The New Math

One of the political marginal casualties of the latest Hamas megalomania is the creation of new political math. It turns out that there are very simple ways to determine who is right and who is wrong, who is meritorious and who is not.

If one side A has 200 casualties and the side B has 5, side A is right. Just observe the arguments made about the current Gaza conflict. Using this football derived math, since Germany had more casualties in WWII than England, the German, naturally, were the meritorious side.

Another measure is exposed by Juan Cole on Sunday, December 28, 2008: "The Israelis on Saturday killed 5% of all the Palestinians they have killed since the beginning of 2001!" If we interpret this correctly this political calculation claims that the correct and acceptable casualty figure for any period of time must be about the same as it was in the years before that. Put another way: spikes of casualties are an indication of guilt.

Were does all this logical garbage come from? It comes from a desperate attempts to render Hamas, a murderous, extremist, Iranian client and rejectionist movement, a mantle of legitimacy in a war that was directly caused by it bombardment of civilians and in particular schools and kindergartens. Without this stupid math, it is much more difficult for racists to justify their racism.