What Raqqa Says about Gaza’s Death Toll
Page 1 of 1
What Raqqa Says about Gaza’s Death Toll
Now that the battle to drive the Islamic State (ISIS) from its Syrian capital of Raqqa has ended, reporters are beginning to explore the devastation the fighting left behind. The information that has emerged so far sheds some interesting light on the Hamas-Israel war in Gaza in summer 2014. In particular, it utterly refutes the accusation by the UN and much of the Western world that Israel caused “appalling” and “excessive” Palestinian casualties.
Admittedly, that isn’t obvious at first glance. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, over 3,000 people were killed in Raqqa, including about 1,130 civilians, during the course of a four-month battle. In Gaza, according to UN figures, 2,251 Palestinians, including 1,462 civilians, were killed in the course of just 50 days. And while there’s good reason to think the UN’s civilian casualty count is wildly inflated (the actual ratio of civilian-to-military casualties is probably around 1:1 or even lower), even Israel puts the total death toll at 2,125 people, comprising 936 combatants, 761 civilians, and 428 unidentified. That isn’t nearly as far below Raqqa’s figures as the conflicts’ relative durations might lead one to expect.
But that simplistic conclusion ignores two crucial factors. The first is that a comparison of raw numbers is meaningless; the relevant comparison is casualties as a proportion of the population. And by that measure, Raqqa’s casualty rate exceeded Gaza’s by as much as 100 to one. Here’s the math:
According to a New York Times report published last week, Raqqa had a population of 300,000 when ISIS took it over. But after the organization began imposing a brutal reign of terror in 2014, “tens of thousands” of people fled, so the population was much lower when the battle to oust ISIS began. More people fled once the battle started. Consequently, “By the dwindling days of the group’s rule, only about 25,000 residents remained.” In comparison, Gaza’s population in 2014 was around 1.79 million, according to official Palestinian statistics.
In other words, those 3,000 casualties in Raqqa represented one percent of the city’s pre-ISIS population and a whopping 12 percent of its population as of early September. The casualties in Gaza, by contrast, represented about 0.12 percent of that territory’s population. Thus, as a proportion of the population, casualties in Raqqa were somewhere between 10 and 100 times higher than those in Gaza, and almost certainly much closer to the higher figure. That is an astronomical difference.
Moreover, the real difference is probably even greater, due to the second critical factor: the effect of Raqqa’s more extensive property damage.
In an article last year comparing property damage in the Gaza war to property damage in the battle to oust ISIS from the Iraqi city of Ramadi, I found that roughly six percent of buildings in Gaza were destroyed or badly damaged, compared to about 50 percent in Ramadi (the detailed calculation is here). The damage in Raqqa is still being surveyed but is likely to prove similar to that in Ramadi. As New York Times reporter Ivor Prickett wrote last week, “when I visited eastern Raqqa, it was hard to find a street or building that had not been damaged by the fighting.”
The result, as Prickett noted, is that on top of the 3,000 people known to have been killed in Raqqa, “many others are missing.” And many of the missing probably died and were buried under the rubble. They will be found only months later, if ever, judging by the experience of the Iraqi city of Mosul. There, as the New York Times reported earlier this month, bodies are still being dug up from the rubble more than two months after the city’s liberation from ISIS; it will take many more months to find them all, and some may never be found.
The fact that, as the Times put it, many of the thousands who “may have died in the fighting” in Mosul are “lying uncounted beneath the rubble” means the city’s true death toll may never be known. The same is likely true in Raqqa. But in both cities, the large number of bodies buried under destroyed buildings means the actual death toll is certainly much higher than the initial reports.
In Gaza, however, precisely because the property damage was much less extensive, all the dead were located quickly and a total could be announced almost immediately. Final casualty totals in Gaza are being compared to very partial and preliminary counts in places like Raqqa and Mosul, making the Gaza conflict look bloodier by comparison than it really was.
ISIS and Hamas employ virtually identical tactics, which is why comparing Gaza to Raqqa or Mosul makes sense. Both dig extensive tunnel networks under civilian buildings, wire civilian buildings with explosives, stockpile arms in civilian buildings and fight from the midst of a civilian population. These tactics greatly increase both property damage and civilian casualties, whether in Gaza, Syria, or Iraq.
Yet despite the enemy’s similar tactics, Israel produced vastly lower casualties as a proportion of Gaza’s population and much less property damage as a proportion of Gaza’s property than the Western coalition against ISIS did in Syria and Iraq. In other words, the very Western countries that accused Israel of “disproportionate” and “excessive” harm in Gaza were guilty of far greater harm in Syria and Iraq.
So if they really believe the accusations they hurled at Israel, Western leaders—starting with former U.S. President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry—ought to turn themselves in as war criminals. And if they don’t like that option, it’s past time for them to finally admit that what they acknowledge in Syria and Iraq is equally true in Gaza. It’s simply not possible to fight terrorist organizations that employ the tactics used by ISIS and Hamas without harming civilians.
And it’s also time for them to admit what a group of high-ranking Western military experts concluded in a comprehensive report on the Gaza war: faced with these difficulties, Israel’s success in minimizing civilian harm equaled or exceeded that of any other Western country. If more proof were needed, that 100-to-one difference in casualty ratios between Raqqa and Gaza certainly provides it.
https://www.commentarymagazine.com/foreign-policy/middle-east/raqqa-says-gazas-death-toll/
Admittedly, that isn’t obvious at first glance. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, over 3,000 people were killed in Raqqa, including about 1,130 civilians, during the course of a four-month battle. In Gaza, according to UN figures, 2,251 Palestinians, including 1,462 civilians, were killed in the course of just 50 days. And while there’s good reason to think the UN’s civilian casualty count is wildly inflated (the actual ratio of civilian-to-military casualties is probably around 1:1 or even lower), even Israel puts the total death toll at 2,125 people, comprising 936 combatants, 761 civilians, and 428 unidentified. That isn’t nearly as far below Raqqa’s figures as the conflicts’ relative durations might lead one to expect.
But that simplistic conclusion ignores two crucial factors. The first is that a comparison of raw numbers is meaningless; the relevant comparison is casualties as a proportion of the population. And by that measure, Raqqa’s casualty rate exceeded Gaza’s by as much as 100 to one. Here’s the math:
According to a New York Times report published last week, Raqqa had a population of 300,000 when ISIS took it over. But after the organization began imposing a brutal reign of terror in 2014, “tens of thousands” of people fled, so the population was much lower when the battle to oust ISIS began. More people fled once the battle started. Consequently, “By the dwindling days of the group’s rule, only about 25,000 residents remained.” In comparison, Gaza’s population in 2014 was around 1.79 million, according to official Palestinian statistics.
In other words, those 3,000 casualties in Raqqa represented one percent of the city’s pre-ISIS population and a whopping 12 percent of its population as of early September. The casualties in Gaza, by contrast, represented about 0.12 percent of that territory’s population. Thus, as a proportion of the population, casualties in Raqqa were somewhere between 10 and 100 times higher than those in Gaza, and almost certainly much closer to the higher figure. That is an astronomical difference.
Moreover, the real difference is probably even greater, due to the second critical factor: the effect of Raqqa’s more extensive property damage.
In an article last year comparing property damage in the Gaza war to property damage in the battle to oust ISIS from the Iraqi city of Ramadi, I found that roughly six percent of buildings in Gaza were destroyed or badly damaged, compared to about 50 percent in Ramadi (the detailed calculation is here). The damage in Raqqa is still being surveyed but is likely to prove similar to that in Ramadi. As New York Times reporter Ivor Prickett wrote last week, “when I visited eastern Raqqa, it was hard to find a street or building that had not been damaged by the fighting.”
The result, as Prickett noted, is that on top of the 3,000 people known to have been killed in Raqqa, “many others are missing.” And many of the missing probably died and were buried under the rubble. They will be found only months later, if ever, judging by the experience of the Iraqi city of Mosul. There, as the New York Times reported earlier this month, bodies are still being dug up from the rubble more than two months after the city’s liberation from ISIS; it will take many more months to find them all, and some may never be found.
The fact that, as the Times put it, many of the thousands who “may have died in the fighting” in Mosul are “lying uncounted beneath the rubble” means the city’s true death toll may never be known. The same is likely true in Raqqa. But in both cities, the large number of bodies buried under destroyed buildings means the actual death toll is certainly much higher than the initial reports.
In Gaza, however, precisely because the property damage was much less extensive, all the dead were located quickly and a total could be announced almost immediately. Final casualty totals in Gaza are being compared to very partial and preliminary counts in places like Raqqa and Mosul, making the Gaza conflict look bloodier by comparison than it really was.
ISIS and Hamas employ virtually identical tactics, which is why comparing Gaza to Raqqa or Mosul makes sense. Both dig extensive tunnel networks under civilian buildings, wire civilian buildings with explosives, stockpile arms in civilian buildings and fight from the midst of a civilian population. These tactics greatly increase both property damage and civilian casualties, whether in Gaza, Syria, or Iraq.
Yet despite the enemy’s similar tactics, Israel produced vastly lower casualties as a proportion of Gaza’s population and much less property damage as a proportion of Gaza’s property than the Western coalition against ISIS did in Syria and Iraq. In other words, the very Western countries that accused Israel of “disproportionate” and “excessive” harm in Gaza were guilty of far greater harm in Syria and Iraq.
So if they really believe the accusations they hurled at Israel, Western leaders—starting with former U.S. President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry—ought to turn themselves in as war criminals. And if they don’t like that option, it’s past time for them to finally admit that what they acknowledge in Syria and Iraq is equally true in Gaza. It’s simply not possible to fight terrorist organizations that employ the tactics used by ISIS and Hamas without harming civilians.
And it’s also time for them to admit what a group of high-ranking Western military experts concluded in a comprehensive report on the Gaza war: faced with these difficulties, Israel’s success in minimizing civilian harm equaled or exceeded that of any other Western country. If more proof were needed, that 100-to-one difference in casualty ratios between Raqqa and Gaza certainly provides it.
https://www.commentarymagazine.com/foreign-policy/middle-east/raqqa-says-gazas-death-toll/
Guest- Guest
nicko- Forum Detective ????♀️
- Posts : 13368
Join date : 2013-12-07
Age : 83
Location : rainbow bridge
Re: What Raqqa Says about Gaza’s Death Toll
Will any Syrians ever go back,? If they do, each can take with them 2 Bricks and a small bag of Cement?
nicko- Forum Detective ????♀️
- Posts : 13368
Join date : 2013-12-07
Age : 83
Location : rainbow bridge
Similar topics
» Palestinians say death toll over 70 as Israel pounds Gaza with air raids
» Aussie Death Toll in Ukraine now at 36..
» Death toll in Yemen's Aden rises to 195 amid worsening humanitarian crisis
» Covid-19, the UK daily death toll now higher than the combined EU
» Airstrike Devastates Kobani Hill As Death Toll In Syria From Coalition Campaign Tops 500
» Aussie Death Toll in Ukraine now at 36..
» Death toll in Yemen's Aden rises to 195 amid worsening humanitarian crisis
» Covid-19, the UK daily death toll now higher than the combined EU
» Airstrike Devastates Kobani Hill As Death Toll In Syria From Coalition Campaign Tops 500
Page 1 of 1
Permissions in this forum:
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
Sat Mar 18, 2023 12:28 pm by Ben Reilly
» TOTAL MADNESS Great British Railway Journeys among shows flagged by counter terror scheme ‘for encouraging far-right sympathies
Wed Feb 22, 2023 5:14 pm by Tommy Monk
» Interesting COVID figures
Tue Feb 21, 2023 5:00 am by Tommy Monk
» HAPPY CHRISTMAS.
Sun Jan 01, 2023 7:33 pm by Tommy Monk
» The Fight Over Climate Change is Over (The Greenies Won!)
Thu Dec 15, 2022 3:59 pm by Tommy Monk
» Trump supporter murders wife, kills family dog, shoots daughter
Mon Dec 12, 2022 1:21 am by 'Wolfie
» Quill
Thu Oct 20, 2022 10:28 pm by Tommy Monk
» Algerian Woman under investigation for torture and murder of French girl, 12, whose body was found in plastic case in Paris
Thu Oct 20, 2022 10:04 pm by Tommy Monk
» Wind turbines cool down the Earth (edited with better video link)
Sun Oct 16, 2022 9:19 am by Ben Reilly
» Saying goodbye to our Queen.
Sun Sep 25, 2022 9:02 pm by Maddog
» PHEW.
Sat Sep 17, 2022 6:33 pm by Syl
» And here's some more enrichment...
Thu Sep 15, 2022 3:46 pm by Ben Reilly
» John F Kennedy Assassination
Thu Sep 15, 2022 3:40 pm by Ben Reilly
» Where is everyone lately...?
Thu Sep 15, 2022 3:33 pm by Ben Reilly
» London violence over the weekend...
Mon Sep 05, 2022 2:19 pm by Tommy Monk
» Why should anyone believe anything that Mo Farah says...!?
Wed Jul 13, 2022 1:44 am by Tommy Monk
» Liverpool Labour defends mayor role poll after turnout was only 3% and they say they will push ahead with the option that was least preferred!!!
Mon Jul 11, 2022 1:11 pm by Tommy Monk
» Labour leader Keir Stammer can't answer the simple question of whether a woman has a penis or not...
Mon Jul 11, 2022 3:58 am by Tommy Monk
» More evidence of remoaners still trying to overturn Brexit... and this is a conservative MP who should be drummed out of the party and out of parliament!
Sun Jul 10, 2022 10:50 pm by Tommy Monk
» R Kelly 30 years, Ghislaine Maxwell 20 years... but here in UK...
Fri Jul 08, 2022 5:31 pm by Original Quill