As I write this, as many as 775 Palestinians, most of them civilians and many of them children, have been slain by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in the 17-day campaign in Gaza. The war, which has sparked international condemnation, has also resulted in the death of two Israeli civilians and 32 soldiers. As a fellow journalist and occasional contributor to Thinking Taiwan who is now covering the latest conflagration in the Middle East wrote a few days ago, the place is “hopeless.” Both sides, embittered by decades of pain, broken promises and hatred, seem condemned to eternal cycles of violence. Both sides have legitimate claims, and both are equally wrong. Both peoples, their welfare held hostage by politicians and the seemingly invincible forces of “history,” have a right to security, dignity, and to a state.
Yet, as with many wars waged by the IDF since 1948, the death ratio has been largely in Israel’s favor. In the Six Day War of June 1967, the casualty ratio was 25 to 1; about 800 Israelis died, against approximately 15,000 Egyptians, 700 Jordanians, and 450 Syrians. One thing that has gradually changed since that war, during which Israel often found itself at loggerheads with the Lyndon B. Johnson administration, is the number of civilian casualties. More and more, Palestinian (and Lebanese) civilians are killed in IDF operations against Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other radical organizations, not to mention the demolition of entire neighborhoods, which has created new generations of displaced individuals and refugees, and thus new cycles of hatred and violence.
My article, published today on Thinking Taiwan, continues here.
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