Palestinians murder Palestinians

Sam Hardy

I had originally asked over at Harry's Place: if of 245 deaths caused by Israeli attacks, about 50% (123) were civilians, how could an unspecified proportion (other than 100%) of civilian deaths in the 318 caused by Palestinian violence leave civilians nearly three times more likely to die from Palestinian, rather than Israeli, attack? In your extract, Human Rights Watch said only that there were "many" civilian deaths during Palestinian violence. What proportion of the total body count did you assume, from that? (It may all be there in the report, but you don't present it.) If we use the only figures that we have here - the worst violence, in which there were 161 Palestinians killed, 41 of those civilians, that results in not only a lower percentage of Palestinian civilian deaths from Palestinian violence (about 25%) than Palestinian deaths from Israeli violence (50%), but also a lower total civilian body count in Palestinian violence (about 80) than in Israeli (about 123). (If we assumed an equal 50%, Palestinian violence would have caused a not significantly different number of civilian deaths, at around 159, rather than 123.) Then I realised that, to arrive at these figures and implications, he was bundling up Palestinian civilians killed by Palestinian militants with Palestinian militants killed by each other. Were you trying to do this too? Is that the fairest comparison? Should we be burying the victim with the perpetrator?

Sempronius

The bottom line is this: Total Palestinians killed by Israelis = 245; Total Palestinians killed by Palestinians = 318. And if the Palestinians who are so busy killing other Palestinians weren't also trying to kill Israelis, the number of Palestinians killed by Israelis would be zero.

sebastian

Am I correct in concluding from Sam's body-counts that the brotherly Palestinians are at least half as dangerous to each other as their sworn object of implacable and deranged hate - Israel - is in that State's defensive reaction to Islamists' murderous ambitions to exterminate it? On the strength of this, I really can't decide which is the more fatal. "Palestinians'" half deadly attempts to slaughter their way to sectarian reconciliation? Or Israel's more deadly refusal to be wiped off the map? Either way, I'd like to think we could hold a more accurate Human Rights scale between the two than a grim, crude weighbridge just for corpses. It's something HRW should turn its efforts towards.

Sam Hardy

Both the Israeli military and the Palestinian factions inflict civilian suffering. My only concern is that Palestinian-killed Palestinian civilians are distinguished from Palestinian-killed Palestinian fighters, because, just as much as Palestinian fighters "get themselves killed" attacking Israel, Palestinian civilians do not "get themselves killed" by living in the Palestinian Occupied Territories. I think it actually downplays Palestinian civilian suffering at Palestinian hands, by lumping them together with the fighters, as if they were one group. (There could be at least five: armed Hamas and their allies; civilian supporters of Hamas's political programme, but not their violence; armed Fatah and their allies; civilian supporters of Fatah's political programme, but not their violence; and other civilians, who support neither of the factions.)