One of the most bizarre aspects of the Israel-Hamas conflict has been the way the entire mainstream media accepts without question the casualty figures from Hamas (who, of course, run the 'Palestinian Health Ministry' in Gaza that provide the figures). This is despite the fact that it is know that Hamas massively fabricated casualty figures in previous conflicts (for example, by classifying most Hamas fighters killed as civilians and including all naturally occurring deaths during the period of the conflict).
The only justification I have seen for using figures provided by a proscribed terrorist organisation is that UNRWA have ‘largely corroborated’ them. Yet, as has now been proven conclusively, not only is UNRWA in Gaza essentially controlled by Hamas, but many of its members are Hamas operatives including several who took part in the Oct 7 massacre.
Today Hamas assured the world that exactly 30,960 Gazans have been killed since 7 Oct. The entire mainstream media duly accepted this figure and repeated it everywhere. Yet the same Hamas people who know this exact number of Gazans killed say they have no idea how many of the 134 hostages - who they have been holding in extremely secure locations for over 5 months - are dead or alive. And not a single mainstream media voice questions the inconsistency in this knowledge about deaths in Gaza.
The Washington Institute produced a comprehensive overview of how the Hamas statistics systematically overestimated the number of children killed, while grossly underestimating the number of male combatants killed. Now the statistician Abraham Wyner (who interestingly was a key expert witness for Rand Simberg explaining the ‘hockey stick’ fraud in the recent case brought against Simberg and Mark Steyn by Michael Mann) has gone further.
Wyner's statistical analysis demonstrates how the claimed daily fatality numbers provided by Hamas between 26 Oct and 10 Nov were clearly faked. Wyner shows that, in addition to blatant contradictions in the numbers, there were a number of statistically implausible relationships, notably:
a statistically unrealistic linearity in the increasing number of deaths
2. lack of correlation between daily child and women numbers (on days when more children are killed we would also expect more women to be killed):
3. and strong negative correlation between daily men and women numbers (suggesting, bizarrely, that on days where fewer men are killed, more women are killed):
Here are the raw Hamas data used in Wyner’s analysis:
Wyner's analysis is excellent but failed to note a further glaring issue with the Hamas data:
They do not provide a breakdown of ‘children’ by age or gender.
In fact, many Hamas armed combatants are teenage males aged between 14 and 19 (see also this).
Moreover, whereas it is standard to classify those under 18 as 'children', Hamas routinely counts combatants under the age of 20 as ‘children’. The only breakdown of casualty figures by age and gender from the 'Palestinian Health Ministry' that I could find is this from 7-26 Oct 2023:
First of all note that, whereas it is normal to classify those under 18 as 'children', Hamas has the ambiguous 15-19 category, indicating that they classify all those under 20 as children. Also, there are obviously fake numbers of deaths for ages 0-4, 5-9 and 10-14. But note that even they state a disproportionate number of male deaths in the categories 10-14 and 15-19 – all of whom Hamas classify as ‘children’.
In summary: a significant number of fatalities who Hamas claims are 'children' are in fact combatants.
The current total of "over 30,000 mainly women and children Gaza deaths" is continually used as a propaganda tool against Israel to call for a 'ceasefire' which would not only leave the Israeli hostages captive and Hamas in control, but would also guarantee future massacres against Israeli civilians. Since Israel has provided evidence of around 13,000 Hamas combatants killed, even if the 30,000 killed is correct, this would represent a civilian to combatant death ratio that is remarkably low compared to other conflicts.
Thanks for a straightforward realistic view of this horrible situation. I believe that although IDF might not be perfect, Gaza and Israel women and children are mostly victims of Hamas' fanatic, violent and careless ideology and actions.
I don't believe Israel figures because even a CIA guy said he knows them too well to believe that. Israel lies and fabricate fake news. We have seen this over decades when they controlled the media completely and brainwashed the world until recently than the tide turned finally! Israel is a squatter state that steals, loot, lie, kill, bomb, then use the victim card of holocaust while they started another holocaust since 1936 when terrorist groups Irgun and Haganah massacred thousands and threatened thousands more to either leave or die! However, I do believe the figures given by the Palestinians because I am sure that they do not have sophisticated tools to count their deaths let alone those who ar…
The subtext of this post seems to be that "this is an armed conflict not a genocide". I am not convinced - the imbalance of power and the degree of devastation to this territory say otherwise - it just has the feel of eradication. Peter Yim
In matters Covid I find Prof Fenton scrupulous both in logic and about the data. In the case of Israel/Gaza his logic seems somewhat questionable.
First off, we are not to believe the Hamas health authority, because ... well because they are the enemy and lie. Second off, we are to believe the Israeli authorities (and the IDF), because ... well because they are our friends and don't lie.
Now to the numbers. Let's skip all the argument as to why the 30000 Gazan dead is a fib, and jump to the end of the article. There we learn that the reliable Israeli authorities have evidence of 13000 Hamas combatants killed. And that if the Hamas figure of 30000 dea…
Your critique, Norman, looks sound. But lets put ourselves in the position of public health administrators (my former profession) - but in a city of 2M people that is being bombed to smithereens, and with virtually no proper admin facilities - due to massive population displacement and a catastrophic failure of health and hygiene. Its pretty obvious that they will use crude estimates of the figures, because they lack the resources to do anything systematic. And from the perspective that I hold, which is to march against the continued bombing and occupation and support a cease-fire in order to save lives - the numbers don't matter much - who knows how many people are buried under the rubble we see…