https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/03/dont-fall-for-hamass-numbers-game/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_
Lloyd Austin’s recent gullibility about Hamas casualty figures lays bare the terrorist group’s goal: to use lies and propaganda to turn the world against Israel.
At a press conference in the early days of the Israel–Hamas conflict, President Joe Biden was asked about casualty numbers coming out of Gaza. He responded that he had “no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using.” The next day, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby was asked the same question, and in turn explained, “We all know that the Gazan Ministry of Health is just a front for Hamas. It’s a — it’s run by Hamas, a terrorist organization. I’ve said it myself up here: We can’t take anything coming out of Hamas, including the so-called Ministry of Health, at face value.”
Fast forward to February 29, when Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin had no such qualms, parroting before Congress Hamas’s claim that “over 25,000” women and children have perished in Gaza. A few short hours later, the Pentagon walked back the secretary’s claim. Why? Because nobody has any idea — any honest idea — how many Gazans have died in the war that began with Hamas’s October 7 attack.
The only sources of data about casualties in Gaza are Hamas-controlled organizations. And despite a demonstrable record of manipulation designed to exaggerate the deaths of women and children (and minimize the numbers of men — the targets of Israeli military action), these numbers have become the data of record, used without qualification by the United Nations, its specialized agencies, the media, and, pace Joe Biden, one of the U.S. government’s highest officials.
As early as October, after false claims that 471 were killed by an alleged Israeli attack on al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City, Hamas’s credibility should have been shot. The “attack” turned out to be a misfired missile launched by Palestinian Islamic Jihad that damaged an area adjacent to the hospital, and most experts concluded that deaths totaled half that number or even fewer. But doubts about Hamas’s honesty soon dissipated, and much of the press returned to an uncritical repetition of Palestinian statistics.
There can be little doubt that many thousands of Palestinians in Gaza have perished. The IDF says that 12,000 Hamas terrorists have been killed — and presumably most, if not all, of these casualties are men. As a proportional matter, if 12,000 men have been killed, it is possible that roughly the same number of women (who are approximately 50 percent of the Gazan population), and almost as many children under 18 (47 percent of the overall population), have also died.
On the other hand, this is not the bombing of Dresden or the carpet-bombing of Vietnam. House-to-house fighting is generally aimed at minimizing civilian casualties, and the IDF has until recently conducted much of its campaign with air support for troops on the ground. Thus, we should assume that a proportional death toll in Gaza of men, women, and children is unlikely. However, Hamas’s penchant for c0-locating their operations with mosques, schools, and hospitals means higher risks for Palestinians who are young, elderly, or infirm.
