Two Defining Numbers of The Ceasefire: 58% And 14%

New column by Lee Camp

(Article and voice over by Lee Camp)

Israel has ethnically cleansed over half of the Gaza Strip. One would think a mass media worth more than a dime-store sticker of a choo choo train would report on this fact. Instead, almost no one in western mainstream media has done so.

Nowhere in the definition of “ethnic cleansing” or “genocide” does it say the perpetrators have to “complete the job” or “cleanse a whole state” or “finish” the “solution” for it to count. Ethnic cleansing is ethnic cleansing even if it’s done to only half a country or half a region. So I repeat: 58% of Gaza has been ethnically cleansed by Israel.

And in that effort, they have killed somewhere between 68,000 and 500,000 Gazans. (Yes, the number varies wildly for several reasons.)

Of course, for a genocidal apartheid state, that’s not enough. Nothing is enough. According to BBC, the IDF has been stealing even more land beyond the yellow line of doom, in many cases over 500m past the agreed-upon border.

I don’t want to be snarky, but it’s almost as if Israel is accountable to nothing and no one. (Okay, I meant to be snarky.) The reason that Israel stealing 500m more than the agreed-upon amount of land theft under the ceasefire deal is “acceptable” to most of the world is largely due to how our brains process numbers and amounts. We subconsciously think, “Israel has stolen 58% of all of Gaza — So what’s another 1,640ft? It’s practically nothing.” We begin to treat Gaza as if it’s a land that is meant to be stolen, destroyed, and pillaged. “Being stolen is just what Gaza does. What’s 500m during a genocide? What’s 500m of land that has already been bombed into oblivion? What’s 500m when 1.8 million people are largely focused on how they’ll survive the next week or day or hour?”

This is what we think even when we don’t realize we’re thinking it.

Another defining number of this kinda-but-not-fully ceasefire is 14%. Israel has only allowed in 14% of the aid that was agreed upon in the ceasefire deal. Thousands of trucks wait just outside Gaza to bring much-needed life-saving foods and medicines, but they aren’t allowed in.

Here’s what this looks like in a nifty bar graph.

Israel is continuing to starve Gaza—just at a slightly slower pace than the earlier pace of starvation. They are continuing to break their ceasefire agreement. They are continuing their ethnic cleansing campaign. They are continuing to steal land and bulldoze homes (the homes that have the gall to continue standing after two years of genocide).

58% and 14%. Remember these numbers.