StatCounter

Tuesday 12 March 2013

Interesting how the BBC choose when to report with 'context'

The BBC's reluctant report  includes this piece of context at the end:

'The UN report concluded that at least 169 Palestinians were killed by Israeli attacks during the offensive.

It said more than 100 were civilians, including 33 children and 13 women. The report said six Israelis were killed by Palestinians attacks, including four civilians.'
Even if we accept the Palestinian sourced split between civilians and military, and work on the minimum figure of 101 civilians out of 169 deaths, that makes a ratio of approximately 1.69:1 civilians:military. This sounds terrible, after all surely more military should be killed than civilians.

Now for some context:
According the International Committee of the Red Cross, the civilian-to-soldier death ratio in wars fought since the mid-20th century has been 10:1, meaning ten civilian deaths for every soldier death. The source for this is Greenberg Research, Inc., The People on War Report, International Committee of the Red Cross, 1999, iii."The fundamental shift in the character of war is illustrated by a stark statistic: in World War I, nine soldiers were killed for every civilian life lost. In today’s wars, it is estimated that 10 civilians die for every soldier or fighter killed in battle."

During the Israel/Palestinian conflict of 2006-2007 approximately 810 Palestinians were killed in Gaza of which approximately 200 were civilians - a ratio of approximately 1:3. During the period leading up to the conflict 1,010 Israelis were killed by Palestinian terrorist attacks of which 773 were civilians - a ratio of approximately 5:1.

Testifying before the United Nations, Col. Richard Kemp, a British commander, stated that:
'Mr. President, based on my knowledge and experience, I can say this: During Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli Defence Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare. Israel did so while facing an enemy that deliberately positioned its military capability behind the human shield of the civilian population... The truth is that the IDF took extraordinary measures to give Gaza civilians notice of targeted areas, dropping over 2 million leaflets, and making over 100,000 phone calls. Many missions that could have taken out Hamas military capability were aborted to prevent civilian casualties. During the conflict, the IDF allowed huge amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza. To deliver aid virtually into your enemy's hands is, to the military tactician, normally quite unthinkable. But the IDF took on those risks.

Despite all of this, of course innocent civilians were killed. War is chaos and full of mistakes. There have been mistakes by the British, American and other forces in Afghanistan and in Iraq, many of which can be put down to human error. But mistakes are not war crimes...

More than anything, the civilian casualties were a consequence of Hamas way of fighting. Hamas deliberately tried to sacrifice their own civilians.'

Now that's some context that the BBC don't report. I contend this is because the BBC is institutionally biased against Israel, that the Balen Report showed this and that is why the BBC is so desperate to keep that report secret.


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