Fact & Fiction Regarding
Casualties in Operation Cast Lead
(Updated February 2009)
Every war has civilian casualties. It is
one of the tragic elements of violent conflict.
Sadly, the war in Gaza was no different and
innocent lives were lost and should be mourned.
It is still necessary, however, to separate
fact from fiction about the casualties of
war and ensure that scurrilous accusations
about the behavior of the Israeli Defense
Forces do not go unchallenged.
History has shown that Israeli
soldiers are routinely smeared by officials
from human rights organizations, the UN and
propagandists in the Arab world and beyond.
To cite just a few examples, in the first
Lebanon war, Israel was
accused of killing 10,000 Lebanese and leaving
600,000 homeless. Later, it was learned the
figures were inventions of Yasser
Arafat’s brother, Fathi,
who headed the Palestine Red Crescent. In
2002, Israel was
charged with killing 500 people in the Jenin “massacre.” It
was a lie. A total of 56 people died, 34
were terrorists. In the second
Lebanon war, the Lebanese Prime
Minister claimed another “massacre,” but
instead of 40 dead as he claimed, only one
person had died.
In Gaza, we are told that 1,300 Palestinians
died, most civilians. What is the source
for these statistics?
The principal source appears to be Palestinian
health officials who are all employed by Hamas. Given that Hamas killed
Palestinians who crossed the organization during the fighting
and have been exacting more revenge since
the cease-fire, how likely is it that any
of these officials will provide accurate
information? Since it is in the interest
of Hamas to minimize the number of casualties
among its troops and maximize the number
of civilians, is it surprising that Palestinians
claim fewer than 100 terrorists were killed?
Usually journalists seek
two sources to verify information, but in
this case, most were satisfied with one that
was unreliable and likely biased. At the
least, the media could have presented the
figures as unverifiable claims.
What about the UN sources? They have their
own bias from years of working for the benefit
of the Palestinians, cooperating with Hamas and apologizing for terror against
Jews. Moreover,
since UN officials were unlikely to have
gone around Gaza counting bodies, they likely
relied on the same tainted Palestinian sources.
Meanwhile, how do we know how many of the
casualties were terrorists and how many were
not? We know that Hamas ordered the fighters
to take off their uniforms and try to blend
in with the civilian population. We know
they hid in private homes. If a dead man
is found, is it clear that he is not a terrorist?
What incentive do Palestinian officials have
for reporting that he is?
What about women and children?
Obviously, they were innocent victims. Unfortunately,
because of Hamas’s
cynical use of women and children as rocket crews,
ammunition carriers and human bombs, even
small numbers of these normally innocent
groups of people may very well have been
combatants.
It is also not clear how
civilians died. According to the Palestinians, Israel murdered
them all. But how many died from Hamas rockets
that fell short? We know of at least two
Palestinian children killed that way. How
many died when booby-traps set for Israeli
troops went off in rooms full of Palestinians
trapped there by Hamas?
How many were killed by secondary explosions
when arms caches hit by Israeli forces exploded?
How many died because they were in the vicinity
of rocket crews
that drew Israeli fire? The truth is the
people reporting casualty figures have made
no effort to determine the cause of death
because that would limit the propaganda value
of the dead.
A deeper philosophical question
is whether Palestinians who did
nothing to prevent the Hamas attacks
are “innocent.”
According to the IDF,
700 of the dead were terrorists, mostly from Hamas,
and 250 were civilians. Another 200 people
are still unaccounted for. If these figures
are accurate, then the majority of the casualties
were indeed terrorists. Israel,
of course, has its own bias, but it also
has a record of integrity and, unlike the Palestinian
Authority, is an open
democracy that allows its claims to be checked
independently.
Every individual should be mourned whatever
the true number of casualties. So long as Hamas uses its children as shields, as rocket crews and as suicide bombers, however, Israel can do nothing to achieve peace with the
Palestinians.
Golda Meir’s observation remains as
true today as when she said it more than
half a century ago: “Peace will come
when the Arabs will love their children more
than they hate us.”
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