Re: [Marxism] What was (is) Israel's purpose in assaulting Gaza?

[Eli Stephens <elishastephens@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

EH asks:

"Why is it that women get this "honour" of special mentioning in lists of the 
dead, singled out together with other "helpless" groups such as children and 
the elderly?"

Well, obviously for starters because this is the way the media (and the U.N.) 
describes it, and I for one am not going to do anything to *diminish* the 
percentage of dead who are civilians; the U.S. media and U.S. and Israeli 
politicians are already doing their best at that.

"so the women included in the 50% were "automatic" civilians (due to their 
"womanhood"?) while the non-elderly single adult males in the other 50% are to 
be counted as "automatic" freedom fighters?"

Actually, back when the figure was 25% and not 50%, I heard the U.N.'s John 
Holmes explain that he/the U.N. had been widely misquoted. The media at the 
time were saying that "the U.N. estimates that 25% of the dead are civilians" 
and he explained that no, what he/the U.N. had said was that *at least* 25% of 
the dead were civilians. He went on to explain, quite reasonably in my view, 
that since they didn't even know the identity of the dead, much less their 
affiliation, they could hardly say who the dead men were, but could assume with 
reasonable certainty (not, obviously, *absolute* certainty, as you correctly 
point out) that all the children, women, and elderly were civilians, thus 
forming the "at least" portion of the statistic.

"Women have been known to be actively engaged in fights against oppression for 
a long time. Why continue with this patronizing linguistic practice that 
implicitly labels all women from the outset as the necessarily helpless and 
innocent civilian?"

Your point is well taken, although in this particular instance (Gaza) I'd say 
it's more likely that some of those counted as "children" were actively engaged 
in the fighting than the women. But this is strictly a statistical measure. If 
there were women fighters, I think it's safe to say their numbers were very 
small and don't really affect the statistics.

Of course, the bottom line is that *every* death, non-combatants -OR- 
combatants, was an Israeli war crime, since the people of Gaza are an occupied 
people. But, for the purposes of propaganda in the proper sense of that word, 
talking about the civilian casualties, and making sure that number reflects the 
full measure of Israeli savagery, is necessary.


Eli Stephens
 Left I on the News
 http://lefti.blogspot.com


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