Many people may think that the death toll in Israel is low compared to the 180 or so Palestinians who have been killed in Gaza in the last few weeks. Leftists will no doubt quote the UN's ratio of civilian-to-military casualties, which is said to be 70% civilian.

(Where have these percentages come from? From Hamas. So it's not a surprise that Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman, Lt-Col Peter Lerner, has disputed the figures. Indeed where else could the figures come from? Hamas rules Gaza. The BBC has also just been reprimanded for supplying fake pictures from Pallywood... or Gaza as it is also sometimes known.)

There's a simple reason for that “lack of proportionality” (as academics in the West often put it) which seems to have been overlooked by Manuel Hassassian (a Palestinian Authority envoy in the UK) when he said:

“There are no shelters, no bunkers, no place to go, except their homes.”

Israel has built many air-raid shelters and other means of protection for its citizens. It also employs air-raid warnings in response to Hamas rocket attacks. Hamas, on the other hand, doesn't provide its people with either of these things. (See this article on Gaza's lack of bomb shelters.)

The other thing is that Hamas deliberately places its fighters amongst the Gaza civilian population -- as is now both well-known and well-documented. Again, for the same reasons just described.

What is the reason for Hamas's suicidal policies?

It's primarily because this Muslim Brotherhood political party wants some -- or even many -- of its people to be killed.

So why does Hamas want that?

There are various reasons; though the main one is the Western response to such deaths; such as the 600 mainly Muslim and student-Leftist demonstrators who took over the streets of Bradford (in the north of England) city center this weekend.

In other words, Palestinian deaths do the Hamas cause a lot of good in the West. (Primarily in the case of Leftist students/activists and their academic feeders) And that's one of the reasons why Hamas doesn't provide shelters for its people.

(I mention the radical/Marxist Left primarily because it sets almost the entire agenda when it comes to Israel and Gaza; whether in terms of the Marxist theories about Israel -- which even non-Leftists and National Socialists use -- or the frequent demonstrations and movements against Israel: which are almost all led by Trotskyists. Indeed, the same Trotskyist/SWP faces -- in the UK -- keep on popping up; whether that be Stop the War, Respect, the boycott-and-divest-from-Israel movement or whatever.)

The other important point to bear in mind is that, according to Hamas theology/ideology, every Palestinian who is killed by Israelis is deemed to be an automatic martyr for Islam. In addition, one well-known Hamas motto just happens to be: "We love death more than life."

Palestinians also say that they have “nowhere to go” when the Israeli air attacks come. Yet that's not entirely true either, because Israel gives advance warnings before such attacks. For example, Israeli forces -- just the other day -- dropped leaflets on the Gaza town of Beit Lahiya which warned of future air strikes.

Only Civilians?

It can't by any stretch of the imagination be said that Israel is aiming its onslaught against Palestinian civilians. For example, on Monday Israel hit three Hamas training camps in Gaza city. Israel has also targeted weapons stores and destroyed various Hamas security headquarters and police stations. All in all, the IDF has hit some 1,320 Hamas sites in Gaza.

In any case, would Muslims prefer a ground invasion instead? Of course not. What they would prefer is no Israel and no Jews at all in any “Islamic land”. I'm not just talking about "Palestine" here, but also in Syria, Iraq, Algeria, and so on. In fact, Jews have already been ethnically cleansed from Saudi Arabia, Libya, Jordan, and other Arab lands. (Thus fulfilling the promise of the Prophet Muhammad: "I will expel the Jews and Christians from the Arabian Peninsula and will not leave any but Muslims" -- Sahih Muslim 4366.)

Now, since Muslims are even trying to Islamize Western towns and cities as diverse as Bradford, Birmingham, Malmö, Oldham, Rotterdam, Oslo, Marseilles, and Paris, it shouldn't come as a surprise that they take the Islamization -- and therefore the ethnic cleansing of Jews and Christians -- of the Arab world even more seriously.

Why Israel?

As I mentioned earlier, roughly 180 Palestinians have been killed in the latest stage of the Israel-Palestinian war.

Compare that with the 100,000 (or more) who have died in Syria since 2011; and the carnage in Iraq as a result of ISIS's own attempt at Islamization in Iraq. And that's not to forget the recent historical Islamic genocides in Sudan between the 1991 and 2002 in which one-and-a-half million Christians and animists were murdered by the Islamic regime in Khartoum and the jihadists of Jangaweed; as well as the Algerian civil war between 1991 and 2002 (up to 150,000 deaths). On top of all that there are Muslim conflicts, Islamic persecutions, and frequent acts of Islamic terrorism in Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, Nigeria, Mali, southern Thailand, the Philippines, Libya... Basically, wherever there are Muslims living next to non-Muslims, there is conflict. Indeed there is even conflict wherever Muslims live alongside Muslims of a different sect.

So throughout the world today, and in recent history, literally millions have died in the ongoing process of Islamization and ethnic cleansing (of Christians and Jews) in both the Arab world and in the larger Muslim world. Yet, as ever, Israel's rational and understandable treatment of Hamas -- which deliberately hides itself among civilians -- still takes up so much media (even when it's not pro-Palestinian) airtime.

And that must be because so many Westerners see the Israel-Palestinian conflict to be both unique and to be far worse than all the other conflicts I've just mentioned.

Why is that?

It's primarily because the Western Left (as well as the more woolly-minded left-liberals who still get much of their 'theory' on Israel from the radical Left) is utterly obsessed with both Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians. Now much of that monomania is literally a result of political fashion (or just plain fashion). However, that political hipness itself is grounded in the radical Left's hatred of capitalism; its hatred of nationalism (though not, of course, Palestinian, African, and other forms of nationalism); and its deep distrust of what it calls “capitalist democracy”: all of which are instantiated in one -- and only one -- Middle Eastern state: Israel.

Finally, why has Hamas upped its rockets attacks against Israel recently?

It will have at least something to do with Hamas attempting to tap into the Sunni-Muslim wars which are currently occurring in Syria and Iraq. In fact rockets attacks into Israel have already been carried out from Syria.

Hamas and ISIS have a lot in common. (It's rumored that ISIS is already in Gaza and fighting with Hamas.) However, Hamas, being Muslim Brotherhood, has even more in common with the many Muslim Brotherhood “rebels” fighting in Syria. You know, the people Barack Obama is both funding and training.