According to the U N, as at the end of January this year, after nearly two years of war against Russia, the Ukraine had suffered about 29,000 civilian casualties, including about 10,000 killed.  Those numbers are not precise, but they are far more reliable than casualty figures in the armed forces.  I am not sure if someone has a breakdown of the women and children killed.

The figures for Gaza are disputed.  Time quotes experts in The Lancet as saying that at least 30,000 have died in Gaza in the six months of that war, including more than 10,000 children.

It is difficult to explain the difference in casualty rates, especially given that Russia is expressly intent on annihilating the nation it is making war against.  As against that, a lot of the damage in Gaza comes from the air, and the people of Gaza have no air force.  Because they have no status as a nation.

But whichever way you look at it, life is cheaper in the Middle East – a least in the eyes of some – than in Europe in a war between peoples of the same ethnic group and faith.

For the most part, the Western world has condemned Russia for its war on the Ukraine.  Its leaders are widely seen as war criminals.

The reaction to the war in Gaza has been very different. 

International concern at the casualties in Gaza has been growing.  An agency funded by the U S says more than 200 aid workers have been killed in Gaza in this war.  But it was not until recently that such concern has led to foreign heads of state demanding hard answers from those responsible.  That has happened after seven were killed who were citizens of the U S, Canada, Australia, Poland or Britain. 

That manifest infusion of European blood in the casualty lists has apparently served to concentrate minds in the West.  These people were killed in circumstances that make any defence of accident implausible and by experienced troops in armed forces that are not notorious for negligent errors.  It does not help that some blame AI, and the Prime Minister of Israel has his own version of the old defence of ‘inevitable accident.’

It is inevitable, I suppose, but so sad that we never live up to the aspiration of the Enlightenment that we should treat all people as having their own worth or dignity.

And in the eyes of at least some, that failure here is driven by forces of disunity inherent in what we call religion – which was just what the Enlightenment sought to deliver us from.

And we here in Australia are entitled to be outraged by the killing of one of ours – even when we look away from the fact that ten thousand Palestinian children have so far been killed.