[O]nce again Palestinian suffering and death tolls continue to break records in the territories occupied by Israel since 1967.It appears that the Arab News is considering the roughly 110 Palestinian Arabs killed since last Wednesday to be some sort of a record of deaths in a week.
Of course, they don't want to remember that this particular record belongs to Palestinian Arabs themselves, who managed in the seven days between June 10 and June 16, 2007 to kill 148 of each other.
So if Israel's actions are a "holocaust" - which is now the word being used universally in Arabic media to describe the events of the past week - then Hamas and Fatah must really be guilty of self-genocide.
Even the Arab News knows enough to limit the idea of PalArab suffering to "in the territories" which allows them to not compare the current Israeli actions with, say, Black September, 1970 when 3400 Palestinian Arabs were killed by Jordanians in an eleven day period. Or even January 18, 1976 when Lebanese Christians killed 1000 Lebanese and Palestinian Muslims in a single day.
Is the death of some 75 terrorists and 35 civilians over seven days (my estimate based on PCHR listings of the circumstances of death) worse than the expulsion of 400,000 Palestinian Arabs from Kuwait in 1991 - also in a single week? After all, if expulsion is considered "ethnic cleansing" and tantamount to genocide - which is the Arab definition when applied to Israel - then Kuwait might win the prize.
It's so tough to compare which has been the worst week in Palestinian Arab history, but what seems clear is that however you slice it, this week doesn't come close.
Not that the Arab media would ever admit it.