Are the Number of Palestinian Deaths Relevant for pro-Israel Commentators?
John Stuart Mill once wrote, “He who only knows his own side of the case, knows little of that”. In this spirit, I feel it’s important to engage seriously with arguments from the opposing side.
One of the most prominent pro-Israel voices is Douglas Murray, and irrespective of whether one agrees with his views, he has a considerable reach and influence.
In his latest book, ‘On Democracies and Death Cults’ he puts forward case that Hamas are better characterised as evil sadists opposed to resistance fighters. He includes anecdotes demonstrating how the perpetrators of the October 7th attacks took great joy in slaughtering innocent people.
No matter how sympathetic one may be towards the plight of the Palestinians, the level of cruelty committed on that day towards civilians can never be justified.
One of the victims included a seventy-four-year-old peace activist, Vivian Silver. Vivian was a Canadian-born peace activist who spent decades of her life working for peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
She had been intentionally burned alive, and such acts cannot be seen as justifiable form of resistance against a settler-colonialist state.
Almost four hundred members of the Israeli security forces were also killed, so one could argue that there was at least some element of resistance to occupation behind the attacks. This is approximately a third of the total number killed that day. By comparison, only around a fifth of Palestinian deaths in this conflict are non-civilians.
Douglas also makes use of statistics to argue that being a Muslim in the state of Israel is preferable to being a Jew in Palestine. For example, Muslims have voter rights and representation in Israeli Government whereas since 2005 no Jews have resided in the Gaza Strip.
At the very least, he makes a case that Israel – albeit I’d argue isn’t a proper democracy – is at least more democratic than Palestine. The description of Hamas as a death cult has some evidence in its support – although it’s worth noting that Israel effectively created them.
Yet the fact that Israel was built on the land of Palestinians, that it has continued to expand throughout its existence including into other countries such as Syria, and that the Palestinian death toll of this current conflict far exceeds that of Israelis are points that are notably downplayed.
There is a strong colonialist whiff within the pro-Israel camp. The sentiment goes something along the lines of, ‘Our perceived sense of moral superiority means we can do no wrong.’
Professor John Mearsheimer writes about this tendency in, ‘The Great Delusion’ where the desire for liberal hegemony has led to disastrous US foreign intervention.
Just because one may willingly accept that democracy is preferable to autocracy, and many liberal values are desirable this doesn’t justify the terrible consequences of imposing the will of one nation upon another.
This is ultimately what the Zionist project has done throughout its existence. Zionists had a complete disregard for the sovereignty of the Palestinian people, and through acts of expansion and ethnic cleansing they’ve created a seemingly never-ending conflict.
Hamas might accurately be described as evil, but they weren’t created in a vacuum.
The pro-Israel commentary speaks of such a group as a spontaneously created Jew-hating group, but the historical context cannot be ignored.
If we fast-forward to the present day and even if we accept the pro-Israel arguments being put forward that this is democracy versus a death cult or civilisation against savagery, can we completely ignore the difference in scale of deaths between Israelis and Palestinians?
Israel recently deliberately killed Palestinian paramedics, and more aid workers have died in Gaza than all of conflict zones in the rest of the world combined, so the idea of their moral intent being better is questionable at best. Also, around 3% of those killed on October 7th were children, compared to 31% of those killed by Israeli forces in Gaza.
However, even accepting these highly questionable arguments, surely the numbers matter?
This is where I become extremely concerned by these commentators.
If they want to make the argument that there is a difference in moral intent between the two parties, they’re free to do so.
Except, they also bring numbers into the argument to emphasise the devastation caused on October 7th, whilst simultaneously downplaying the much larger number of deaths committed by Israelis.
Popular podcaster, Konstain Kisin, like Douglas Murray has measured the October 7th attacks as being multiple September 11ths on a per capita basis.
Numbers do apparently matter, when it comes to emphasising just how atrocious the attacks from a year and a half ago were.
Yet, on a recent podcast Douglas Murray quickly interjected to argue that the Syrian conflict produced far more deaths on an average year for the past decade than the entirety of this conflict.
This claim doesn’t even appear to be true if we look at the figures from a reliable source such as the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and compare them with the current death toll for the ongoing conflict in Gaza. Besides, why wasn’t the per capita measurement used, considering Syria has over ten times the population of Gaza.
The numbers either matter of they don’t, and if stating the numbers in such a way can be used to emphasise the devastation caused on October 7th 2023, then one must surely acknowledge that on average the IDF has created the same number of dead bodies every 11days for the past year and a half.
Recent reports suggest that more than 61,700 have died in this conflict if the thousands currently trapped under the rubble are dead.
The scale is impossible to comprehend. If one looks at the lasting effect of the devastation caused by Bloody Sunday and the impact this had on the conflict, imagine if around eight times the number of people killed by British terrorists on 30th January 1972 was repeated on average every day for over a year and a half?
If Bloody Sunday was a huge recruitment drive for the IRA, what kind of recruitment drive are Israel creating in Gaza?
Israel created this conflict, powered by the settler-colonialist ideology of Zionism. They also created Hamas as an attempt to divide the Palestinian resistance. Now, Israel are providing Palestinian people with even more justification for armed resistance.
The number of innocent people being killed in this conflict matter, how could they not?
The fact of the matter is Murray supports Israel regardless of how many civilians die. The people who support Palestine don’t care about Jewish deaths. That’s the very nature of war. My side good your side bad. We above all people should realise that?