The world is fixated on the suffering, both real and fictitious, of the Arabs in Gaza. But that is because Jews are involved, and “Jews are news.” Supposed outrage over the treatment of Gazans has become a respectable vehicle for antisemitism, a pathological disease from which, alas, hundreds of millions around the world suffer.
Many Arabs have suffered far worse than the “Palestinians” in Gaza, yet are given far less attention, precisely because Jews are not part of the story. More on this phenomenon, described several months ago by Hussain Abdul-Hussain of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, can be found here.
What would a Sudanese person watching that country’s renewed civil war — which has killed 14,000, displaced eight million, and threatens 17 million with famine in less than a year — think when they this CBS headline: “Gaza faces unprecedented desperation.”
Sudan has a population of 46 million, Gaza only has two million.
Between 2004 and 2009, the Sudanese regime killed 400,000 people in Sudan. Millions were displaced and still live today in camps suffering acute hunger and the spread of cholera. Since then, the Sudanese regime has disintegrated into its components: its the army and its militias. Since April, the two sides have been engaged in a civil war, causing even more Sudanese deaths, displacement, and agony.
A child in Sudan is dying every hour, according to Medecins Sans Frontier. The International Rescue Committee lists the war in Sudan as the top concern of its 2024 Emergency Watchlist.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) reported that 25 million Sudanese are in need of assistance. Close to 18 million of them face acute hunger, 4.9 million on emergency levels. Of the $2.7 billion needed for Sudan in 2024, UN agencies have received $96.7 million, amounting to only four percent.
Yet, the Sudanese tragedy never seems to attract as much attention as the newer and much smaller conflict in Gaza. UN Secretary General Secretary General António Guterres said about Gaza: “We are witnessing a killing of civilians that is unparalleled and unprecedented in any conflict since I have been Secretary-General.”
But Guterres is wrong.
When the number of deaths in Gaza stood at a reported 29,000 — if we were to believe local Gazan sources — Hamas claimed that it had lost 6,000 of its fighters. Israel alleged that Hamas had lost double that number. Even assuming nearly 30,000 people have died (something we have no way to verify), if we split the difference, the ratio of combatants to non-combatants killed in war in Gaza would be roughly 1:2, lower than the 1:3 (or 1:4) ratio of a similar Middle Eastern asymmetric war when US forces eradicated ISIS in Mosul….
Instead of “splitting the difference,” as Abdul-Hussain does, let us be more exact: by the beginning of March, Hamas reported 30,000 deaths (it does not distinguish between civilians and Hamas terrorists), while the IDF said it had killed 13,000 Hamas operatives. That means that the ratio of civilian-to-combatant deaths in Gaza now stands at 17:13, which is far less than 2:1 — closer, in fact, to 3:2, which no army in the history of warfare has ever achieved, except the IDF, with its colossal effort to warn civilians – by leafleting, messaging, and telephoning — in Gaza away from areas, and from buildings (schools, apartment buildings, mosques) that are about to be targeted. Since then, this has not changed.
We see on the nightly news pictures of the dead, and of the destruction, in Gaza. What has much too rarely been shown to audiences worldwide is the far greater loss of life, through war and famine, in Sudan. When was the last time you have seen any videos from Sudan? Nor did we see the destruction and horrendous loss of life wrought by Assad’s forces in Syria during that country’s decade of civil war. Again, when have you ever seen videos of the aftermath of the Syrian civil war? We were not shown the scenes of the destruction in Iraq, the result of the two wars fought in that country by the Americans, first against Saddam Hussein, and then against ISIS. Nor have we seen the effects Yemenis have endured, including widespread famine, as a result of the civil war between the Sunni-dominated central government and the Houthi rebels, with Saudi Arabia supporting the Sunnis and Iran the Shi’a Houthis.
In fact, even when proven false, the global media has rarely retracted erroneous reporting. On October 17, the world media claimed that Israel had committed an “unprecedented” attack on a Gaza hospital that killed 500 Palestinians. It turned out that errant Palestinian fire had killed tens of Palestinians who were camped in the yard of that hospital. Yet the original report is still available today on Reuters‘ website, without any update or errata notice.
The claim by Hamas that an Israeli airstrike had killed “500 people” at the Al-Ahli hospital was dutifully reported around the world, but it turned out to be false in every respect. It was a missile launched by Palestinian Islamic Jihad that misfired, and fell to earth inside Gaza, on the parking lot of the hospital, not on the hospital itself. And finally, there were not “500 dead,” but between 10 and 50 people killed, as American intelligence confirmed. Yet one of the two most important news agencies in the world, Reuters, that supplies its reports to thousands of outlets for reprinting, continues to carry the original story, and not the corrected version. Why?
Mike says
Has killed 14,000? (sic) Is that a typo? One would think that the war on Sudan has killed 1,400,000 or even more?
abu taleb says
Muslims killing people (both muslims and non muslims) is not news, because it is a very common. Just like the sin always rises every day, it is not news, nobody needs to pay attention.
Besides, who cares what happen in Africa especially the black Africans. (sarc)