No Israeli and roughly 25 Lebanese civilians have been killed since yesterday in the war.
Sitting in London or New York, the news that Gaza lost 151 souls, most of them civilians, last month to Israeli bombs and bullets passes us by. It is after all just a number, even if a high one. At best, a number like that from a place we don't know, suffered by a people whose names we can't pronounce, makes us pause, even sigh with regret. ...
... This month it is Lebanon. Next month it will probably be Iran. Then maybe it will be back to Baghdad or the Palestinians. The horror stories sound so much less significant, the need for action so less pressing, when each is unrelated to the next. Were we to watch the Arab channels, where all the blood and suffering blends into a single terrible Middle Eastern epic, we might start to make connections, and maybe suspect that none of this happens by accident.
Jonathan Cook, at http://counterpunch.org/... see more in the P.S.
Press Coverage of Civilian Casualties:
AP/Yahoo
E' tu' AP? AP now steps into the less reliable world of Lebanese securities officials for the numbers of Lebanese killed in the conflict. From the variations I see, they seem to be of two minds, using both health ministry and security ministry figures in different stories. The first quote below I'm sure relays security ministry figures. The second almost certainly reports health ministry figures.
At least 1,061 people in Lebanon and 124 Israelis have been killed in the war that began after Hizbollah guerrillas captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid on July 12.
http://news.yahoo.com/...
11 hours earlier AP reported the following (which parallels a later AP story I found on Fox, see further below):
The ongoing clashes have killed more than 800 people -- including at least 741 Lebanese and 123 Israelis.
http://news.yahoo.com/...
FoxNews/AP
Wandering among the Fox stories, I found the statistics below in one of Fox's AP wire stories, which I assume (unlike many of you, considering yesterday's poll numbers) are from a daily and official health ministry report. These data are what generate the estimated civilians killed total in this diary's title. The math -- using the last, two-day, figures on civilian and overall deaths in Lebanon -- looks like this: 628 x 761+ / 715 = 668.40
But the resolution, approved 15-0 in the U.N. Security Council, did nothing to immediately halt the fighting that erupted exactly a month ago and has claimed nearly 900 lives -- including at least 761 in Lebanon and 123 Israelis.
http://www.foxnews.com/...
CNN
CNN continues its practice of using Lebanese security forces figures, which apparently do not subdivide the dead into civilians and non-civilians, and which in my opinion are less reliable than health ministry figures.
Since the conflict erupted on July 12, nearly 1,000 people have been killed, according to authorities in Lebanon and Israel.
Of those killed, 873 were Lebanese, most of them civilians, according to Lebanese Internal Security Forces, which also reported 3,491 wounded. Israel said 85 military personnel and 40 civilians had been killed and about 1,000 wounded.
http://www.cnn.com/...
Reuters
Reuters I believe is adding together data from security sources and its own estimates. I think this likely produces duplication and perhaps non-eradication of original reports that were in error.
At least 1,061 people in Lebanon and 124 Israelis have been killed in the war that began after Hizbollah guerrillas captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid on July 12.
http://today.reuters.com/...
AFP
AFP, like Reuters, I believe is adding together data from security sources and its own estimates.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan criticised the time world powers took to reach a resolution on ending a conflict that has claimed more than 1,200 lives, most of them Lebanese civilians. ...
More than 1,100 people have been killed in Lebanon and more than 900,000 displaced while Israel's bombardments have laid waste to the only international airport, roads, bridges and power stations and effectively cut the country off from the outside world.
http://www.afp.com/...
BBC
BBC continues to lead all other major news services in lack of specificity.
More than 1,000 Lebanese and more than 120 Israelis have been killed in the conflict since Hezbollah militants captured two Israeli soldiers on 12 July in a cross-border raid.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/...
Please donate to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, at www.ifrc.org, to assist Lebanon.
P.S.
Jonathan Cook again [Continuing directly ...]
But my Arab friends and High Wycombe's Pakistanis have longer memories. Their attention span lasts longer than a single atrocity. They understand that those numbers -- 151 killed in Gaza, and in a single incident 33 blown up in a market in Najaf, Iraq, and at least 28 crushed by rubble from an Israeli attack on Qana in Lebanon -- are people, flesh and blood just like them. They can make out, in all the pain and death currently being inflicted on Arabs and Muslims, the echoes of events stretching back years and decades. They see patterns, they make connections, and maybe discern a plan.
Unlike us, they do not sigh, they burn with fury.