Prior to the year 2000, when the suicide bombings started, there were 25 Palestinians killed by the Israeli army for every 1 Israeli killed.

Well, first, my numbers put it at about 10 to 1 at the very worst, at least back to 1987,* but if you have your own statistics, I'd like to see them. You see, on this board you can't just pull numbers out of your ass. You can see my problem, though. Bowser can generate twelve assumptions in the time it takes me to dig up the numbers for one.

Second, many of these Palestinians were attacking the army at the time, a distinction that eludes a lot of people when we are talking about Palestinian "civilians," including the humanitarian organization where I got my numbers.

*The charts show a total of 1,552 Palestinians ("civilian" and otherwise) killed by Israelis (soldiers or civilians) up to the 2000 date in the "Occupied Territories" and Israel.

During the same time, 151 Israeli soldiers were killed by Palestinians, and 273 Israeli civilians.

If you assume that only Israeli soldiers "count" in the ratio, then the ratio is 1,552/151, or 10.3 to 1. If you include Israeli civilians killed by Palestinians, the ratio comes to about 3.7 to one (1,552/424). 25 to 1 is nowhere close.

The ratio, up to the current date of this chart (about the middle of 2003), is at about 3.2 to 1.

Feel free to check my math and assumptions.