Over a 1000 Palestinians dead in the past 18 days of conflict, the news caster announced with a deadpan face.  The statistics might not be big enough to scare, after all what is a mere thousand, when hundreds die every day.  In a typical day, a couple of hundreds meet gory death somewhere in Middle East or Asia, if the terrorists are in the mood. For instance in the recent strike on Mumbai by terrorists (BBC prefers to call them gunmen; they are terrorist if only they hurt US or Brit citizens), within a span of 72 hours some 183 people lost their lives. Or in any of those car-suicide-blasts in Baghdad, 50-60 people getting blown away in bits is not uncommon. So, when one looks at 1000, somehow that does not seem all that much. After all, how many hundreds died when F16s dropped cluster bombs on Bosnia, just so that President Bill Clinton could divert the attention from the Monica Lewinsky affair (if one believes Michael Moore).

But that’s the trouble with statistics, they can look alarming or innocuous simply by the comparison one makes. Thus, compare the 1000 deaths in Gaza to the hundreds that die every day across the globe it doesn’t seem much. Now, think of your own personal loss, death of a close relative or at a close friend’s home. Picture now, a 1000 fathers, a 1000 mothers, a 1000 children, and a few thousand others wailing and beating their breast in anguish. Imagine the pervasive drops of tears that refuse to subside. Consider the anguish and the pain that a single traumatised family goes through. And suddenly this 1000 becomes depressing. Continue reading …