Are you saying it is 40,000 definite civilians or all casualties including soldiers? Its a relatively small military force for 2.3 million people given that they train the children to be warriors and given that fighting Israel is touted as very important in their society. USA citizens aren't trained as soldiers from childhood, and most never perform military service at any time in our lives. It is a possible career path but only one of many. Therefore our smaller percentage makes sense, but secondly it makes sense because a smaller percentage is needed since the population is large. A million strong is strong enough for most purposes.The population of Gaza is about 2.3 million, so 40,000 is around 1.73% of the strip's entire population. To put this into perspective, an equivalent number of Americans relative to the population of the US, estimated at 333 million, is 5.76 million.
How is this "relatively small"? Imagine if someone looked at an equivalent number of civilians killed in any other country and said something like that. Those people weren't mere statistics; many of us elsewhere knew many of them—they were our neighbors, friends, classmates, and coworkers. Entire families have been wiped out, many of them spanning more than one generation.
Thank you for correcting me about wealth and what Muslims think about it.The beliefs you listed are far from universal among Muslims, and there's no belief in mainstream Islam that the wealthy are any more or less righteous than other people. I have lived my entire life among Muslims and never heard anyone express such a belief either. Also, most Muslim countries are capitalist, especially the Gulf ones, and while Islam doesn't forbid monarchy, it doesn't forbid an electoral system of government either.
A lot of the statements I have seen about Muslims and Palestinians (whether Muslim or otherwise) over the years seem to me to have been said about them in one source or another, not by any representative number thereof. Many successful and prosperous countries exist, and the vast majority of them are barely on the radar of the average Muslim. Not that non-Muslim supporters of Palestinian civilians don't exist, but even if one limits the scope of the assertion (that the objections to the IDF's actions in Gaza are related to Israel's prosperity) to Muslims, it doesn't hold water when examined more closely.
If people are told by the UN and by official news sites that there is a genocide then that is the information they will act on.I have seen nothing that indicates that the vast majority of the opposition to the current bombing of Gaza is due to anything besides opposition to killing tens of thousands of civilians. No one appreciates seeing their people being killed or maimed, nor do they appreciate seeing countries like the US and Germany talk about "democracy" and "human rights" in different contexts while supplying many of the weapons that have been used to massacre tens of thousands of civilians and providing financial and geopolitical support for such actions. The opposition is a natural reaction that anyone in the same position would have and any country doing what the US has been doing would receive.
There are many Western countries that are either viewed generally favorably or are barely noticed in many of the countries where negative sentiments toward the US are widespread. A few examples are Norway, Iceland, and Romania. There's just no reason for most people to have ill feelings toward those countries, whereas the US has an extensive history of destructive and hostile interventionism in Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East, and it is consequently seen far more negatively by far more people. This is not a sentiment that is remotely unique to a subset of Muslims, and I don't see what said sentiment has to do with trying to embarrass Western values or ideals—unless those are synonymous with support for bombing of civilians, but I know they are not.
The USA certainly has been involved in destructive behavior, and these can be another motivation to undermine the USA, using its position on the security council and its support for Israel. We are talking though about over a hundred different representative each with their own motivations.
My real concern is the UN accusation of genocide which is misleading, as it suggests an intent to kill 2.3 million people. Considering all the funding sent to aid Gaza, the use of which is misreported and which is instead used for weaponry, the Gaza Health Ministry seems somehow connected to both Hamas and the UN. The UN pleads stupidity and ignorance about the funding. They somehow don't notice so much money disappearing into weaponry. Amazing how disinterested everyone has been in where all this aid money has been going. The Ministry of Health hasn't been short on funds at all? Then perhaps they have not been part of the subterfuge.The death tolls reported by the Gaza Health Ministry in past conflicts have been verified and found overall reliable by various sources and observers. I mentioned this in a previous post, so I'll quote that part of the post here:
If the Hamas Ministry of Health has given accurate death statistics all this time good for them.