The Daily Background

Over the last week or so I’ve written a few times about the situation with Iraq with regards to whether or not a civil war is going on there (I’ve argued yes). Ned Lamont, who recently won an extremely tough Democratic primary (as we all know), consistently referred to the situation in Iraq as “a bloody civil war” which I think was a smart move on his part.

We’ve been looking at Iraq a whole lot and talking about civil war there, but now (evidently) we should be worried about civil war breaking out in Lebanon according to several Arab states led by Qatar. More than 1,000 people have been killed on both sides of the war which now in its fourth week, and thousands have been wounded.

I was thinking recently about the situation with regard to the Israeli military’s Hezbollah-civillian kill ratio. That is to say, how many civillians they kill compared to how many Hezbollah militants they kill. While the number of Hezollah militants that have been killed in the fighting is unknown, based on reports I estimate it to be at or slightly under 100. Last week there were reports that 50 fighters had been killed so far, and more recently about 30-40 was an additional number that floated around the press.

Again, these aren’t exact numbers because nobody has exact numbers. The Israeli military itself doesn’t claim to have any sort of numbers although they will occasionally say that they can confirm they have killed x or y number of Hezbollah fighters on a certain day.

We already know that upwards of 900 Lebanese civillians have been killed and the most recent reports peg that number at closer to 1,000.

The Israeli military, throughout this entire war has said that it has done nothing more than defend itself (even the mistake bombing of 37 child refugees in Qana was done in self defense according to them). They show no signs of letting up on attacks, and in fact are going to intensify them. Can one reasonably infer that they are then satisfied with their Hezbollah:civillian kill ratio?

This ratio is, according to the only numbers we have, roughly a ratio of 1:10. For every Hezbollah militant killed, ten Lebansese civillians must die, according to the Israeli military, because of Hezbollah’s supposed evil tactic of assimilating themselves into Lebanese neighborhoods.

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This Hezbollah practice, I feel obliged to note, has in fact been cast into doubt. If Hezbollah are indeed radical Islamic terrorists, then why would they integrate themselves into the almost exclusively Christian neighborhoods of Beirut which the Israeli military has targetted for bombing and virtuall gutted in “self defense.” In fact, individual Israeli fighter pilots have now begun to doubt the intelligence their commanders give them and actually abort bombing missions out of fear that they’re being ordered to target civillians.

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Still though, back to the ratio, does the Israeli military really think it holds the moral upper hand if it is killing anywhere near ten civillians per Hezbollah militant? Contoversely, does Hezbollah actually believe that it can possibly have the moral upper hand if it deliberately aims rocket attacks at Israeli civillians as part of its supposed “self-defense”?

Since there are an estimated 1,000 Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon, and Israel’s stated goal is to kill all of them and eliminate Hezbollah, then if they even have one third the kill ratio they have now, 3,000 Lebanese civillians will have to die– that’s roughly the number of Americans who died on 9/11.

The only people who have the moral upper hand in this situation are those calling for immediate peace. And unfortunately, neither side is.

Filed under: Middle East Crisis, Z-TDB Blog