Why Gaza is so important to internet denizens who are neither Jewish nor Muslim, neither Israeli nor Arab.

And using AI to evaluate

A friend shared with me the following: “One might ask why Gaza is so important to internet denizens who are neither Jewish nor Muslim, neither Israeli nor Arab. People are not nearly as concerned with the 500,000 fatalities in nearby Ethiopia, 300,000 in South Sudan, 200,000 in Yemen, 70,000 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or 60,000 in Nigeria. The seeming (and unwarranted) obsession with Israel is rather universal among the white, European nations of the world. As the graphic below shows, the "web page per fatality rate" for Gaza is >3000/1 and is <1/1 for every other conflict mentioned. So, the attention to Israel and Gaza may indeed be internet traffic driven, as opposed to stemming from an unhealthy obsession with Jews per se. Of course, the rate of internet traffic about Gaza itself likely stems from an unhealthy obsession with Jews. - SD

This map predates the current Gaza conflict, but the proportions aren’t much different today …

All numbers are quoted from Wikipedia and denote site hits quantified by google . com for example "site:bbc.com gaza" returns 28 million hits for Gaza and 4 hits for Mbuti, the jungle natives of the norther Congo.

Certainly, here's the revised list with the sums calculated and presented as single numbers for each genocide:

### Genocides Since 2000: Casualties, Media Coverage, and Pages per Fatality

1. **Darfur**

2. **Gaza**

-------BBC: 28,000,000 pages

-------NYT: 243,000 pages

--------Le Monde: 1,280,000 pages

- **Pages per Fatality**: 3,023 pages/fatality (29,523,000 pages / 10,000 fatalities)

3. **Yemen**

---Casualties**: 200,000 dead, 2 million displaced

---Media Coverage**:

-------NYT: 28,000 pages

-------BBC: 35,000 pages

-------Le Monde: 12,000 pages

- **Pages per Fatality**: 0.38 pages/fatality (75,000 pages / 200,000 fatalities)

4. **Mariupol**

---Casualties**: 10,000 dead, 300,000 displaced

---Media Coverage**:

-------BBC: 7,530 pages

-------NYT: 2,560 pages

-------Le Monde: 744 pages

- **Pages per Fatality**: 1.08 pages/fatality (10,834 pages / 10,000 fatalities)

5. **Rohingya**

---Casualties**: 25,000 dead, 1 million displaced

---Media Coverage**:

------- BBC: 8,440 pages

------- NYT: 3,950 pages

------- Le Monde: 1,200 pages

- **Pages per Fatality**: 0.56 pages/fatality (13,590 pages / 25,000 fatalities)

6. **Boko Haram**

---Casualties**: 60,000 dead, 2.5 million displaced

---Media Coverage**:

------- BBC: 21,000 pages

------- NYT: 2,800 pages

------- Le Monde: 4,000 pages

- **Pages per Fatality**: 0.47 pages/fatality (27,800 pages / 60,000 fatalities)

7. **Tigray**

---Casualties**: 500,000 dead

---Media Coverage**:

-------- BBC: 6,700 pages

-------- NYT: 1,500 pages

-------- Le Monde: 300 pages

- **Pages per Fatality**: 0.02 pages/fatality (8,500 pages / 500,000 fatalities)

8. **Mbuti**

---Casualties**: 70,000 dead

---Media Coverage**:

-------BBC: 5 pages

-------NYT: 54 pages

------- Le Monde: 2 pages

- **Pages per Fatality**: 0.00087 pages/fatality (61 pages / 70,000 fatalities)

_Note: These calculations are based on the provided data and rounded to two decimal places where applicable._

https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/17jl879/comment/k71t991/

I ran this information through AI and received the following:

The post you're referencing makes an argument about disproportionate media and internet attention to Gaza compared to other global humanitarian crises, measured through a very rough metric: "web pages per fatality." It's presented in a deliberately provocative style and seems aimed at suggesting that Gaza receives outsized attention not because of objective severity but because of what the author implies is an "unhealthy obsession with Jews."

Let’s break this down critically and contextually:

---

🟡 1. Methodological Issues

The argument relies heavily on a metric—web pages per fatality—that is highly imprecise and misleading:

• Google hit counts like site:bbc.com gaza are not reliable data for precise media attention. Google often inflates or estimates numbers.

• Casualty counts themselves are often contested or underreported, especially in inaccessible conflict zones.

• Media attention isn't only a function of death tolls—it’s shaped by geopolitical stakes, alliances, news cycles, audience familiarity, and language bias (English-language news disproportionately covers Israel/Gaza over conflicts in, say, Ethiopia or Congo).

---

🟡 2. False Equivalency

The post creates a false equivalency between Gaza and other conflicts:

• Israel/Gaza is not just a local conflict—it’s entangled in U.S. foreign policy, religious narratives, Western history (including the Holocaust), and post-colonial politics.

• Other crises (e.g., Tigray or South Sudan) often suffer from media fatigue, limited access, and global neglect—not because they're less important, but because they lack the political traction that Israel/Palestine has globally.

• Comparing coverage per fatality ignores context: some stories dominate because they resonate with multiple audiences across identity, religion, politics, and diaspora communities.

---

🟡 3. Subtle (or Not So Subtle) Antisemitic Framing

The author’s conclusion—“Of course, the rate of internet traffic about Gaza itself likely stems from an unhealthy obsession with Jews”—is deeply problematic:

• It recycles a long-standing antisemitic trope: that Jews are at the center of global attention or manipulation without justification.

• The suggestion that Gaza coverage = obsession with Jews dismisses legitimate global concern over humanitarian issues, occupation, war, and civilian casualties.

---

🟡 4. Why Gaza Does Receive Attention

It's disingenuous to pretend Gaza gets attention only because of antisemitism or media bias. Here’s why it draws sustained global focus:

• Ongoing, decades-long conflict with frequent flare-ups, destruction, and suffering.

• Symbolic power: for Muslims, leftists, human rights advocates, and international law critics, Gaza represents broader global issues.

• Social media virality: videos from Gaza are widely shared, unlike most crises in rural Africa or Southeast Asia.

• Diaspora amplification: Jewish, Muslim, and Arab communities worldwide are vocal and invested.

---

✅ Conclusion:

While it's fair to critique selective outrage or media bias, this post veers into ideologically loaded distortion. It presents dubious data to make a politically suggestive argument that flirts with antisemitic subtext while dismissing the real and complex reasons Gaza draws global attention.

If you're evaluating this as part of a larger inquiry or responding to it, you might ask:

• What are the ethical implications of comparing death tolls as a way to measure media legitimacy?

• What would more responsible comparative coverage look like?

• How can we address media imbalance without using it to minimize suffering or weaponize attention?

Then I said: The comments above made me wonder whether AI is also getting implicated in the same biased assessment?

The response I received: That’s a timely and important question—yes, AI is increasingly being implicated in accusations of bias, including when it comes to conflict coverage, visibility, and framing of Israel/Palestine, Gaza, and broader Middle Eastern or African crises. But it’s more complex than simple partisan skew. Here's a breakdown:

---

🔹 1. AI Mirrors Existing Biases

Most large language models (like ChatGPT) are trained on vast amounts of internet text—from books and articles to Wikipedia and news sites. As a result:

• Bias in the data → bias in the model.

• If Israel/Palestine receives disproportionate English-language media coverage compared to Tigray or South Sudan, that will be reflected in what AI “knows” and emphasizes.

• Similarly, Western ideological framings (liberal human rights discourse, U.S.-centric views of democracy or sovereignty) often dominate AI outputs.

So yes, the uneven attention the internet gives to global suffering is inherited by AI unless it’s carefully corrected or balanced.

---

🔹 2. Censorship, Moderation, and “Sensitivity” Filters

• AI systems are often more cautious around controversial or politically charged topics.

• For example, any mention of Gaza, Zionism, antisemitism, or genocide often triggers over-filtering, hedging, or evasive responses.

• That in itself becomes a form of invisible bias: what AI won’t say or discuss often reflects institutional, legal, or reputational fears, not moral clarity.

So AI may appear “neutral” but is often moderated in a way that reflects the sensitivities of Western publishers, platforms, and institutions.

---

🔹 3. Accusations from Multiple Sides

AI gets accused of bias by all sides:

• Pro-Israel users may say AI echoes “leftist” or “anti-Zionist” framings.

• Pro-Palestinian voices say AI too often sanitizes or justifies Israeli state violence.

• Others accuse AI of moral relativism, historical flattening, or both-sidesism when discussing conflicts rooted in power imbalance or colonial legacies.

These conflicting accusations usually reveal more about the polarized political landscape than the AI itself—but they also point to the limits of algorithmic neutrality.

---

🔹 4. Can AI Be Trained to Be Fairer?

Yes—but only to a degree:

• AI can be trained on diverse and globally representative data (though that’s hard to access and curate well).

• Developers can include underrepresented narratives, non-Western scholarship, and alternative media ecosystems.

• But the deepest questions—about whose suffering is visible, which ideologies are “reasonable,” or how trauma should be narrated—are ethical and political, not technical.

---

✅ Conclusion:

Yes, AI is caught in the same web of media bias, geopolitical imbalance, and selective empathy that infects the internet. It doesn’t create these problems but inherits, reflects, and sometimes amplifies them.

The better question isn’t “Is AI biased?” (it is)—but how conscious users, writers, and editors can use AI with awareness of what’s absent, overstated, or unchallenged.

Something to be aware of.