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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

> Comparing it to the war in Ukraine ("Even in Ukraine") isn't really helpful or informative

Why not?

40% of bombing victims in Gaza are under 10. What fraction of the population is? How does that compare to Ukraine’s demographic and bombing victim distributions?

These are valid questions for contextualising a conflict.

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The majority of deaths in Gaza are women and children. Nearly 70%.[1] The reason we talk about "women and children" in Gaza is because Israel can accuse any adult man of being a militant. Statistics from Ukraine are harder to get but according to the OHCR,[2] we know that 39% of non-combatant casualties are women and less than 5% are children. What percent of total deaths are civilians is the hard part, but in Donbas about 25% of casualties were civilian.[3]

  (.39 + .05) * .25 = .11

So we have a 70% women/children rate vs about a 11% (very very roughly calculated) women/children rate. Yes the nature of these conflicts are extremely different.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn5wel11pgdo

[2] https://www.ohchr.org/en/meeting-summaries/2023/07/ukraine-c...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Russo-Ukrain...

> So we have a 70% women/children rate vs about a 11% (very very roughly calculated) women/children rate

Sure. This is how "comparing it to the war in Ukraine" is both helpful and informative.

Actually the answer is almost 40%. Gaza had a young and fast growing (one of the fastest in the world) population before the war. Some estimates even indicate their population has continued to grow (though at a very reduced rate) even during, but no reliable statistics have been collected.

Unfortunately the reality in Gaza is way more severe than the reality in Ukraine in nearly every conceivable metric: deaths, famine, buildings destroyed, farms, schools, hospitals, journalists killed, shortages (by blockade) of essential goods...

And Ukraine is a massive war with over a million casualties, so imagine that.

Just the fact that there is now a whole generation of children who have missed over two years of school.

One child missing two years of school is already a tragedy. A whole generation missing school, starving, under constant risk of violence and death, this is the first thing I think of when I think of Gaza.

I'm not even a Palestine "supporter" but I will not longer support the state of Israel for any reason, even if the "good guys" come to power.

a lot of these kids are missing limbs, it breaks my heart

How is it more severe if the Ukraine war resulted in over a million casualties?

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