In his State of the Union last month, President Joe Biden referenced Hamas’s “Gaza Health Ministry” casualty numbers, saying that “more than 30,000” Gazans have been killed. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has now said that Israel must make reducing these casualties Israel’s “highest priority,” apparently even higher than bringing back the more than 100 hostages who are being sexually abused in dark tunnels, with minimal food and water, six of whom are American citizens.
But the 30,000 figure has been proven totally false. First, even Hamas admits the 30,000 includes terrorists that Israel is intentionally killing. Israel estimates this figure at 13,000. Second, we know the 30,000 could include casualties from more than 1,200 Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) errant rockets dropped within Gaza and attributed to Israel. Third, we know the 30,000 could include Gazans who are shot by Hamas operatives while relocating at Israel’s request or attempting to obtain some of the international food aid that Hamas keeps for its own leaders and fighters or sells back to Gazans at exorbitant prices. Most likely though, the 30,000 figure doesn’t correlate to any actual casualty numbers whatsoever because it is entirely fictitious.
A world-renowned Wharton professor of statistics and data science, Abraham Wyner, has determined that because of internal inconsistencies, the likelihood is zero that the numbers reported by the “Health Ministry” are truthful. Based on his analysis of casualties reported during the first three weeks of the war, Wyner concludes that Hamas picks an arbitrary number for daily total deaths, takes 70% of this total as its reported number of daily deaths for women and children, and then each day randomly splits that number between women and children. Following this process, Wyner was able to replicate the numbers reported by Hamas during the three-week period, noting that the number of total deaths reported each day was constant at 270 +/- 15%, regardless of whether the Israel Defense Forces engaged in fighting or not on a given day. Moreover, the percentage of deaths of women and children that are reported each day does not fluctuate regardless of whether the fighting is in a civilian area or in tunnels where only Hamas fighters are present.
Of course, it should come as no surprise that Hamas is falsifying its casualty numbers. Certainly, an organization that supports beheadings, rape and torture would have no qualms about lying. Hamas fully admits that its strategy is to maximize Gazan deaths to create global sympathy. When Hamas claimed that Israel had bombed a hospital, it immediately – within the hour – claimed 500 fatalities. We then learned that it was an errant PIJ rocket that fell outside the hospital, and the fatalities were less than 100. We already know objectively that it is impossible for Hamas to accurately assess these figures in a war zone.
How does it happen that people who call themselves journalists report unconfirmed numbers like these? First, journalists will tell you that on a big story like this, there is intense pressure to keep reports coming, no matter what. Second, because it is a war zone, Israel does not permit outside journalists within Gaza, other than on supervised military tours. That’s why American articles are often written by someone, whom we perhaps recognize, with additional Gazan names on the by-line. The “senior” reporter is located somewhere in Israel. The others are “stringers” – Gazans who provide stories and pictures to the journalists. These stringers are Hamas approved. They must be because Hamas strictly controls all reporting out of Gaza.
NGOs and others, to whom the media looks for more objective evaluations, are under the same pressures from Hamas. Those who need to operate in Gaza, know that if they say something other than what has been approved, they and their colleagues literally put their lives on the line. At a minimum, they can lose all access, and will be banned from Gaza and no longer able to do their jobs.
The bottom line is that we, and our politicians, are bombarded with Gaza stories all day, every day, but where reporting from Gaza is concerned, they are just that – stories, and they cannot be taken at face value. For these reasons, it is dangerous beyond measure, for world leaders and other decision makers to formulate political strategies based on wholly fictitious data. And, using fake information as a cudgel to beat up on a democratic ally that is literally fighting for its life is simply inexcusable.
