this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2023
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Israel has continued bombarding Gaza’s south despite telling 1.1 million people in the north of the besieged enclave to relocate there ahead of an expected ground offensive.

“We were displaced from Tal al-Hawa to Rafah at the request of the Israeli army, and this is what happened to us. My son is a 3-month-old martyr,” the father of a child killed in an attack in Rafah told Al Jazeera.

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[–] randon31415@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago (2 children)

America has a population that is 35 larger than Israel. If America had lost the same percentage of their population as Israel did on Oct 7th, it would be ~49,420 dead, or the equivalence of 16 "9/11"s. That is why Biden said 10 times worse than 9/11.

Iraq currently has a population of 43.5 million. 187k is 0.42% of it's population. If we do it by percent of population, Gaza has 2 million people, so the retaliation would kill "only" 8,600.

[–] hglman@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago

Oh, so good news, the blood fugue is close to an end. I was worried this would get worse. /s

[–] Krono@lemmy.today 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Why would you calculate this as a percentage of population? Do you really think the population numbers of a nation have any relevance to the value of a human life?

[–] mycatiskai@lemmy.one 10 points 1 year ago

A certain side thinks "they have no value if their skin is a brown hue"

[–] randon31415@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Biden called it "Ten 9/11s" because of percent of population. I would have called it "0.47 9/11s", as each human life is equally valid. But as impact on the whole, Oct 7th was a larger percent of the population of the country than 9/11, so it is having a much larger impact with only half as many dead.

I also hope that the numbers that die in retaliation are as low as possible, and percent population numbers gave a smaller needed "revenge" killing. Wish it was zero, but we are, underneath it all, rage-full apes with explosives.