Gaza: A statistical anomaly

THE EDITOR, Madam:

I was looking at the casualty numbers the other day and I noticed that there was something wrong with them.

The number of civilians killed in Ukraine in three years of war is 12,605. Ukraine’s current population is about 29 million. The number of people killed in Gaza in 18 months is 50,600. The current population of the Gaza Strip is just over two million.

Now, the Israelis would point out that many of the Palestinian deaths were combatants, and it is true that the Gaza Health Ministry (GHM) does not record the military status of the casualties who are brought in to the various hospitals still functioning in Gaza.

That means 59.1 per cent of the dead with ‘traumatic injuries’ seen in hospitals are children, women and old men: definitely civilians. Although the Israelis claim that these numbers are false because Hamas runs the GHM, its reports are considered reliable by the United Nations, the World Health Organization, Human Rights Watch, and international media.

An analysis published by British medical journal The Lancet in January concluded the GHM had undercounted deaths because of traumatic injury by 41 per cent in its reports, mainly because so many corpses still lie buried under the ruins of their homes.

The Lancet study estimated traumatic injury deaths in Gaza, as of October 2024, probably exceeded 70,000, as opposed to the GHM’s reported 41,909. Another six months have passed since then, but two of those months were a ceasefire. So, let’s say only another 20,000 deaths, for a total of 90,000, since October of 2023.

Out of those 90,000 deaths, using the estimate in The Lancet that 59.1 per cent of ‘traumatic deaths’ in Gaza were children, women and old men, there were 53,190 civilians killed in the strip since October 2023.

About FOUR times as many civilians have been killed in Gaza, in half the time, out of a population less than one tenth as big.

There is a plausible explanation, but it isn’t pretty. Most people don’t know this, but the better armies – the ones that try to keep civilian casualties at a minimum – can estimate in advance how many civilians will die if they carry out a particular artillery or air strike.

Six Israeli intelligence officers told +972 Magazine that they regularly consulted pre-set limits for the number of civilians who could be killed before they authorised strikes on various levels of suspected Hamas members.

This leaves us with the surprising fact that the Russian army cares more about the lives of enemy civilians than the Israeli Defence Force does.

But then, the Russians believe (mistakenly) that Ukrainians are really Russians who have just lost their bearings, whereas the Israelis believe that Palestinians are ... well, just Arabs.

GWYNNE DYER