While it's nearly universal practice, even among peace activists, to stick with the lowest death count (41,909 at the moment), it is also nearly universal practice to call the war on Gaza the worst war ever, dramatically worse in fact than other wars, so much worse as to be a different phenomenon entirely. But if that's the death count, then as an absolute number it's much smaller than the death counts of other recent wars. And it's not record-setting even as a proportion of the small population involved (it's less than 2 percent of 2.1 million Gazans).
If, on the other hand, 118,908 is the death count, then it's still not a large number as war deaths go, but it is over 5.5 percent of the population of Gaza. When you combine that with the openly genocidal rhetoric, which is indeed dramatically worse than the rhetoric accompanying most wars, plus the thoroughgoing destruction of infrastructure, plus the record-setting murders of journalists and aid workers and UN staff, plus the record-setting percentage of the population made homeless, etc., you start to get a picture of one of the worst wars, at least by certain measures.
Iraq may have lost 1.4 million lives just in the war that began in 2003, which was 5 percent of the population. That compares to the United States losing 2.5 percent of its population in the U.S. Civil War, or Japan losing 3 to 4 percent in World War II, while the UK lost less than 1 percent and the U.S. 0.3% in that same war. So the Iraq war was far more deadly in absolute numbers. But it killed a slightly smaller percentage of the population (thus far, as the war on Gaza keeps going), and more of the country survived the destruction (already, as the war on Gaza keeps going).
Meanwhile, U.S. deaths in the war on Iraq were 0.3 percent of the dead. That compares to Israeli deaths, currently at 1.3 percent of the deaths in the past year in Gaza/Israel. So, the Iraq war was more one-sided (though both have been extremely one-sided).
Worst war ever? Depends how you look at it. But you have to start with a serious look at the death count.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
