Home » Hamas makes up its casualty numbers and the world repeats them as truth

Comments

Hamas makes up its casualty numbers and the world repeats them as truth — 32 Comments

  1. I’m not sure how to critically evaluate his article.
    ==
    The thing is, given the chaotic state of affairs in Gaza, how would their ‘health ministry’ have any idea of the death toll? Your go to explanation is that the numbers were ass-pulls.

  2. Thanks for this important post.

    BTW, WRT to:

    …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…

    …this is also true—and has been said by more than one statistician—about the election results of 2020…
    FWIW. (To be sure, both parties—“Biden” and most certainly Hamas—seem to have an ingrained need to play by “Palestinian Rules”….)

    In any event, while the following might not exactly persuade “The Righteous”, here’s something to compare and contrast…
    “UNDERSTANDING ISRAEL’S WAR”—
    https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2024/03/understanding-israels-war.php

    And an unusual take:
    “Israel: A strange astonishment in the eyes of the nations;
    “Indeed, the world is watching, with all too many casual observers passing moral judgment over the nature and scope of Israel’s military response to being attacked on October 7th….”
    https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/386803

  3. Read a couple articles how the numbers are blatantly made up,worse is the White House uses them without question.

  4. I never believe anything emanating from the pie holes of Hamas.
    I don’t even believe many of the videos they show.
    I saw one a few years back where “dead” Gazans – shown dead lying on stretchers – could be seen moving under the sheets.
    And other videos where a “dead” Gazan, was shown dead in several different locations (Maybe they were triplets and all go killed) .

    There has never been a war in world history where innocent civilians have not been killed or suffered real hardships. The average German citizen living in Dresden – and experienced and died in the absolute horror of the fire bombings – may have not supported Hitler, but it made no difference.

    On a percentage basis, there are probably a greater number of Gazans that support Hamas than there were German (non-combatants) that supported the Nazis.

    Sort of an aside; I have read that when the WTC got attacked on 9-11, Arabs living in New Jersey were seen celebrating. I don’t know if this is true or not, but if it is, I would not be surprised.

    Israel had better finish off Hamas once and for all, though I have no idea how Israel expects Gaza to be governed without the terrorists once again causing big trouble.

  5. I am wondering about the Rafah operation, and hoping something is going on we can’t see. It’s time to finish them off.

    Hamas should not be believed about anything.

  6. They are passionately intent on serving as hamas’ s mouth piece as they had done for fatah and hezbollah before

  7. There is footage of that and other events that the local reporters denied as well as celebrations in gaza that were contemporaneous

  8. Some things cannot be excused, among them is the fact that the great majority of those who support the Palestinians and condemn Israel’s actions know what Hamas did on October 7th.

    No amount of facts and evidence can convince them because in their “heart of hearts”, they justify the slaughter of babies and children.

    When there’s another slaughter, they’ll support that too.

    In supporting the intentional slaughter of babies and children they have shown themselves to be part of the indecent race of men. Whether cold or hot, an eternal state of war exists between the indecent and the decent.

    Simply because the indecent will have it no other way.

  9. Try to wrap yer heads around this one….
    “A literary magazine’s collapse reveals the censorship the Israel-Hamas war has wrought”—
    https://archive.is/99xBm
    H/T Blazingcatfur blog.

    The point? Israelis deserve no compassion. (How dare they even think they do…)

    The result? The Narrative(TM) will eat its own…

  10. People who use “insurrection” for J6, I can understand them using “genocide” for Israel’s’ justified response, and no intent at wiping out Balestinians. They are meme-responders.
    its perplexing to see “insurrection”-deniers with “genocide”-believers, unaware meme-responders, I guess?

  11. Barry M., that’s part of what I meant when I said I hope there’s something going on we can’t see.

  12. Civil War in Gaza??

    When hell freezes over.

    Hamas will just murder any of their opponents, including the families of their enemies.
    Hamas is really no different than Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge.

  13. A literary magazine “Guernica” cancels itself because it discovers an Israeli had been writing there. Red on Red causalities are the best kind.

  14. Cracks starting to show? Barry Meislin mentioned Hamas murdering leader of the Doghmush clan—and at least 10 other members. Add Fatah in…

    Iran Update, March 16, 2024

    Fatah criticized Hamas for opposing PA President Mahmoud Abbas’ appointment of a new prime minister. Hamas stated on March 15 that Abbas’ decision is an “individual decision” that is “devoid of substance,” noting that Palestinians have lost confidence in the PA’s policies. Fatah officials argued that Hamas is responsible for the war in the Gaza Strip and unilaterally conducted the October 7 attack.

  15. Barry Meislin; John Tyler:

    They already had a civil war in Gaza in 2007, after Israel had pulled out. Hamas won.

    Of course, that doesn’t mean they won’t have another. Too bad both sides can’t lose.

  16. I use a simple 500 / ~25 estimate of reported / actual based on the 500 killed in Hospital NYT article, vs the later more verified number. So 50,000 is more likely 2-3k.
    Most of Neo’s friends who read & believe the NYT will continue to do so, as so many Democrats fail to change their minds.

    When it’s really clear that Hamas will fall, and only then, will enough Palestinians agree to get rid of them.

  17. I’m not clear on the Tablet article’s third statistical assertion: ” The daily number of women casualties should be highly correlated with the number of non-women and non-children (i.e., men) reported.” Can someone explain why that is so?

  18. Tried this earlier:
    Hamas’ currency isn’t munitions.
    It’s dead Palestinian civilians. These are assigned value by the rest of the world. Sort of a fiat currency, in a manner of speaking.
    The more value assigned, the greater Hamas’ moral authority and legitimacy.
    If dead Palestinian civilians were assigned the same value
    by the rest of the world that is assigned to dead Israeli civilians, Hamas would be flat broke.

    And so there would be no use for Hamas to arrange for and lie about dead Palestinian civilians.
    And, so, fewer would die.

  19. Phillip Sells:

    One would expect that if any group were over-represented in the death toll it would be men. There is no question that a lot of armed Hamas fighters are involved and are being killed. And yet that’s not what Hamas reports. What’s more, women and children are usually together, and bombs should be hitting them in roughly similar proportions. That’s not what’s happening here.

    The author explains:

    But it turns out that on the three days when the men’s count is near zero, suggesting an error, the women’s count is high. In fact, the three highest daily women casualty count occurs on those three days.

    Taken together, what does this all imply? While the evidence is not dispositive, it is highly suggestive that a process unconnected or loosely connected to reality was used to report the numbers. Most likely, the Hamas ministry settled on a daily total arbitrarily. We know this because the daily totals increase too consistently to be real. Then they assigned about 70% of the total to be women and children, splitting that amount randomly from day to day. Then they in-filled the number of men as set by the predetermined total. This explains all the data observed.

    There are other obvious red flags. The Gaza Health Ministry has consistently claimed that about 70% of the casualties are women or children. This total is far higher than the numbers reported in earlier conflicts with Israel. Another red flag, raised by Salo Aizenberg and written about extensively, is that if 70% of the casualties are women and children and 25% of the population is adult male, then either Israel is not successfully eliminating Hamas fighters or adult male casualty counts are extremely low. This by itself strongly suggests that the numbers are at a minimum grossly inaccurate and quite probably outright faked. Finally, on Feb. 15, Hamas admitted to losing 6,000 of its fighters, which represents more than 20% of the total number of casualties reported.

    Taken together, Hamas is reporting not only that 70% of casualties are women and children but also that 20% are fighters. This is not possible unless Israel is somehow not killing noncombatant men, or else Hamas is claiming that almost all the men in Gaza are Hamas fighters.

    So we have tons of women and children reported killed, but when lots of women are killed lots of children are not. We have a lesser number of men reported killed, but they are almost all fighters with almost no non-fighter men reported killed.

  20. Do the same patterns apply to the casualty “data” since November? The article’s dataset only covered a few weeks’ worth. Maybe because of these temporary truces, data in 2024 has been lacking.

  21. Philip Sells;

    The author writes: “While there is not much data available, there is a little, and it is enough … ” In other words, it seems they stopped releasing this sort of detailed data after that.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

HTML tags allowed in your comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>