There is a very good article at Wikipedia which attempts to provide statistics about casualties during the conflict. It is very difficult to obtain accurate figures; For example, Israel claims it killed 500 Hezbollah fighters, Hezbollah claim that only 74 were killed. The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. Because of the propoganda, only an idea of the true casualties can be obtained.
Whichever way you cut the figures, at least 66% of people killed by the Israelis were civilians, whereas only 25% of those killed by Hezbollah were civilians. Importantly, Hezbollah did not have the accurate technology which was available to the Israelis, if they did, their figure would probably be even less than 25%.
Against this, it has been argued (probably correctly to some extent) that Hezbollah sited their forces close to civilians. I still don't think that this argument justifies the differential, given the better technology available to the Israelis, the sparseness of the civilian population in Southern Lebanon (many of the civilians left the area quite early in the conflict), and the fact that the Israelis had the option as to whether or not to attack a particular target.
The only conclusion that I can reach is that Israel were negligent in their targeting policy, or else they were deliberately targeting civilians. Either way, it demonstrates that they considered Lebanese civilians as expendable (in the order of 1,600 were killed outright and 3,600 wounded).
The Israelis must be disappointed that they had to stop killing civilians before they managed to finish the job completely - just as Hitler failed to eradicate the Jews in WWII. Still, they have scope for more success in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, maybe they will manage to complete the task there (the West are still turning a blind eye to the Israeli attempts of genocide against the Palestinians).
Joe McGonagle
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