Civillian deaths
I want to thank Gary Seidner for his April 24 letter, so I can point out the flaws of one of Israeli’s main talking points: the dismissal of the 72,000 Palestinians killed by Israel because the statistics are reported by the Gaza Health Ministry in a Hamas government. (Reminding me of Holocaust deniers who quibble over the 6 million.) One reason that news organizations trust these numbers is that the Ministry provides the names. The number doesn’t include those buried under rubble, or those who died of starvation or preventable disease because of Israel’s obliteration of Gaza’s infrastructure.
When Israel says that 22,000 are “terrorists” (admitting that 50,000 — more than two thirds — are civilians), how would they know unless they are using the names on the Ministry’s list? Whether all, or even most, are terrorists is doubtful, since Israel often applies this label to Palestinians opposing the occupation. If Hamas had actually 22,000 terrorists, it would have done a lot more damage on Oct. 7.
A third of those killed on Oct. 7 were also Israeli soldiers. That doesn’t excuse an attack that mainly kills civilians, just as Israel’s murder of at least 50,000 civilians — more than 50 times the civilians killed on Oct. 7 — is not excused because they killed some terrorists along the way. Under Jewish law, a human life is sacred, possessing infinite value: not just Jewish lives, but all lives.