Unfortunately one dead Palestinian seems to be worth five live Palestinians to Hamas, and Israel seems to be done with giving a shit what the world thinks about them, or playing right into the Hamas propaganda engine, figuring they'll sort it all out when Hamas doesn't exist anymore.
Either way neither of the belligerents seems to concern themselves about Palestinian deaths anymore. Human shields will die, Hamas will blame Israel, Israel will blame Hamas, and the whole region is likely to end up on fire soon.
Equating the horrific Hamas attack on civilians with the IDF attack on Hamas which inevitably involves civilian casualties (because Hamas uses civilians as human shields) is despicable.
The tit for tat isn’t fair. The entire situation is tragic. Hamas intentionally targeted civilians and civilian outposts in its attack. Their terrorists are intentionally situated in civilian population centers where they know civilian casualties will be high...they count on it. Hamas is intent on killing Jews and ultimately destroying Israel. The elimination of terrorists is an accepted goal of our western world. Without the full cooperation and aid from the rest of the Arab world to achieve that goal, what recourse does Israel have? In the best of worlds, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt and other mid east nations where US aid is received would join forces of the west to use embargoes, sanctions and yes, invasion of the Gaza Strip and /or Iran to weed out Hamas once and for all. But, we all know that is a pipe dream.
Interesting maths, and implacable logic behind. So long as counting will be the name of the game, there will be no end to it because no-one will agree on the counting methodology. Someone will always have more victims to deplore than the neighbour. And on and on with casualties in the name of accurate counting. Thank you for pointing to the absurd, which guns' smoke tend to hide
Maybe I should have put it differently. Biden normed Israeli 10/7 losses to US population. He did that — pretty honestly — to encourage Americans to comprehend the magnitude of the loss Israelis suffered. To have any meaning, it must have a moral basis. Doing ratios strips the moral component.
Then what is the point of the exercise? If it is merely a matter of ratios, then it is merely gruesome word problem for middle-schoolers. To be something more than that requires a moral component to which ratios alone cannot speak.
Out of curiosity I decided to try it on the next most recent worldwide traumatic event before 9/11.
Based on Wikipedia:
WW2 direct casualties are low end 50 million on a world population of 2 billion estimated, on a per 100,000 basis, that's 500 to 20,000, or 1 in 40
divided by the number of days from Sept 1, 1939 to Sept 2, 1945 (exactly 6 years and 1 day with 2 leap years 1940 and 1944 - so 365 x 4 + 366 x 2 + 1) = 2,193 days
50 million over 2,193 days = roughly 22,800/2 billion per day, or 0.2 per hundred thousand.
This is the lowest possible number since I used estimated world population rather than figuring all the nations formally in the war for the demonimator, but I hope to see that the longer they go, the lower the toll.
I feel same as you. Don’t care about the answer to any of those questions. I guess where we differ is that I don’t care how many die on either side. I struggle to care through all the problems that have stacked up in our own house. We should have our own house in order before we start helping or caring about others. America is in bad shape amigo.
Unfortunately one dead Palestinian seems to be worth five live Palestinians to Hamas, and Israel seems to be done with giving a shit what the world thinks about them, or playing right into the Hamas propaganda engine, figuring they'll sort it all out when Hamas doesn't exist anymore.
Either way neither of the belligerents seems to concern themselves about Palestinian deaths anymore. Human shields will die, Hamas will blame Israel, Israel will blame Hamas, and the whole region is likely to end up on fire soon.
Equating the horrific Hamas attack on civilians with the IDF attack on Hamas which inevitably involves civilian casualties (because Hamas uses civilians as human shields) is despicable.
The tit for tat isn’t fair. The entire situation is tragic. Hamas intentionally targeted civilians and civilian outposts in its attack. Their terrorists are intentionally situated in civilian population centers where they know civilian casualties will be high...they count on it. Hamas is intent on killing Jews and ultimately destroying Israel. The elimination of terrorists is an accepted goal of our western world. Without the full cooperation and aid from the rest of the Arab world to achieve that goal, what recourse does Israel have? In the best of worlds, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt and other mid east nations where US aid is received would join forces of the west to use embargoes, sanctions and yes, invasion of the Gaza Strip and /or Iran to weed out Hamas once and for all. But, we all know that is a pipe dream.
Interesting maths, and implacable logic behind. So long as counting will be the name of the game, there will be no end to it because no-one will agree on the counting methodology. Someone will always have more victims to deplore than the neighbour. And on and on with casualties in the name of accurate counting. Thank you for pointing to the absurd, which guns' smoke tend to hide
Maybe I should have put it differently. Biden normed Israeli 10/7 losses to US population. He did that — pretty honestly — to encourage Americans to comprehend the magnitude of the loss Israelis suffered. To have any meaning, it must have a moral basis. Doing ratios strips the moral component.
Then what is the point of the exercise? If it is merely a matter of ratios, then it is merely gruesome word problem for middle-schoolers. To be something more than that requires a moral component to which ratios alone cannot speak.
Left off a zero on the J6 one. Your previous article said (correctly) 0.0012, not 0.012
Unfortunately for the Gazans the ratio their fellows in "The Struggle Against The Zionist Entity" established in 2006 that 1 Israeli = 1,000+ Arabs.
That is about how I feel about all this dumb ass stupidity.
“Israel’s retaliation seems to be 15 9/11’s per day ...”
Moral and numerical equivalence aren’t remotely the same.
Out of curiosity I decided to try it on the next most recent worldwide traumatic event before 9/11.
Based on Wikipedia:
WW2 direct casualties are low end 50 million on a world population of 2 billion estimated, on a per 100,000 basis, that's 500 to 20,000, or 1 in 40
divided by the number of days from Sept 1, 1939 to Sept 2, 1945 (exactly 6 years and 1 day with 2 leap years 1940 and 1944 - so 365 x 4 + 366 x 2 + 1) = 2,193 days
50 million over 2,193 days = roughly 22,800/2 billion per day, or 0.2 per hundred thousand.
This is the lowest possible number since I used estimated world population rather than figuring all the nations formally in the war for the demonimator, but I hope to see that the longer they go, the lower the toll.
I hope.
I feel same as you. Don’t care about the answer to any of those questions. I guess where we differ is that I don’t care how many die on either side. I struggle to care through all the problems that have stacked up in our own house. We should have our own house in order before we start helping or caring about others. America is in bad shape amigo.
Vaguely related:
https://twitter.com/tgof137/status/1436812720809013250