Last April Gabriel Epstein, an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, pointed out that something was amiss. He found that the deaths attributed to “reliable media sources” were almost entirely women and children. Of the 6,629 media-attributed victims, 1,941 were women, 4,678 were children, and only 10 were men. Of the nearly 11,000 deaths reported between January 1 and March 31, adult males accounted for just 9 percent of the victims, even though Gaza’s gender ratio is close to parity and more than half of its residents are adults.
A report by Britain’s Henry Jackson Society denounced that the number of civilians killed in Gaza is inflated to portray Israel as deliberately targeting innocent civilians.
Then, a month ago, a report by Britain’s Henry Jackson Society denounced that the number of civilians killed in Gaza is inflated to portray Israel as deliberately targeting innocent civilians. The researchers accused the “Ministry of Health” of Gaza, cited as the only source by the newspapers and under the control of Hamas, of manipulating the data on the victims by including natural deaths, not distinguishing between civilians and terrorists, also classifying sixteen and seventeen-year-old fighters among children, overestimating the number of women.
The official version of the newspapers, the UN and Hamas speaks of 46.000 victims in Gaza, of which “70 percent women and children.” In reality, more than one serious study has explained that more than half of the dead are terrorists and that the ratio of losses is one civilian for every terrorist, much more proportional than other similar wars in urban environments and indicating a notable and successful effort to avoid unnecessary losses of human lives while fighting a ruthless enemy that defends itself by using civilians as human shields.
But for the Lancet, the famous medical journal founded in 1823 and directed by the activist Richard Horton, the numbers of Hamas are low, indeed very low, and Israel killed many more, almost double. The death toll in Gaza is estimated at 70,000. The figure from the Hamas “Health Ministry” is 45,885 as of January 7. But the English magazine contradicts even its own sensational previous study.
In July, in fact, the Lancet had launched another number. The magazine published an article written by the three doctors (at least two of whom have a documented history of taking a stand in defense of terrorism, including justifying the lynching of two Israeli reservists in Ramallah in October 2000), in which they state that “it is not implausible to estimate up to 186,000 or more deaths.” Title of the article: “Counting the dead in Gaza, a difficult but essential task.”
Counting them is indeed difficult.
In July, the Lancet published an article written by the three doctors stating that “it is not implausible to estimate up to 186,000 or more deaths.”
In 2006, Lancet published a “bombshell report” that estimated that the victims of the war in Iraq had exceeded 650,000. It took a while to ascertain that they were no more than two hundred thousand. Even the pacifists themselves said so. Their “Iraq Body Count” project, which monitors the number of violent deaths in Iraq and is a point of reference for the entire rainbow movement, is stuck at 300,000 deaths, including terrorists.
Quadrupling and doubling the number of deaths reported by Hamas must really be a “difficult but essential task” for the Lancet, even if the leaders of terrorism are not exactly picky and consider civilian deaths “necessary sacrifices” in the war against Israel.
Instead, we await a medical study by the Lancet on the 98 Israeli hostages held for a year and three months in Hamas cages, how much they weigh, their psychological condition, the rapes they suffered, the torture, the deprivation of light and sleep: there would be enough to write for a scientific journal.
But it will be more realistic to expect another Lancet report on “one million deaths in Gaza” on January 27, just in time to commemorate the Palestinian Arab genocide instead of the Holocaust.
Published originally under the title “Why Not One Million Deaths in Gaza?”
