insomnomaniac

Brava! Isn't it ironic that it was cdavies himself that suggested that site link with the statistics?

Great points, all of them.

[blush back] it's never more thrilling that to get kudos from a blogger one admires!

I have to give you credit though, your post really got me fired up to post this. I'm so sick of moral equivalency, and am really scared that more people aren't calling it out as the REAL danger that it is. I honestly believe that terrorists won't be our undoing, our reaction to them, however, might be.

And the sad thing is a-girl, cdavies is impervious to logic, much less irony, so he wouldn't even understand what he's done.

Isarael will have to choose at some point if it would like a democratic Israel including the West Bank or a religeous Israel without the West Bank.

The current choice (occupation and settlement building) results in terrorism. That is Israels choice.

Quite Clintonesque. If we play with the definitions a little more, we can probably show that no one has been murdered by anybody over there.Why no one is accurately reporting these statistics in the mainstream media is a mystery to me. Are people so afraid of being perceived as "pro-Israeli?" or "pro-Jewish?" Facts are not "pro" anything. The basic fact remains that the Israelis are killing more Palestinians than vice versa. That is not mitigated by the fact that most Palestinian casualties are young males, unless you mean to say that young men are worth less than older women for some reason. Selective presentation of facts can, however, indicate a bias on the part of the reporter. What should we infer from the massive media coverage of Israeli deaths versus their relative silence on Palestinian deaths? US TV and newspapers have been all over the terrorist attacks that killed 17 Israelis over the past 2 weeks. Where then, if the press is not pro-Israeli, is the coverage of the IDF attacks that have killed about the same number of Palestinians (including at least 3 under 15) during the same period? Even Ha'aretz and Arutz Sheva had articles about the deaths - why not Fox or the NYT?

First of all, you're wrong. The Palestinian deaths are covered AD NAUSEUM, and are typically preceded by all sorts of human interest crap like "they were just heading out to buy sweets" or "she was pregnant with their sixth child."

In contrast, however, all we get about the Israeli deaths are numbers. We rarely hear that some of them died because rat poison was included amongst the shrapnel that entered their bodies from the bombs, or that their organs liquified from the sheer force of the concussive sound waves of the blast...Whereas, when Palestinians die, even if it's while they were doing something violent or provocative like throwing stones, shooting, running through crossfire between terrorists and soldiers, etc...We get "he was shot in the knee and head and bled to death."

Go do a search on the NYT. Look up "Israelis killed" and then look up "Palestinians killed" you will notice something interesting....both searches return headlines that begin "Israelis kill." You will rarely, if ever, see the words "kill" or "murder" after "Palestinian." Instead, you see words like "resisted" or "attacked" but not killed. The passive tense is often used so as to make it look like Israelis spontaneously dropped dead. Malls are "bombed" and busses "explode" just happen, like they are freak accidents of nature, and the statistics include the bombers in their counts.

What makes it significant that mostly young males are killed on the Palestinian side (if you actually READ the article and not just my post you'd know this) is that they are more often than not the ones engaged in some sort of risky activity. There is a huge difference between running around in front of tanks that are not after you, but are after terrorists in your midst, and sitting quietly on the bus on the way to school, I don't care if you're male, female, old or young. The VAST majority of the Palestinians killed are NOT just minding their own business on their way to school or having lunch in a pizza parlor when Israelis PURPOSELY blow them to bits. They are actively engaged in making it hard for their own government (such as it is) and the IDF to crack down on terrorism.

(if you actually READ the article ...Ha, ha, very funny. I read the article. It's a morally reprehensible attempt to show that Palestinian non-combattant deaths are less meaningful than Israeli non-combattant deaths. It's bullsh*t and a perfect example of "Figures don't lie, but liars figure." It's ironic that you choose to accuse the US press of dehumanizing Israeli casualties by using numbers while defending a "report" that does exactly the same thing to Palestinians. I do statistical analyses professionally. Using the same techniques as Radlauer, I could prove that your dog attacked those two girls on the bench a few days ago. Would that change what actually happened?

Grog, I don't read the article that way at all. I don't think the article takes a position one way or the other. I just think they present the facts that the statistics we're usually fed are those that paint the Israelis in the worst light, and that's worth noting. It's also worth noting that the definition of "non-combattant" is more than a little fuzzy in this situation.

Whatever you think you can "figure" statistically about my dog, we'd first have to agree on a definition of "attack" and a definition of "dog" wouldn't we? I think that's the problem! We have words like "civilian" and "non-combattant" being used the same way on both sides, and that's what ends up making it seem like the Palestinian casualties are belittled (to you) by this article and the Israeli ones are belittled (to me) by the NYTimes and other sources.

Personally, I agreed (opinion here, not fact) with the way the article defined the two terms. If you do not, that's fine, but I think that's the sticking point. I don't think it's some vicious attempt to denegrate Palestinian deaths, I think the writers of the article just take a different view of "civilians" and "non-combattants" than you do. You definition--it seems--only takes into account, what, their clothing? Their military affiliation? Their relative lack of armaments in had when killed? What? Clear it up for me...

My definition takes into account INTENT. Maybe that's not something you statisticians care about, but the rest of us mortals do because, at the end of the day, as you point out, statistics HIDE AS MUCH AS THEY REVEAL (my point in the first place).

If you really read what I wrote, you'd stop being so hung up on my personal opinion (which is evident on this site) and would look at the intention behind the post which is to point out that the stats we usually get don't tell the whole story. Maybe the article I like to doesn't either, but it sure shows that "the story" can be spun any which way you like, and isn't that worth noting when we're all so busy pointing fingers?

In the end, we have to decide what we believe is true, and have to take statistics with a giant grain of salt because, as you point out, without the rest, they are meaningless.