Cenk Uygur Sparks Fury With Syria-Gaza Death Toll Comparison

Progressive stalwart Cenk Uygur kicked up a firestorm of anger on Friday evening with a tweet accusing Israel of killing more civilians in Gaza than Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Assad did in Aleppo. Aleppo, a city of over 2 million people, suffered large-scale destruction during the Syrian Civil War, in which pro-democracy factions tried to overthrow the totalitarian Assad regime.

“Bashar Al-Assad in four years of brutalizing Aleppo didn’t kill as many civilians as Israel has in two months. Russians killed fewer Ukranian civilians in Maruipol. Israel has killed 20 times the civilians Hamas did. Netanyahu is one of the biggest terrorists of our lifetimes,” wrote The Young Turks host on X/Twitter.

Uyugur’s comment comes as the death toll in Gaza continues to quickly rise and, according to Hamas-linked officials, it had passed 20,000 this week. While most critics did not take issue with Uygur highlighting the suffering in Gaza, he was roundly slammed for suggesting that atrocities in Syria in Ukraine were somehow lesser.

“‘Less people died in Aleppo’ is factually incorrect according to the Gaza Health Ministry’s own numbers,” wrote the American Enterprise Institute’s Kareem Rifai, adding:

The UN acknowledges that the official Mariupol death toll is a severe undercount.

But most importantly: WHY do we feel the need to erase Syrian and Ukrainian suffering?

Notably, according to the UN the death toll in Aleppo was well over 50,000 in a conflict that left some 350,000 people dead (many estimates put the total death toll over 500,000) and left Assad in power to continue to brutalize his people. The war also created a mass refugee crisis with over 7 million Syrians being forced to flee their country. “The greatest number of documented killings was recorded in the Governorate of Aleppo, with 51,731 named individuals killed,” read a statement from the Office of the High Commissioner For Human Rights at the UN in September of 2021.

Assad’s crimes against humanity have long been documented by foreign governments, the UN, and other watchdog groups. On October 5th, CNN’s Clarissa Ward highlighted a harrowing report on how Assad’s regime today continues to use hospitals to torture and punish its critics at home. “Devastating report by @RohitKachrooITV as Assad continues his rehabilitation,” Ward wrote on Twitter, sharing a clip captioned, “A Damascus hospital has become a secret ‘slaughterhouse’ for Syrians who oppose President Bashar al-Assad, where doctors and nurses use medical equipment to taunt, torture and kill activists during check-ups.”

Other critics of Uygur’s tweet were quick to note that Assad also attacked and starved out Palestinian refugee camps in Syria during the civil war.

“Israel is undoubtedly committing war crimes and ethnic cleansing here and the west should be ashamed for enabling it but no it’s not as bad as Mariupol. And Bashar Al-Assad has murdered far more people including Palestinians in refugee camps,” one user wrote in reply.

The Times of Israel reported in March of 2014 on the issue with an analysis titled, “Assad is starving Palestinians to death in a Syrian camp, and nobody cares.”

A conservative attorney who writes under the pseudonym AG Hamilton also noted that Uygur makes no distinction between Hamas fighters and civilians killed in Gaza. “The lying is bad enough, but the refusal to place any responsibility on the terrorist group that started this war and has actively encouraged/ensured the maximization of civilian deaths is deplorable. That’s why Cenk gets embarrassed any time he debates this topic and that’s why no one serious pays attention to him,” Hamilton concluded in a lengthy reply.

Below are some more replies to Uygur’s tweet:

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