What is the value of the life of a Muslim person compared to the life of a Westerner?

1/25, that is the value.

At the peak of the "war on terror" and the during the course of Israel’s assassination campaigns in the last two decades, a media commentator and former US military official was asked about what would be an acceptable collateral damage. He said: if killing a "high-value" terrorist or conducting an important security operation results in the deaths of 25 civilians or less, then, such collateral damage is acceptable. That is 25-to-1 ratio.

According to a study by Brown University, the US-led global war on terror, that took place mainly in Muslim-majority countries including Afghanistan, Iraq, and Yemen, “nearly 1 million people” have been killed. Adding all persons of all Western countries killed by acts that could be categorized as “foreign terrorism” (a category coined to designate acts carried out by persons who might Muslim) as well as troops killed in battle fields (including US and NATO troops), the 25/1 ratio becomes a very aspirational figure. The data shows that for every one Western person killed in any incident involving Muslim actors, 100 Muslims--mostly civilians--were killed. 

This formula for revange establishes that the life of non-Westerners as being worth less compared to Western lives. The dehumanizing formula was crudely, yet illustratively articulated by Trump last year. Speaking at the Republican Jewish Coalition Conference on Oct. 28, 2023, the former US president declared: “If you spill a drop of American blood, we will spill a gallon of yours.”

To add to the body of evidence of dehumanizing people from non-Western nations, Israel just acted on that equation, killing 100 civilians to rescue just two Israelis. During this conflict alone, comparing the reported total of 1,139 Israelis killed since Oct. 7 (695 Israeli civilians and 373 security forces and 71 foreigners), and comparing it to the 29,000 Palestinians killed thus far, produces a ration of exactly 25 Palestinians killed for every 1 Israeli--the formular still holds--though the killing is still ongoing and likely to reach the 50-for-1 ratio should the war on Gaza lasts for another five months.

In the light of the above data and the comments by US officials that the civilian toll in Gaza “remains too high”, one must ask Israeli officials: How many Palestinian civilians must die for every Israeli death before this revenge war comes to an end? And one must ask US officials: what is an acceptable “toll of civilian deaths”?

The lack of awareness of how bigoted the view that there is an acceptable “toll of civilian deaths” that can be excused and justified when every single Western life is avenged by unimaged level of destruction and death is confounding. When one adds the number of children killed thus far in Gaza, such callousness becomes cruelly mind-bending.

 Acceptance of some level of civilian toll destroys Western rhetoric about their commitment to universal rights. It clearly shows that there is no universal right to life; that some lives are superior and worth saving at any cost and some lives can be destroyed to avenge the loss of the superior lives. The troubling part is that, now, US officials acknowledge that the military operation is "over the top" and that too many civilians have been killed and displaced, yet the US administration blocked every UN intervention that could have stopped the war.

Biden’s phone call with Netanyahu comes a few days after the president offered one of his sharpest rebukes to date of Israel’s military conduct in Gaza, saying the operation to go after Hamas had been “over the top.”

 “I’m of the view, as you know, that the conduct of the response in Gaza – in the Gaza Strip – has been over the top,” Biden told reporters at the White House on Thursday, describing his own efforts to open up Gaza so more humanitarian aid could flow in.

 Last week, Blinken told Netanyahu and other top Israeli officials that the civilian toll in Gaza “remains too high” as violence continues in the region.

“Nearly 2 million people have been displaced from their homes. Hundreds of thousands are experiencing acute hunger. Most have lost someone that they love. And day after day, more people are killed,” Blinken said at a news conference after meeting with top Israeli officials.