The Gaza Ministry of Health Cannot be Trusted on Casualty Numbers
“Here’s the problem with this data: The numbers are not real.”
The numbers have been exaggerated from the very beginning.
Abraham Wyner writes at Tablet Mag:
How the Gaza Ministry of Health Fakes Casualty Numbers
The number of civilian casualties in Gaza has been at the center of international attention since the start of the war. The main source for the data has been the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, which now claims more than 30,000 dead, the majority of which it says are children and women. Recently, the Biden administration lent legitimacy to Hamas’ figure. When asked at a House Armed Services Committee hearing last week how many Palestinian women and children have been killed since Oct. 7, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said the number was “over 25,000.” The Pentagon quickly clarified that the secretary “was citing an estimate from the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry.” President Biden himself had earlier cited this figure, asserting that “too many, too many of the over 27,000 Palestinians killed in this conflict have been innocent civilians and children, including thousands of children.” The White House also explained that the president “was referring to publicly available data about the total number of casualties.”
Here’s the problem with this data: The numbers are not real. That much is obvious to anyone who understands how naturally occurring numbers work. The casualties are not overwhelmingly women and children, and the majority may be Hamas fighters.
If Hamas’ numbers are faked or fraudulent in some way, there may be evidence in the numbers themselves that can demonstrate it. While there is not much data available, there is a little, and it is enough: From Oct. 26 until Nov. 10, 2023, the Gaza Health Ministry released daily casualty figures that include both a total number and a specific number of women and children.
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Comments
“The Gaza Ministry of Health Cannot be Trusted on Casualty Numbers”
To be fair, a trait it shares with the US “ministry of health.”
Perhaps all these women and children did not die “of war,” but just “with war.”
The Tablet piece makes a strong case for the numbers being faked. Read the whole thing.
Definitely read the whole thing, because the extract reproduced here is not very comprehensible. It cuts off before making any kind of point. The whole thing is a must-read.
I have read the whole piece. As a physician, I am quite conversant in epidemiology and health outcomes research, and Hamas is doing its Numerical Sideshow the same way that “The Lancet” did with its Iraqi civilian casualty numbers back during the early 2000s: cooked books that were easily disproven with a more thorough analysis. Hamas is supplying numbers which are obviously “cooked books”, and a good epidemiologist will catch that and report it. Those with an agenda will not, hence trash like UNRWA and the Lancet overplaying their hands.
Duh?
Well, Duuuuuuuuh……you’d have to be an intellectual cripple, like a State Department Employee, for example, to believe you could trust Hamas’ minions. Or as senile as Dementia Joe. Austin is no brighter, but apparently there is still someone in the Pentagon who isn’t too stupid to drool without a spotter.
Yes, but this isn’t about whether terrorists are likely to tell the truth. This is about using statistical methods to formally prove that the numbers are made up.