Like many of you here and elsewhere, I have been following the disaster that is the latest war between Israel and Hamas with sadness, frustration, and horror. It seems that the only interests being served are those of the extremists in the governments and militaries on both sides. Both maintain their positions best if war continues actively or potentially, and one or both lose some or all of their position if the status quo changes in the direction of what most would regard as a reasonable, just, and fair negotiated settlement.
This war has been characterized so far by many imbalances between the two sides and so much of the discussion and coverage and commentary has focused on numbers. The most obvious is the number of casualties. I am not even sure at this point what the lastest counts are...Something like 1,600 Palestinian killed with 75% of those civilians and something like 8,000 Palestinians wounded. 55 or more now Israeli soldiers killed and I don't know how many wounded. I think three, maybe more now, civilians killed in Israeli by the rockets that Hamas and other Palestinian military groups have fired into Israel.
An obvious number that has received constant attention is the number of missiles launched by Hamas and other Palestinian militaries into Israel. I think the last number I saw today was more than 2,500, but it could be more than that. This number has been a key to the entire discourse, as the missile fire from Gaza has been one among several of the justifications for the scale and intensity of the Israeli attacks on Gaza.
Beyond the question of who shot first most recently as justification for both sides continuing to shoot more, the number of shots (so to speak) fired by the Palestinians seems to be an important issue. This struck me while reading David Harris Gershon's latest excellent diary live blogging the latest renewal of fighting after the latest failed ceasefire today. He noted at 2:43:
"Over 40 rockets and mortars have been fired into Israel since this morning's incidents in Rafah which broke the hour-old ceasefire."
While the scale of the Israeli bombardment of Gaza by planes, helicopters, drones, artillery, tanks, ships, and other weapons is obvious from the results in Gaza, no where have I seen such a careful and detailed accounting of the numbers of mortar shells, aerial bombs and rockets, naval artillery shells, drone missiles, tank shells, and artillery rounds fired into Gaza by the Israelis. I want to make clear that I am not picking on David at all here. I cite him only as the comment that brought to the fore for me another imbalance in the discourse around this war.
I do know from the news that the US has resupplied the Israelis with 120 mm mortar rounds and 40 mm grenades (presumably for either infantry grenade launchers or aircraft and vehicle grenade guns). I have not read any articles that indicate how many of these munitions are being supplied or how many the Israelis have expended already. However, I would think that it would be a relatively large number for each type given how these weapons are used. Have the Israelis fired more than 40 mortar rounds and grenades today since the ceasefire broke (or since 2:43)? Has the number of munitions of all types expended by the Israelis since then exceeded 40? That seems likely.
Given the emphasis on the number of missiles and mortars and rockets fired by Hamas and other Palestinian military groups into Israel from Gaza, I am curious to know just how many of various types of munitions are being fired by Gaza by Israel. During the US war to liberate Kuwait from Iraq and at least during the Shock and Awe phase and early stages of the US invasion of Iraq, the numbers of airstrikes in particular and often the munitions used were carefully cataloged to the media. So far in this war, it seems that someone, presumably the Israelis, is carefully cataloging the numbers of missiles and other munitions fired by Palestinian military groups into Israel. However, the converse does not seem to be regularly tabulated or presented in the media.
So I am curious to know how many missiles (and other munitions) has Israel fired into Gaza. I don't care at this point who fired first as then the only number that matters is 1 and all others that follow are ostensibly unimportant. If that is so, why do we have such careful accounting of the attacks by one side but not the other?