous claims that Israel is committing “genocide” in Gaza are receiving their first round of formal scrutiny in the international arena. The United Nations’ International Court of Justice (ICJ) met last week to review evidence that Israel stands in violation of the Genocide Convention of 1948, hearing arguments from both the defendant, Israel, and plaintiff, South Africa.
Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada.
Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada.
Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.
Don't have an account? Create Account
With initial public hearings now wrapped up, the world court is expected to make a statement on the merits of South Africa’s case in the coming weeks.
The timing of the ICJ proceedings against Israel invites a comparison between the carnage in Gaza and the most notorious episode of genocide of the past three decades: Rwanda’s “100 days of slaughter.” Even a cursory glance at the two situations reveals just how ludicrous the “genocide” charge lobbed at Israel truly is.
Over the course of roughly 100 days in 1994, lightly armed Hutu militias massacred some 800,000 Rwandans, mostly from the Tutsi ethnic group. Most of the victims are believed to have been killed with machetes and other rudimentary or improvised weapons, including a number of common household tools. Government-supported broadcast radio also played a significant role in inciting violence against Tutsis and co-ordinating the massacres.
As low-tech as it may have been, the Hutu campaign was brutally effective. As many as 10,000 people were killed per day at the height of the genocide and, when the dust settled, the small East African nation would lose over 10 per cent of its population (including some seven in 10 Rwandan Tutsis).
A daily roundup of Opinion pieces from the Sun and beyond.
By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc.
A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder.
The next issue of Informed Opinion will soon be in your inbox.
We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try again
If rag-tag Hutu bands brandishing garden hoes and handheld radios were able to rack up such an astronomical body count in a mere 100 days, just imagine what Israel, home to one of the world’s most powerful and technologically sophisticated militaries, could do in that time, if it were engaged in a genuine, co-ordinated campaign to wipe out Gaza’s Palestinian population. It’s not far-fetched to speculate that, going full bore, Israel’s military could comfortably have cleared out all two-million Gazans by now.
The numbers in Gaza simply don’t add up to genocide. Even taking the Gaza health authority’s official count of 23,968 Palestinian casualties at face value, this translates to just under 240 deaths per day and about one per cent of Gaza’s population. (It bears repeating that the Hamas-controlled agency has every incentive to inflate casualty counts).
The carnage in Gaza is, to be clear, nothing to shrug off, but it isn’t remotely comparable to figures from Rwanda and other contemporary genocides. Take, for instance, the 1995 Srebrenica genocide, in which Bosnian Serbs slayed more than 7,000 Muslims over the course of a single week, and expelled 20,000 more.
The Hamas-reported body count from Gaza falls more in line with casualty counts from the civil war in nearby Syria. An estimated 76,000 perished at the height of the fighting in Syria in 2014, averaging out to just under 210 war-related fatalities per day.
Stretched over the past 10 years, an average of 84 civilians have been killed each day in connection with the ongoing conflict. (Canada, joined by the Netherlands, filed ICJ proceedings accusing the Syrian regime of torture over the summer but stopped short of using the “G-word” in the joint lawsuit.)
As the numbers show, not only does the (Hamas-reported) death toll in Gaza fall well short of benchmarks taken from contemporary genocides, it isn’t even exceptional by the standards of warfare in the region (which is admittedly somewhat of a rough neighbourhood).
With the first 100 days of fighting in Gaza now officially behind us, one can only hope that the next 100 days will bring less hyperbole and more objectivity on the part of the international community. The situation in Gaza is undoubtedly tragic but it is not, by any credible metric, a genocide.
National Post
Postmedia is committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion and encourage all readers to share their views on our articles. Comments may take up to an hour for moderation before appearing on the site. We ask you to keep your comments relevant and respectful. We have enabled email notifications—you will now receive an email if you receive a reply to your comment, there is an update to a comment thread you follow or if a user you follow comments. Visit our Community Guidelines for more information and details on how to adjust your email settings.
login
who are we?
contact us
qosheapp
Toi Staff
Gideon Levy
Belen Fernandez
Rami G Khouri
Mort Laitner
Donald Low
Ali Fathollah-Nejad
Nikkei Editorial
Michael Kwet
visit website
