A little over a week ago, a report published by the British-based think tank, the Henry Jackson Society, claimed that, after rigorous analysis of the data available, the terrorist organization Hamas is exaggerating the number of casualties from the on-going war between Israel and Hamas.
The report did not make many waves, mostly because nobody was surprised that Hamas is using casualty numbers to show the brutality of the Israeli army and turn opinion against Israel, thereby counting on the short memory of the world and forget the Hamas atrocities that started this war.
The academics of the Henry Jackson Society base their claim of Hamas exaggeration on statistical analysis of the numbers (war deaths are statistics?) and the thorough analysis of reports about Israeli attacks which they suggest gives them an accurate estimate of the “real” number of civilian casualties. In addition, they also claim that Hamas counts the people who died a natural death in Gaza (which amounts to approx. five thousand people) and includes them in the overall war tally.
All this may be true but if the aim of their analysis was to show that Israel does not kill civilians in large numbers they thoroughly failed. The whole world (except in Israel) sees and has seen the actions of the Israeli army, and in particular the Air Force. Whole cities are being destroyed building by building without significant consideration for the population and those that do survive are forced to concentrate in “safe zones”, resulting in large numbers of people in small areas where food, water, hygiene and privacy are hard to come by. And when Hamas terrorists are hiding among the population in these “safe zones” the Israeli army will not hesitate to attack. The Israeli army uses formulas to decide how many casualties are permitted as “collateral damage” and the more important the terrorist, the higher the collateral damage allowed.
The British academics are also careful not to suggest numbers of civilian casualties that would be acceptable and permissible in a war like this and this may be understandable because it would look bad for Israel in any case.
If Israel did not kill forty-five thousand Palestinians, as the Hamas reports, that how many did they kill? Thirty-five thousand? Thirty thousand? The Brits realized very well that reducing the numbers would still make Israel look really bad, or, if they would suggest very low numbers, their credibility would be severely affected.
It is very hard to analyze the number of people killed, and decide who is a terrorist and who is an innocent child, but for Israel, it does not make much of a difference anyway. As long as those killed are Palestinians and not Jews, the numbers are irrelevant for Israel. The word “genocide” is not allowed in Israel and most people do not think this is what is happening today in Gaza. And agreed, genocide is a premeditated action and this is (most likely) not the case even though certain politicians in Israel would love to see otherwise. Simply, Israel and Israelis, do not care if Palestinians are killed and it does not matter if there will be thousand casualties or a hundred thousand casualties.
The barbaric attack by Hamas on October 7th of last year, whereby twelve hundred Israelis were brutally murdered and a large number of people where captured and taken into the Gaza strip (some one hundred still remain in Gaza, under inhuman conditions) made the war necessary and Israel has every right to do everything in order to prevent a recurrence of such a disaster. But this should not need to include the massive killing of civilians.
Ultra-right Israelis dream of resettling the Gaza strip and to realize this dream, Palestinians need to make way. However, it is clear to everyone who looks at the status of the Gaza strip, that only “exporting” Gazans will make that dream possible, with as alternative a mass killing.
Israel, internally and internationally will not recover from extreme steps like those but this is not something that worries the fascist politicians.
It should worry us………………..
I hope you found this article interesting and I welcome any comments you may have.
If you register on the site, you will be receiving a notice when new articles are posted.
