Well I've mentioned body counts in two posts, both of citizens of Gaza. I think that there is a lot more than a battle of body counts and it wasn't my intention to turn it into that. Plenty of my posts to this thread have focused on the complexities of this conflict and the need to not ignore history. I realise that dwelling on body counts is a rather loaded and crude way of characterising war, but just a couple of things. First, my sympathies are with non-combatant civilians on both sides: I have no sympathies whatsoever with either Hamas or Netanyahu, not a scrap. Second, there's a huge and understandable emphasis in our mass media, understandably, on the horrors perpetrated by Hamas on Israeli citizens. After all, it was they who were attacked. What I'm not seeing anywhere near as much of is comment on the indiscriminate and utterly inhuman nature of the retaliation by the Israeli regime. Whole civilian neighbourhoods in Gaza are being shelled and razed, with not a care for the ordinary people who are literally trapped there. Hundreds of women, children and non-combatant men killed. A blockade which is going to starve people of food and water. No heat or light, no cooking of the rapidly-diminishing supplies of food. A hospital running out of power, medicines and beds which is now little more than a massive refugee camp. I see the stale old lie about human shields popping up again, as if you could somehow avoid being near civilians in the most overcrowded place on earth.

I could mention women being raped, babies beheaded and bodies ripped apart, hostages taken. We've seen those revolting sights on our tellies all week. When it comes to Gaza, we see lots of bomb explosions and collapsed buildings but we see less of those human stories (though the BBC tries hard). I think it's important that we see the scale of the killing in Gaza and that much of that horror is little more than tit-for-tat revenge slaughter, little to do with self-defence. Both sides are committing war crimes with apparent impunity - both. Body counts do matter a little bit too.