5 MILLION AMERICANS DEAD, 11 MILLION INJURED IN JUST SEVEN MONTHS
Got your attention?
Those are what the casualty figures would be if the United States were Gaza. Oh, and of those victims, 2,145,000 would be children.
Our eyes glaze over when we listen to casualty figures day in and day out from Gaza.
But putting them in the context of your own country—your community, your family- is a far better way to bring home the horror of what has been happening for the past seven months.
The arithmetic is simple:
Israel’s original losses in the savage October 7th attack by Hamas were 1,139 civilians and military dead, 10,000 injured, and 252 hostages taken.
Israel’s furious response is still going on. As of today, the toll is 36,000 Palestinians killed and 81,136,000 injured, of which 15,000 are children.
That’s roughly 30 Palestinians killed for every Israeli.
(These figures are from the health authority controlled by Hamas, but they are not seriously disputed by the U.N. nor other agencies tracking the situation.)
But now, to bring it home to you, the reader, if you’re American, with a country 143 times more populous than Gaza (333 million v 2.3 million), you’d be mourning the deaths of 5,165,217 of your U.S. compatriots over the past seven months.
Added to that, more than 11.6 million Americans would be wounded, probably millions missing arms or legs, paralyzed, and disfigured for life.
In the U.S. were Gaza, four times more Americans would have died in the past seven months than died in all the wars in which the U.S. was involved since 1776. (Those dead come to 1.3 million and included your incredibly bloody Civil War.
Together, the equivalent number of American dead and injured would equal the population of Pennsylvania and Connecticut. (Wait a few more weeks, and they will equal the entire population of the State of New York).
Oh, and by the way, you’d have virtually no access to decent medical care, most of your hospitals would be shut down or ruined, famine and disease would be everywhere, and emaciated children would be dying each day from starvation and disease. About 35% of all housing units would be destroyed or damaged (according to the U.N.), and about 71 million Americans would be homeless. And each day, you’d be receiving orders about where to pick up and run to next with your terrified family—though nowhere would be safe.
You’re not American? Your Canadian?
In that case, you use 17.6 as a multiplier to transform casualty figures from Gaza to Canada. (40 million vs. 2.3 million).
There would be 637,000 Canadians dead and 1.428,000 wounded, of which 264,000 would be children. The dead and injured would equal the entire population of Ottawa and Edmonton combined. That would also be about fifteen times the number of Canadian soldiers who died in WW2. (45,000)
For France? Population 68 million?
You’d have lost 1,080,000 dead, 2,430,000 wounded. The number of dead, believe it or not, is two times the number of civilian and military deaths that France suffered in World War II.
It would, however, be short of the horrendous casualties (1.4 million dead and 4.2 million) that France suffered in World War I. On the other hand, in Gaza, all the bloody mayhem took place in just the past seven months—not four years. And it’s not over yet.
And the Jewish population of Israel? Which equals about 7 million, including the Occupied Territories. ( The multiple there is about 3.04).
That works out to 122,000 Israelis killed in the past seven months. 243,000 wounded. That would be 27% more than the entire population of Haifa. (285,000).
By the way, the Palestinian casualty figures do not include the ethnic cleansing that’s been undertaken by right-wing Israelis and settlers with the help of the Israeli army in the Occupied Territories--villages seized, destroyed, and Palestinians run off their lands. While the world is focused on Gaza.
So far, more than 500 Palestinians have been killed there since October 7.
And it hasn’t stopped. Nothing has stopped.