The Gaza Strip is 365 square kilometers and has a population of over 2 million. For comparison, LEAFS SUCK is 630 square kilometers with 2.9 million residents and Chicago is 600 square kilometers with 2.7 million residents. This is the area that Israel is bombing and now invading with tanks and soldiers. The first week of the campaign, Israel was dropping a thousand bombs a day. And they have only picked up the pace since then. And - an important reminder - they have not stopped.
There was a statistic running around a short while ago - that the number of children killed in Gaza in just three weeks had surpassed the number of children killed across all other conflict zones across the world since 2019. And - an important reminder - it is still going on right now, only at a faster pace.
The current death count is over 9,000. Sadly, this isn't a Dragonball reference - that's the number of people that have been confirmed dead, people whose corpses the Gaza Health Ministry has identified by name. Adding to this sadness is the scope of the undercount. There are hundreds if not thousands buried under the rubble. The deaths in Gaza City over the past two days is almost certainly undercounted as information getting out of there is unlikely with Israeli tanks surrounding the place. The actual death toll is certainly way over 10K now. You might recall that I used the UNRWA Gaza Field Office size to scale things - there are 10K UNRWA workers at that office. This works out to one per 200 Gazans. Now basically the same as the number of dead.
One in 200 dead. In Canada this would mean 190,000 dead. In the US, this would be 1.65 million dead. In less than a month.
Using only the official verified count of 9,000 over 27 days - this is 1,000 deaths every 3 days - 14 people per hour - one person dying from violence every 260 seconds. Non-stop for almost four weeks. And - an important reminder - it has not stopped, but in fact only picked up speed.
One in 200 dead. The US Civil War saw a million people die out of a population of 31 million. 1 in 31 - staggeringly horrific. But it took 4 years - 50 times longer than the bombing campaign in Gaza has lasted. The rate of death in Gaza right now is seven times higher than the scaled proportional deaths from the Civil War. Add to that, roughly 2/3 of US Civil War deaths were from disease. It's hard to maintain hygiene when you're restricted to 1800's technology. The Gaza Strip is now largely without power or medical supplies. Or clean water. While it was already overcrowded before, people have fled to seek protection near buildings that they believe Israel wouldn't target - hospitals and UN schools. Before the bombing, Gaza was substantially denser than the cities I cited earlier - it has only gotten even more crowded as the situation deteriorates. The death toll in Gaza is likely almost all violent deaths and people succumbing to injuries from bombing - the plague deaths have not kicked in yet. And - an important reminder - there is no respite, the overcrowding gets worse as more residential areas are bombed to rubble - because the bombing continues at this very moment.
And yet - people still invoke Israel's right to self-defense. They can look at the carnage and destruction being laid in Gaza and then imply that this is somehow "self-defense". Context matters. Just waiting for the first reporter willing to lose their job in order to ask whatever US spokesidiot whether they honestly believe that what is happening in Gaza right now is Israel defending itself.
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