Israelis and Palestinians Killed in the Current Violence

Retaliation?

American news reports repeatedly describe Israeli military attacks against the Palestinian population as “retaliation.” However, when one looks into the chronology of death in this conflict, the reality turns out to be quite different.

Death Ratio: First Month of Uprising

Source: B’Tselem

For example, it turns out that over 80 Palestinian children, many shot in the head, were killed BEFORE the first Israeli child died. At least 127 Palestinians were killed before the first Jewish Israeli lost his life on Israeli land. (The Palestine Red Crescent Society, a very reliable medical organization gives this number as 147, but in the interest of using the same source for Israelis and Palestinians, we are using the more conservative numbers provided by the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem.) During the first month 121 Palestinians and 11 Israelis — virtually all either illegal settlers or soldiers on Palestinian territory — were killed.

Included in the number of Palestinian dead are three Palestinian women and girls who died due to restrictions placed on their movement by the Israeli military:

1. Ten-year old ’Ala Hamdan ’Abd al-’Aziz Ahmad died when her appendix burst after Israeli soldiers prevented her father from taking her to a hospital.
2. Twenty-seven-year-old Na’im ’Attallah a-’Abd Ahmad Huas, a liver patient, died after Israeli soldiers prevented her from obtaining dialysis treatment at a hospital in Nablus.
3. Masiona Hussein, age 60, a diabetes patient, died after being forced to travel to the hospital along treacherous paths because of physical roadblocks placed on the main roadways by Israeli forces.

In addition, an important fact often left out of U.S. reports is that in this war the Israeli side is armed with high-tech, high-cost weaponry: a large arsenal of nuclear weapons, F-16s, helicopter gunships, top-of-the line tanks, sniper scopes, the best helmets and personal safety gear money can buy. Palestinians, on the other hand, whose land has been invaded by Israel (this fact is also usually omitted) are largely unarmed. Some have a small supply of rifles, handguns, and home-made mortars; very few have uniforms, helmets, etc.

For Israel it is, basically, a turkey shoot. The only “weapon” that Israel fears is that tragic result of such an unequal conflict: the suicide bomber.

One other critical fact that is also consistently omitted from U.S. coverage is the local connection: Israel’s power comes from the over $10 million per day that American taxpayers give it. This is more aid than goes to any other nation on earth. In fact, Israel, with a population of 6 million, receives more US tax dollars than all of Sub-Saharan Africa put together.

Americans are directly involved. We need to be accurately informed.