Murder By Numbers

Israelis, Jews, and many others often find it extremely offensive to compare any contemporary event to the Holocaust. They often say it is an insult to the victims and survivors of the Nazi atrocities that left 6,000,000 dead. Those who don't find it offensive, would at least generally agree that it's far too much of a stretch to make such a comparison. Yet I often found myself arguing with seemingly sane people that killing 300 people, though horrible in and of itself, should not be compared to the Holocaust.

Today, however, Israeli rationalization of its current actions in Gaza has arguably reached (and exceeded) that level of exaggerated comparison. It has even brought the Holocaust within the scope of legitimate comparison.

More than two weeks into the conflict, with over 900 Palestinians killed, Israeli politicians, generals and even blog commenters maintain the same rationalization: That this war is a war of self-defense aimed at halting rocket fire from Hamas into Southern Israel. They describe world media as biased against Israel because they don't show the suffering of Israelis who have to live under the threat of Hamas rocket fire. But let's look at the numbers. So far, the "Gaza Op" has killed 900 Palestinians in 18 days, that's 50 per day. Hamas rocket fire since Israeli disengagement from Gaza 4 years ago (including the past two weeks) has killed 30 people, or 0.02 per day. That is to say, in terms of number of people killed per day, The Gaza operation is currently outperforming its cassus belli, namely Hamas's rocket launching campaign, by 2500 to 1. If that's not an outrageous comparison, I don't know what is.

To put it a way that makes these numbers mean something: Imagine if today Hamas suddenly unveils a massive war machine that it's been keeping hidden, waiting for the right moment, then launches a retaliatory attack on Israel in "self-defense." If it responds by killing 100000 Israeli's a day, it will be well within its right to defend itself, according how Israelis see that right. To make the point clearer, if Israel's logic holds, Hamas has the right to defend itself (if it could) by killing about 20 times more people per day than Hitler killed during the Holocaust.

So, mathematically speaking, comparing the Gaza op to Hamas's rocket fire is far more of a stretch than comparing the Holocaust to what is happening in Gaza today. What is even sicker is that, although no sane man would ever say the current Gaza op would justify another Holocaust, Israelis seem to have no trouble making that jump when it comes to their own self-defense.