Counting the dead

These days I am getting quite a few e-mails on the Israeli-Hizbulah conflict. Or shall I say the new Lebanon war?.
One in particular, from a Canadian, called "coffin" something, counts the dead. In his page shows the numbers as little coffins. The current tally is of some 30 Israelis, 4 UN force men, and some 500 Lebanese. He gets the figures from the BBC reports.
It's a bad thing to count the dead. In Spain, 70 years after our Civil War we are still counting the dead from both sides. 500.000 is a commonly cited figure. Jose Gironella, a writer, entitled one of his novels about the Civil War "One million dead", pointing out in the prologue that there were 1/2 a million but another half million died in their souls.
Do not count the dead. One is just one too many.