The International Policy Institute, based in Israel, has been doing some counting. They have a page that lists the number of Palestinians and Israelis killed by the current "uprising", something that the western news organizations commonly do. Then, they break down the numbers into several discrete categories, something the western media never do. The numbers are interesting.
It is especially interesting to note that although the number of dead Palestinians is approximately three times greater, the number of dead Israeli women is almost 2.5 times greater (in absolute terms), which equates to a kill rate for Israeli women more than seven times higher than that for Palestinian women.
Also interesting is the number of combatant deaths (that is, the number of deaths of active participants in violence). 1074 of the 2350 Palestinians killed were combatants, while 166 of the 791 Israelis fell into the same category. That translates, in percentage terms, to 45.7% of Palestinian deaths and 21% of Israeli deaths. Yet the European press, in particular, calls the Israelis out for indiscriminate killing of civilians.
One last point that must be emphasized is the disparity in "friendly fire" incidents, and the Palestinian execution of suspected informants, something that has no Israeli equivalent. 293 Palestinians have been killed by other Palestinians, and 18 Israelis by other Israelis. These killings would alter the percentages I cited above even further, but not in a way that the Palestinians would like.
(BTW, the numbers are current up to 2 July as I type this; the page is dynamically updated, so the numbers you see may differ from my citations, if more people are killed.)
posted on July 03, 2003 05:10 PM
