"Criticizing Israel is not anti-Semitic, and saying so is vile. But singling our Israel for opprobrium and international sanction -- out of proportion to any other party in the Middle East -- is anti-Semitic, and not saying so is dishonest." — Thomas Friedman
Nevertheless, Israel will be singled out for opprobrium and international sanction all out of proportion to any party, not just in the Middle East, but in the world, and antisemitism is back in style. We have seen both since Hamas was attacked on the 7th of October 7, 2023. The attacks on that day were horrific, brutal beyond anyone’s imagination, and diabolically evil. Amazingly, before Israel had even begun to respond, she was being blamed for the massacre and preemptively condemned for whatever it would do in response.
Israel decided to respond by waging total war against Hamas until it surrenders unconditionally or is destroyed, and has been denounced for doing what any other nation would do if its civilian population were attacked in the same way. It seems that everyone agrees that Israel has a right to defend itself, until it does.
To illustrate the point I’m trying to make, I asked Microsoft’s Copilot for help. I asked, “If the same percentage of the United States population was massacred as were massacred in the October 7th attack on Israel, and the same percentage of our population taken captive, how many persons would be killed and kidnapped?” This was the answer I received:
”To estimate that, we’ll need two key figures from the October 7th attack:
Fatalities in Israel: Approximately 1,200 people were killed.
Hostages taken: Around 251 individuals were abducted.
Israel’s population: Roughly 9.3 million at the time.
Let’s calculate the percentages:
Killed: 1,2009,300,000≈0.0129\frac{1,200}{9,300,000} \approx 0.0129 or 1.29%
Kidnapped: 2519,300,000≈0.0027\frac{251}{9,300,000} \approx 0.0027 or 0.027%
Now apply those percentages to the U.S. population, which is about 342 million:
Killed: 342,000,000×0.0129≈4,421,800342,000,000 \times 0.0129 \approx 4,421,800
Kidnapped: 342,000,000×0.0027≈923,400342,000,000 \times 0.0027 \approx 923,400
Equivalent impact on the U.S.:
Killed: ~4.42 million people
Kidnapped: ~923,000 people
That scale is staggering. It’s like wiping out the entire population of Los Angeles and then abducting nearly everyone in San Francisco.”
Yes, Copilot is correct. The scale is staggering. In forming his own opinion on the war in Gaza, Konstantin Kisin repeatedly asked his anti-Israel guests: “If you were the prime minister of Israel, what would you do?” This is a good question, and his anti-Israel/pro-Hamas guests’ inability to answer it was one of the main reasons he ended up supporting Israel. But in light of the statistics cited above, his question would be my second question.
The first question I would ask is, what would you do if you were the President of the United States, and Mexico attacked us, killed 4.2 million people, and kidnapped another 923,000 of our citizens? Of course, we would wage total war against Mexico. Someone might protest, but what if the Mexican army was using its civilian population as human shields, and what if a Catholic Church was accidentally damaged? I suppose the answer would be, “It’s a war, and in war people are killed and things are destroyed. This is why it is a really bad idea to start one.”