When people call what’s happening in Gaza "unbelievably inhumane," it shows a lack of historical and global perspective. Don’t get me wrong—it is genocide by definition, and the suffering is tragic. But in terms of scale, it’s far from the worst atrocities humanity has inflicted on itself.
Take Dresden in 1945. Over the course of three da…
When people call what’s happening in Gaza "unbelievably inhumane," it shows a lack of historical and global perspective. Don’t get me wrong—it is genocide by definition, and the suffering is tragic. But in terms of scale, it’s far from the worst atrocities humanity has inflicted on itself.
Take Dresden in 1945. Over the course of three days, around 25,000 civilians were killed in Allied bombings. In one night, the firebombing of Tokyo killed somewhere between 100,000 to 150,000 people, leaving a million homeless. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki wiped out around 200,000 people in an instant and through subsequent radiation exposure.
Even when it comes to population displacement, Gaza is not an exception. The Nakba of 1948 resulted in over 700,000 Palestinians being forced to flee their homes, with around 15,000 killed. Around the same time, the expulsion of Germans after WWII displaced 12 to 14 million people, leading to up to 2 million deaths from forced marches, starvation, and disease.
Later, we had horrors like Pol Pot’s Cambodia, where between 1.7 to 2 million people were executed, starved, or worked to death between 1975 and 1979. And in Rwanda in 1994, around 800,000 people were slaughtered in just 100 days, with neighbors turning on each other with machetes over ethnic identity.
Now let’s talk about more recent atrocities. In Ukraine, over 2,000 people die every day because a midget in heels with a Napoleon complex can’t handle losing power. The civil war in South Sudan has caused over 400,000 deaths since 2013 and continues to destabilize the region. Meanwhile, North Korea has been systematically starving its population, and in Tigray, thousands have been killed amidst widespread reports of mass killings and sexual violence.
This isn’t meant to downplay the tragedy in Gaza. It’s about perspective. Humanity has repeatedly committed atrocities, often on far larger scales. And ironically, despite these events, we are still living in the most peaceful period in recorded history. Maybe that’s something worth considering before declaring any single event the worst we've ever seen.
When people call what’s happening in Gaza "unbelievably inhumane," it shows a lack of historical and global perspective. Don’t get me wrong—it is genocide by definition, and the suffering is tragic. But in terms of scale, it’s far from the worst atrocities humanity has inflicted on itself.
Take Dresden in 1945. Over the course of three days, around 25,000 civilians were killed in Allied bombings. In one night, the firebombing of Tokyo killed somewhere between 100,000 to 150,000 people, leaving a million homeless. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki wiped out around 200,000 people in an instant and through subsequent radiation exposure.
Even when it comes to population displacement, Gaza is not an exception. The Nakba of 1948 resulted in over 700,000 Palestinians being forced to flee their homes, with around 15,000 killed. Around the same time, the expulsion of Germans after WWII displaced 12 to 14 million people, leading to up to 2 million deaths from forced marches, starvation, and disease.
Later, we had horrors like Pol Pot’s Cambodia, where between 1.7 to 2 million people were executed, starved, or worked to death between 1975 and 1979. And in Rwanda in 1994, around 800,000 people were slaughtered in just 100 days, with neighbors turning on each other with machetes over ethnic identity.
Now let’s talk about more recent atrocities. In Ukraine, over 2,000 people die every day because a midget in heels with a Napoleon complex can’t handle losing power. The civil war in South Sudan has caused over 400,000 deaths since 2013 and continues to destabilize the region. Meanwhile, North Korea has been systematically starving its population, and in Tigray, thousands have been killed amidst widespread reports of mass killings and sexual violence.
This isn’t meant to downplay the tragedy in Gaza. It’s about perspective. Humanity has repeatedly committed atrocities, often on far larger scales. And ironically, despite these events, we are still living in the most peaceful period in recorded history. Maybe that’s something worth considering before declaring any single event the worst we've ever seen.