https://jacobin.com/2025/08/israel-gaza-worst-crimes-ever
Israel’s Gaza War Is One of History’s Worst Crimes Ever
Israel’s war in Gaza combines a staggeringly high death rate, shocking violence toward children, unparalleled physical destruction, and now a world-historical famine. The world has, by objective measure, never seen anything like this.
i don’t know about the worst but it’s definitely getting up there, depending on whose number you believe
https://www.scaruffi.com/politics/dictat.html
It would definitely be up there if the numbers were number of deaths to population ratio.
Also you gotta multiply the Gaza death number by at least 4, likely even more, to account for indirect deaths and missing-but-realistically-dead people, so in reality you’re looking at more than 10% of Gaza dead and a good chunk of the rest wounded, many permanently.
It’s difficult for me to weigh crimes at this scale. Would it be worse to kill 80% of Chinese people or all Brazilians? Many more people would die in the former situation, but a culture would be more fully erased in the latter. Obviously there’s some subjectivity involved, so I’m not looking for an answer, it’s just hard for me to actually grasp the enormity of these types of crimes.
You’re absolutely right, crimes of this scale almost defy comprehension, and trying to weigh them feels both necessary and impossible. It’s horrific to realize this is all happening in real time, in front of us yet, as unthinkable as Gaza is, it’s tragically not isolated. Places like Sudan and Mali etc are also facing famine and conflict, often unfold off the front page. It’s overwhelming, but I believe that bearing witness, and refusing to look away even when our understanding falls short, is still essential.
Oh absolutely, this is unfortunately not the only genocide currently being attempted, nor are genocides the only seemingly immeasurable hurt that we’re currently committing against humanity.
I’m an immigrant in Germany, and even after visiting concentration camps and seeing multiple Stolpersteine (memorial plaques) per block in most cities, the massiveness of the holocaust still hits me in waves.
You’re right that we need to weigh these types of crimes, and their scale is not an excuse to bury our heads in the sand.
What can we do now? Raise our voices to be heard? Do we take it in turn, Israel protest on Mondays, Sudan on Tuesdays?