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Comment by noibl | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure what you wanted to say either but two things are notable about your comment: 1. you broaden the context to include the entire history of the Israeli-Arab conflict, 2. you make no distinction between military and civilian casualties.

Between 1860 and 2010 there were a reported (by Israel) 3,971 Israeli civilian casualties of terrorist attacks.[1]

Between 2000 and 2012 there were a reported (by Israel) 3,034-3,726 Palestinian non-combatant civilian casualties of IDF operations.[2]

Obviously, tank battles in Sinai are not going to produce the same casualty rates as wars of attrition fought at street level in densely populated cities. Air strikes on Gaza (10,000 people / km2) are precisely on the same order of devastation though. The broader you make the context, the more you mask that fact.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_casualties_of_war

[2] http://old.btselem.org/statistics/english/Casualties.asp

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Well, I don't know how many non-combatants die in the cartel wars, but I guess I'm saying that the Israeli-Arab conflict is lesser in magnitude compared to past and present violent conflicts around the world, perhaps contrary to perception. So it's not Vietnam-big (where millions lost their lives); it's Mexican drug war-big.

Of course, while not a big conflict in terms of actual warfare, it carries a lot of political influence worldwide.

Maybe I need to be a little more blunt.

Because of the gross disparity in casualties between the two sides, attempting to minimise perceptions of the conflict as a whole (with a frame of reference chosen for statistical convenience) amounts proportionally to discounting the importance of the (overwhelmingly Palestinian) deaths.

This attitude of "it's bad but we can live with it" is directly reflected in the policies of the current Israeli government with respect to peace.

This is true but a useless statistic. Israelis do kill many more Palestinians than vice versa, but Hamas could end the violence at any time, and Israel can't. If Hamas would simply hold all fire, and publicly announce it, Israel would be forced to stop, both by internal and external pressure. If you mistakenly believe otherwise, you really don't know much about Israelis. [Edit: This is only true of the violence, not about the political dispute. But you don't really need to kill people to have a political dispute.]

Hamas can only end 'the violence' [against Israel] by (a) violently suppressing competing militias[1] in Gaza (one wonders how many different ways that could play out), or (b) pointing to progress in peace talks to convince Gazans to hold the truce. Only Israel can end the occupation though.

So, far from being a 'useless statistic', the relative hardships and pressures faced by each side have a direct bearing on the longevity of the conflict.

BTW, it's not necessary to speculate about how little I know. Let's stick to the facts.

[1] http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Backchannels/2012/1114/Is-Ham... [as-responsible-for-Gaza-rocket-fire-Not-exactly]

I don't think much of your comment makes sense, unless you think that it's worth the violence to end the Israeli occupation. I think it's clear that the violence is hurting that goal anyway plus killing Palestinians, so the only reasonable thing to do is to try to end the violence first, then worry about everything else. If the price is (a), well, policemen get shot everywhere. That's one (heavy) price Hamas has to pay to be a government.

It is Israel that breaks the ceasefires and starts the violence. Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nancy-kanwisher/reigniting-vio...

Maybe, maybe not: http://www.pnas.org/content/108/15/E53.full

>by (a) violently suppressing competing militias[1] in Gaza

In other words, behaving like a government, which they supposedly are?

Oh, no, that's not was I was trying to say at all. We most certainly cannot live with it. I also wasn't trying to discount the importance of the Palestinian deaths. I was just trying to give a sense of how violent this conflict really is.

I do think, though, that you really must take into account, when measuring the intensity of the conflict, its entire history. After all, the violence didn't start when the occupation began, and, sadly, it's not likely to end when the Palestinians finally get an independent state (as I hope they would). But let's not turn this into an endless political argument. This isn't the Daily Beast.

OK, I take your point. And really, I didn't intend to have a political argument, just to identify the political dimensions of statistics.

(Of course, the Israeli-Arab conflict doesn't encapsulate the 'entire history' of the Jewish/Palestinian-Arab conflict either, some of whose bloodiest events happened before 1948. But that doesn't alter its magnitude.)

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