'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

Nasrallah appears; war-time casualty tolls

Nasrallah has now-- as forecast-- made a public appearance at the big Hizbullah rally in Beirut today. This, in open defiance of the many threats that Israeli political and military leaders have made against his life, even after the conclusion of the August 11/August 14 ceasefire.

During late August and early September, Israeli PM Ehud Olmert taunted Nasrallah a number of times, asking when he would come out of the "bunker" in which, Olmert alleged, Nasrallah was hiding. On a number of occasions, Nasrallah calmly told interviewers from the media that he would appear at a seemly and appropriate time, once all the bodies of Lebanese residents killed by Olmert's military had been recovered and buried.

By the way, human rights researchers in Lebanon say that in recent weeks they have been able to travel extensively around south Lebanon. Families of Hizbullah fighters are nearly always eager to note that affiliation on the tombstones and the memorial notices that are widely posted throughout the whole region. Based on this evidence, the researchers estimate that the ratio of Hizbullah fighters to civilians killed in Lebanon is somewhere around 1:7 or 1:8 .

With a total Lebanese casualty toll of about 1,200, that would give a total of about 150 to 170 Hizbullah fighters killed. Among Israelis, the casualty toll was 118 IDF members killed and 39 civilians. RIP, all of them.