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Is Gaza Really the Biggest Case of Arab Suffering?

FILE PHOTO: Sudanese refugees who fled the violence in Sudan’s Darfur region and newly arrived ride their donkeys looking for space to temporarily settle, near the border between Sudan and Chad in Goungour, Chad May 8, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra/File Photo

What would a Sudanese person watching that country’s renewed civil war — which has  killed 14,000, displaced eight million, and threatens 17 million with famine in less than a year — think when they this CBS headline: “Gaza faces unprecedented desperation.”

Sudan has a population of 46 million, Gaza only has two million.

Between 2004 and 2009, the Sudanese regime killed 400,000 people in Sudan. Millions were displaced and still live today in camps suffering acute hunger and the spread of cholera. Since then, the Sudanese regime has disintegrated into its components: its the army and its militias. Since April, the two sides have been engaged in a civil war, causing even more Sudanese deaths, displacement, and agony.

A child in Sudan is dying every hour, according to Medecins Sans Frontier. The International Rescue Committee lists the war in Sudan as the top concern of its 2024 Emergency Watchlist.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) reported that 25 million Sudanese are in need of assistance. Close to 18 million of them face acute hunger, 4.9 million on emergency levels. Of the $2.7 billion needed for Sudan in 2024, UN agencies have received $96.7 million, amounting to only four percent.

Yet, the Sudanese tragedy never seems to attract as much attention as the newer and much smaller conflict in Gaza. UN Secretary General Secretary General António Guterres said about Gaza: “We are witnessing a killing of civilians that is unparalleled and unprecedented in any conflict since I have been Secretary-General.”

But Guterres is wrong.

When the number of deaths in Gaza stood at a reported 29,000 — if we were to believe local Gazan sources — Hamas claimed that it had lost 6,000 of its fighters. Israel alleged that Hamas had lost double that number. Even assuming nearly 30,000 people have died (something we have no way to verify), if we split the difference, the ratio of combatants to non-combatants killed in war in Gaza would be roughly 1:2, lower than the 1:3 (or 1:4) ratio of a similar Middle Eastern asymmetric war when US forces eradicated ISIS in Mosul.

While the death of a single civilian in war is regrettable, it is unlikely that Guterres will ever walk back his claim and admit that the number of non-combatants killed in Gaza is below war average. Guterres’ statement will linger for a long time, and feed the misinformation mill of anti-Israel hatred.

Similarly, a World Health Organization’s spokesperson said that the “war in Gaza has resulted in unprecedented levels of destruction.” Notwithstanding that almost any war in the Middle East — including in Sudan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Lebanon — has caused comparable destruction, the WHO will unlikely qualify its statement or correct itself.

In fact, even when proven false, the global media has rarely retracted erroneous reporting. On October 17, the world media claimed that Israel had committed an “unprecedented” attack on a Gaza hospital that killed 500 Palestinians. It turned out that errant Palestinian fire had killed tens of Palestinians who were camped in the yard of that hospital. Yet the original report is still available today on Reuters‘ website, without any update or errata notice.

For non-Palestinian Arabs who have been suffering from war, there is a sense of unfairness that Palestinians have been monopolizing global headlines for the past century.

Palestinians even get their own UN agencies, such as UNRWA, dedicated exclusively to the affairs of 5.9 million Palestinian “refugees” — when 12 million displaced Syrians, 8.1 million Sudanese, 4.5 million Yemenis, and 1.1 million Iraqis are all tucked under UNHCR and receive a fraction of the global resources and attention.

In fact, the majority of Palestinian refugees today were not themselves displaced, but are the descendants of Palestinians displaced in the 1948 and 1967 Arab-Israelis wars. Millions of displaced Palestinians from these wars resettled and were naturalized in countries around the world, yet are still registered as UNRWA “refugees.”

Even claims that the rate and scale of Israel’s fighting in Gaza “is unlike any war in recent memory” are false.

Unless humanity has the memory of a goldfish, most of us remember (and this writer witnessed) Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon to eject Yasser Arafat and his Palestine Liberation Organization militias. In 12 weeks, Lebanon estimated its losses at 18,000, with many more thousands of Palestinians fighters unaccounted for. Even Israel suffered heavier losses in 1982 Lebanon, 350 troops in 88 days, compared to 230 in 140 days in 2024 Gaza.

Until 2003, Iraqis suffered 24 years of brutal Saddam Hussein tyranny, including his usage of sarin gas on his own people. Kuwaitis suffered Saddam’s invasion and burning of their oilfields. Similarly, Syria’s Assad used chemical weapons in crushing a revolution, between 2011 and 2018, killing along the way at least 300,000 and displacing 12 million.

In Lebanon, a UN Tribunal found that Hezbollah assassinated Prime Minister Rafic Hariri and a dozen other politicians, journalists, and activists after him. The World Food Program (WFP) has been working to prevent a famine by feeding 400,000 “vulnerable Lebanese families.”

And yet, in their rallies and in the statements of their leadership — whether the Palestinian Authority or Hamas — Palestinians have praised Hussein, Assad and Nasrallah, and have shown disinterest in the tragedy of other Arabs, claiming exclusive victimhood.

Despite their agony, ongoing displacement and hunger, the Lebanese, Syrians, Iraqis, Yemenis, and Sudanese people are expected to focus on Gaza as their “central cause.” In fact, the UNRWA’s budget per capita is multi-folds that of non-Palestinian Arabs. These Arab people would raise their voice, but social shaming and physical harassment that threatens them — both at home and in their Western diaspora — keeps them silently weeping and prevents the world from understanding these tragedies that are happening in the Arab world.

Hussain Abdul-Hussain is a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy. Follow Hussain on X @hahussain

The post Is Gaza Really the Biggest Case of Arab Suffering? first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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After False Dawns, Gazans Hope Trump Will Force End to Two-Year-Old War

Palestinians walk past a residential building destroyed in previous Israeli strikes, after Hamas agreed to release hostages and accept some other terms in a US plan to end the war, in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa

Exhausted Palestinians in Gaza clung to hopes on Saturday that US President Donald Trump would keep up pressure on Israel to end a two-year-old war that has killed tens of thousands and displaced the entire population of more than two million.

Hamas’ declaration that it was ready to hand over hostages and accept some terms of Trump’s plan to end the conflict while calling for more talks on several key issues was greeted with relief in the enclave, where most homes are now in ruins.

“It’s happy news, it saves those who are still alive,” said 32-year-old Saoud Qarneyta, reacting to Hamas’ response and Trump’s intervention. “This is enough. Houses have been damaged, everything has been damaged, what is left? Nothing.”

GAZAN RESIDENT HOPES ‘WE WILL BE DONE WITH WARS’

Ismail Zayda, 40, a father of three, displaced from a suburb in northern Gaza City where Israel launched a full-scale ground operation last month, said: “We want President Trump to keep pushing for an end to the war, if this chance is lost, it means that Gaza City will be destroyed by Israel and we might not survive.

“Enough, two years of bombardment, death and starvation. Enough,” he told Reuters on a social media chat.

“God willing this will be the last war. We will hopefully be done with the wars,” said 59-year-old Ali Ahmad, speaking in one of the tented camps where most Palestinians now live.

“We urge all sides not to backtrack. Every day of delay costs lives in Gaza, it is not just time wasted, lives get wasted too,” said Tamer Al-Burai, a Gaza City businessman displaced with members of his family in central Gaza Strip.

After two previous ceasefires — one near the start of the war and another earlier this year — lasted only a few weeks, he said; “I am very optimistic this time, maybe Trump’s seeking to be remembered as a man of peace, will bring us real peace this time.”

RESIDENT WORRIES THAT NETANYAHU WILL ‘SABOTAGE’ DEAL

Some voiced hopes of returning to their homes, but the Israeli military issued a fresh warning to Gazans on Saturday to stay out of Gaza City, describing it as a “dangerous combat zone.”

Gazans have faced previous false dawns during the past two years, when Trump and others declared at several points during on-off negotiations between Hamas, Israel and Arab and US mediators that a deal was close, only for war to rage on.

“Will it happen? Can we trust Trump? Maybe we trust Trump, but will Netanyahu abide this time? He has always sabotaged everything and continued the war. I hope he ends it now,” said Aya, 31, who was displaced with her family to Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.

She added: “Maybe there is a chance the war ends at October 7, two years after it began.”

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Mass Rally in Rome on Fourth Day of Italy’s Pro-Palestinian Protests

A Pro-Palestinian demonstrator waves a Palestinian flag during a national protest for Gaza in Rome, Italy, October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Claudia Greco

Large crowds assembled in central Rome on Saturday for the fourth straight day of protests in Italy since Israel intercepted an international flotilla trying to deliver aid to Gaza, and detained its activists.

People holding banners and Palestinian flags, chanting “Free Palestine” and other slogans, filed past the Colosseum, taking part in a march that organizers hoped would attract at least 1 million people.

“I’m here with a lot of other friends because I think it is important for us all to mobilize individually,” Francesco Galtieri, a 65-year-old musician from Rome, said. “If we don’t all mobilize, then nothing will change.”

Since Israel started blocking the flotilla late on Wednesday, protests have sprung up across Europe and in other parts of the world, but in Italy they have been a daily occurrence, in multiple cities.

On Friday, unions called a general strike in support of the flotilla, with demonstrations across the country that attracted more than 2 million, according to organizers. The interior ministry estimated attendance at around 400,000.

Italy’s right-wing government has been critical of the protests, with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni suggesting that people would skip work for Gaza just as an excuse for a longer weekend break.

On Saturday, Meloni blamed protesters for insulting graffiti that appeared on a statue of the late Pope John Paul II outside Rome’s main train station, where Pro-Palestinian groups have been holding a protest picket.

“They say they are taking to the streets for peace, but then they insult the memory of a man who was a true defender and builder of peace. A shameful act committed by people blinded by ideology,” she said in a statement.

Israel launched its Gaza offensive after Hamas terrorists staged a cross border attack on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 people hostage.

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Hamas Says It Agrees to Release All Israeli Hostages Under Trump Gaza Plan

Smoke rises during an Israeli military operation in Gaza City, as seen from the central Gaza Strip, October 2, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas

Hamas said on Friday it had agreed to release all Israeli hostages, alive or dead, under the terms of US President Donald Trump’s Gaza proposal, and signaled readiness to immediately enter mediated negotiations to discuss the details.

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