[Opinion] The Return of the Gaza Numbers Game
[Excerpts]
The headlines and images of violence from the border between Israel and Gaza are chilling – dozens of dead Palestinians, thousands more wounded. But no Israeli casualties.
The high number of casualties on the Gaza side versus the limited injuries and zero deaths in Israel has been portrayed around the world as proof of Israeli culpability. Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch tweeted his outrage at this asymmetry: “According to the pro-Israel trolls, it’s all the Palestinians’ fault that Israeli snipers killed 55 of them with nary a scratch on the Israeli side.”
his is how the violence of the past six weeks, reaching a crescendo on May 14 when the US opened its embassy in Jerusalem, has been cast, in the standard narrative of “David vs. Goliath,” of Israeli aggression and Palestinian victimhood.
This conventional wisdom notwithstanding, it is important to take a step back and recognize two core truths about the casualty statistics emerging from Gaza.
