Comment by Adverblessly

2 years ago

Out of curiosity I looked for a relevant reference, apparently in WWII, civilian casualties to allied air raids were 0.6% of the total population and twice that for wounded, so around half the numbers you cite for Gaza (though IIUC you are including both civilian and militant deaths in your counts so not perfectly comparable). Given that Hamas seeks to maximize their civilian deaths I'm not sure how to take that comparison.

Looking at WWI is a bit more confusing, similar numbers of dead Germans due to malnutrition and disease (excluding the pandemic), but overall 1.1% civilian deaths due to military action for the Central Powers.

While personally I feel that the ideal number of civilian deaths is obviously 0 (on both sides), I do feel like counting the dead is not a particularly convincing metric when considering who (if any) is doing right since the relevant information is in the rightness of concrete actions taken rather than the results. Bombing a hospital is bad even if there are almost no civilian casualties. Bombing a military HQ is right even if it unintentionally involved civilian casualties (assuming you did act to minimize them). Bombing a military HQ that is directly under a hospital - ask me later please, but I don't think I'd judge solely on who is dead at the end.

I'm obviously a bit biased here, but just reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_and_gender-based_violen... I can't see how Israel can stop the war as long as Hamas has any form of influence in the area. For now, except for Netanyahu which should be rotting in a jail cell, I'm reserving my judgement until we can see the final results.