James Veverka: Letter writer's 1:1 ratio for civilians, combatants killed Gaza is wrong

To The Daily Sun,

Sheila Kufert claims that statistics attest to a 1:1 ratio of civilians to combatants killed in Gaza. According to the UN's Human Rights Office, 44% of verified victims were children and 26% were women. There is no doubt among human rights lawyers and Holocaust experts that Israel is committing war crimes. Experts include world-renowned Israel-born historian and Holocaust expert, Omar Bardoff, who warned that statements made by high-ranking Israeli government officials "could easily be construed as indicating a genocidal intent." Israeli historian Ilan Pappé has argued that genocide "is the only appropriate way to describe what the Israeli army is doing in the Gaza Strip." Israeli historian Lee Mordechai just released a 124-page report, “Bearing Witness to the Israel-Gaza War,” which documents a wide range of atrocities committed by Israeli forces. He states that his country is committing genocide. Recently, former Israeli defense minister Moshe Yaalon accused Israel of committing war crimes and ethnic cleansing in Gaza. He said the Israeli government was putting the lives of Israel Defense Forces soldiers in danger and exposing them to lawsuits at the International Criminal Court.

In a landmark Amnesty International report titled, "You Feel Like You Are Subhuman: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza," research has found sufficient basis to conclude that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. In a 154-page report published last month titled, "Hopeless, Starving and Besieged," Human Rights Watch shows that Israel has carried out a "massive, deliberate forced displacement of Palestinian civilians in Gaza" that amounts to a war crime and a crime against humanity, Last month, Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, released a report titled “Genocide as Colonial Erasure,” finding that Israel’s genocide is founded on ideological hatred, dehumanization and is “enabled through the various organs of the state.”

James Veverka

Laconia