Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
A week ago, Time magazine published an article ‘The Science Is Clear. Over 30,000 People Have Died in Gaza’. “The science” Time is referring to is “two critiques of the death surveillance process” done by Johns Hopkins and The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
The “critiques” are published in The Lancet’s “correspondence” section. They are akin to “letters to the editor” and are not peer-reviewed science papers.
The Lancet describes its correspondence as “Our readers’ reflections on content published in the Lancet journals or on other topics of general interest to our readers. These letters are not normally externally peer-reviewed.”
So, for Time to headline that “the science is clear” is blatant disinformation.
The main source for the data that has been publicised worldwide 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.
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.
If Hamas’ numbers are faked or fraudulent in some way, there may be evidence in the numbers themselves that can demonstrate it.
Let’s not lose touch…Your Government and Big Tech are actively trying to censor the information reported by The Exposé to serve their own needs. Subscribe now to make sure you receive the latest uncensored news in your inbox…
How the Gaza Ministry of Health Fakes Casualty Numbers; The Evidence Is In Their Own Poorly Fabricated Figures
By Abraham Wyner, 7 March 2024
The number of civilian casualties in Gaza has been at the centre 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 7 October 2023, Secretary of Defence 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 26 October until 10 November 2023, the Gaza Health Ministry released daily casualty figures that include both a total number and a specific number of women and children.
The first place to look is the reported “total” number of deaths. The graph of total deaths by date is increasing with almost metronomical linearity, as the graph in Figure 1 reveals.
This regularity is almost surely not real. One would expect quite a bit of variation day to day. In fact, the daily reported casualty count over this period averages 270 plus or minus about 15%. This is strikingly little variation. There should be days with twice the average or more and others with half or less. Perhaps what is happening is the Gaza ministry is releasing fake daily numbers that vary too little because they do not have a clear understanding of the behaviour of naturally occurring numbers. Unfortunately, verified control data is not available to formally test this conclusion, but the details of the daily counts render the numbers suspicious.
Similarly, we should see variation in the number of child casualties that tracks the variation in the number of women. This is because the daily variation in death counts is caused by the variation in the number of strikes on residential buildings and tunnels which should result in considerable variability in the totals but less variation in the percentage of deaths across groups. This is a basic statistical fact about chance variability. Consequently, on the days with many women casualties, there should be large numbers of children casualties, and on the days when just a few women are reported to have been killed, just a few children should be reported. This relationship can be measured and quantified by the R-square (R2 ) statistic that measures how correlated the daily casualty count for women is with the daily casualty count for children. If the numbers were real, we would expect R2 to be substantively larger than 0, tending closer to 1.0. But R2 is .017 which is statistically and substantively not different from 0.
This lack of correlation is the second circumstantial piece of evidence suggesting the numbers are not real. But there is more. The daily number of women casualties should be highly correlated with the number of non-women and non-children (i.e., men) reported. Again, this is expected because of the nature of battle. The ebbs and flows of the bombings and attacks by Israel should cause the daily count to move together. But that is not what the data show. Not only is there not a positive correlation, but there is a strong negative correlation, which makes no sense at all and establishes the third piece of evidence that the numbers are not real.
Consider some further anomalies in the data: First, the death count reported on 29 October contradicts the numbers reported on the 28th, insofar as they imply that 26 men came back to life. This can happen because of misattribution or just reporting error. There are a few other days where the numbers of men are reported to be near 0. If these were just reporting errors, then on those days where the death count for men appears to be in error, the women’s count should be typical, at least on average. 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 15 February, 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 non-combatant men, or else Hamas is claiming that almost all the men in Gaza are Hamas fighters.
Are there better numbers? Some objective commentators have acknowledged Hamas’ numbers in previous battles with Israel to be roughly accurate. Nevertheless, this war is wholly unlike its predecessors in scale or scope; international observers who were able to monitor previous wars are now completely absent, so the past can’t be assumed to be a reliable guide. The fog of war is especially thick in Gaza, making it impossible to quickly determine civilian death totals with any accuracy. Not only do official Palestinian death counts fail to differentiate soldiers from children, but Hamas also blames all deaths on Israel even if caused by Hamas’ own misfired rockets, accidental explosions, deliberate killings or internal battles.
One group of researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health compared Hamas reports to data on UNRWA workers. They argued that because the death rates were approximately similar, Hamas’ numbers must not be inflated. But their argument relied on a crucial and unverified assumption: that UNRWA workers are not disproportionately more likely to be killed than the general population. That premise exploded when it was uncovered that a sizable fraction of UNRWA workers are affiliated with Hamas. Some were even exposed as having participated in the 7 October massacre itself.
The truth can’t yet be known and probably never will be. The total civilian casualty count is likely to be extremely overstated. Israel estimates that at least 12,000 fighters have been killed. If that number proves to be even reasonably accurate, then the ratio of non-combatant casualties to combatants is remarkably low: at most 1.4 to 1 and perhaps as low as 1 to 1. By historical standards of urban warfare, where combatants are embedded above and below into civilian population centres, this is a remarkable and successful effort to prevent unnecessary loss of life while fighting an implacable enemy that protects itself with civilians.
The data used in the article can be found HERE, with thanks to Salo Aizenberg who helped check and correct these numbers.
About the Author
Abraham Wyner is Professor of Statistics and Data Science at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and Faculty Co-Director of the Wharton Sports Analytics and Business Initiative.
Featured image: Protest in Manhattan, New York City, on 25 December 2023. Source: Who’s behind the pro-Palestinian protests that are disrupting Biden’s campaign events and blocking city streets? NBC News, 20 March 2024
The Expose Urgently Needs Your Help…
Can you please help power The Expose’s honest, reliable, powerful journalism for the years to come…
Your Government & Big Tech organisations
such as Google, Facebook, Twitter & PayPal
are trying to silence & shut down The Expose.
So we need your help to ensure
we can continue to bring you the
facts the mainstream refuse to…
We’re not funded by the Government
to publish lies & propaganda on their
behalf like the mainstream media.
Instead, we rely solely on our support. So
please support us in our efforts to bring you
honest, reliable, investigative journalism
today. It’s secure, quick and easy…
Just choose your preferred method
to show your support below support
Categories: Breaking News, World News
I’m confused by this article as it seems to be down playing the attack on innocent people based upon numbers killed – even one death is one too many. The article makes me extremely uncomfortable about its intent.
Like you said ,one is too many and retaliation for ever amount is going to haunt the guilty as part of the problem unless they reverse course which may be too late, better late than never as Satan gets punished sometime down the road
Hi raj patel,
You are totally correct, it’s just smoke and mirrors.
The Israeli Child Killers in the armed forces, must be hard to live with.
One dead child is one too many.
30 thousand murders are just a statistic to argue over.
To make it seem they are bothered.
You Racist Jew haters are all the same, not once in all your writing did you mention the 1,200 innocent people that HamAss killed or the kidnapped women and children still being held all you focus on is the destruction of Gaza who BTW is completely run by HamAss. They started this war always remember that or did you forget!!
Hi trainman6,
Have you heard of Operation Hannibal.
How could 6 paragliders carry enough ammunition to kill all those people.
Most of those killed, were machine gunned by Israeli Child killers , from helicopters.
The Israeli’s have been murdering Palestinians for years.
Hence the average age of all the Palestinians, is 17 years of age.
So most of those murdered are Children.
I completely agree with you Raj, you are 100% correct.
It confused me also.
One death IS one too many.
This is not a ‘war’, it is GENOCIDE!
Evidence of the ‘collectivist’ mentality is everywhere in this world and it all comes from the top…Shocking and disgusting.
I totally agree with your concludions, Raj – many thanks for putting my own concern so succinctly!
So which story is real, 30,000 Palestinians dead or not???
[…] Go to Source Follow altnews.org on Telegram […]
Whatever the statistic probability, an article that tells you 4 times upfront: here is the problem: the numbers are not real, is clearly manipulative. When we finally arrive at the first argument, it suddenly changes to „almost certainly“. Casualty ratio is higher than in previous conflicts… well, the bombing is too! So this makes the numbers more likely, not the other way around. The numbers are roughly confirmed by other sources and certainly by the amount of bombing and destruction, not least of places full of civilians. I think you‘ve posted a fraudulent article whitewashing genocide.
Hundreds if not thousands of children have been killed.
That’s reason enough to stop.
Both sides monkey with numbers–massively. the truth is that both sides have shown ai-fakery in videos to get people emotional and demanding mercy, justice for “their side.” many will deny this but there are ruthless liars AND good innocent people on both sides… this does not fit the MSM narrative(s)
In the socially “just” world of people of genuinely good conscience but also somewhat skewed reality, all zionists are evil apartheid occupiers (ergo ditto for all those living in Israel who support the existence of their state) and all palestinians are innocent beautiful people including those who are in Hamas. ALWAYS if they state numbers, believe them–or dismiss any discrepancies as inconsequential. Clearly to the readership, all dead palestinians are mothers and children—ALL innocents and even a single dead palestinian is a far greater crime than any “likely” made up deaths of Israelis. Of course.
It’s clear that to most that if Israel makes a statement, don’t believe it as they are liars (always) and if Hamas makes a statement ALWAYS believe them, they are soldiers of truth.
Netanyahu is a war criminal. But so are ALSO Hamas and those supporting them. ALL the civilians are innocents and BOTH regimes are lying (and many of these innocents in Israel do not support the war tactics being used… just as many Americans do not support the way our own nation kills innocents daily invading, conquering, etc.
I don’t know ….. but there are many ways to interpret these figures. It’s not as simple as saying “the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry”. In the end, we’re looking at people and their relationships and beliefs, and the fact that a totally devastating war is being waged by the world’s second-most heavily armed nation against a minimally-armed, largely civilian population. Just looking at the before-and-after Google images of the urban areas of Gaza is enough evidence to show that the destruction is huge and broad, and that, inevitably, huge numbers of people have been killed. Perhaps the man or woman in charge of uploading daily statistics just wants to get some figures up in amongst the chaos and is not so much concerned with accuracy? Seems like a much more plausible analysis than saying Hamas are deliberately fudging the figures. If they truly were so cunning as to do this, surely they’d have the smarts to make the stat sheets look convincing? The lack of a possibility of presenting accurate figures in amongst the mayhem has already been reported and, given what we know of the daily reality on the ground, this looks to be an accurate reflection of what’s going on …..
[…] https://expose-news.com/2024/03/26/the-gaza-ministry-of-health-casualty-numbers-are-not-real-heres-t… […]
Thankfully someone who knows the truth. Hamas are terrorists and ‘well blow me down’ terrorists lie.
We cannot believe a thing coming out of Gaza as lying is second nature to Muslims, they will lie on everything to advance Islam. They started this war and now they don’t like the outcome, if you don’t like the war then don’t start one.
Hi Trainman6, not all Muslims lie. Muslims will on average lie as often and for the same reasons as any other group of people.
However, I do agree with you that Hamas cannot be trusted and from the beginning it has puzzled me why people who previously used critical thinking (e.g. some independent media and a lot of people commenting on social media), and who previously questioned the TV’s narrative (e.g. on covid, climate change, Ukraine/Russia) have simply followed the TV’s narrative on events in Israel/Gaza and haven’t questioned, for example, the information Hamas is producing. The news readers on TV will of course not question or investigate anything, the TV stations no longer have journalists, they are given a script and they simply follow it. And it seems a number of independent media and a number of the public are following that same script. I saw one commentator call it the most successful PsyOp since covid, and judging how easily people are triggered instead of applying critical thinking, it could well be the case.
In any war there is propaganda from both sides and that’s before we take into account what Hamas stands for and what/who motivated them to brutally attack and kidnap unarmed men, women, children and babies in Israel on 7 October 2023. That Hamas has not released all the hostages, to me, is a big red flag that they do not want this to come to an end. That they are happy to sacrifice many civilians in Palestine to achieve their aims.
Hi Rhoda,
Have you read any of my letters mentioning Operation Hannibal.
If you had, you might realise this saga was a False Flag.
People were killed on both sides by Israeli Helicopters firing machine guns.
Not 6 paragliders, who could not even carry a machine gun, let alone any ammunition.
Hi Dave Owen, what sources are you using for your information?
Hi Rhoda,
Just use Google or, https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240104-what-is-the-hannibal-directive-and-how-israel-uses-it/
What else do you want to know ?
Hi Dave, I’m familiar with the Middle East Monitor and pop on there from time to time. I’ll take a read of the article you’ve provided.
I was particularly interested where you got your information regarding 6 paragliders. I have yet to hear anyone make the claim that that was how Hamas attacked and kidnapped men, women and children in Israel on 7 October. So it would be interesting to see your source that claims that no other Hamas terrorist entered Israel that day.
Hi Rhoda,
Just use Google.https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12631357/They-swooped-kill-dozens-Nova-music-festival-reveal-Hamas-trained-murderous-paraglider-squadron-right-noses-Mossad.html
Hi Dave, thanks. I’m aware of the paraglider story and videos which were the first to be widely circulated. What source did you use that said this was the only mode of attack on Israel on 7 October?
Hi Dave Owen, I’ve read of the Middle East Monitor article you shared. It is an opinion piece and I think we should read it in this context.
It is quite rightly labelled as an “opinion” and is not attempting to be anything else. It talks about “according to” unnamed “experts” and “sources” and uses language such as “the IDF is thought to have” and “while it has not been confirmed.” This piece is not meant to be taken as fact, it is exploring possibilities according to the opinion of the writer rather than attempting to give readers facts.
https://tapnewswire.com/2024/03/keeping-vaccine-deaths-off-the-news/
Hi trainman,
How can Palestinians, with No Army, No Airforce and No Navy, start a war ?
Explain how Israel, with the latest Radar, a large Airforce, Army and Navy, can be overpowered by 6 paragliders.
You need to stop taking whatever you take, and smell the Coffee.
Hi Dave, Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades is the paramilitary wing of Hamas. It is the largest and best-equipped militant group operating within Gaza. The Brigades seek to establish an Islamist state of Palestine, comprising Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel—ending Israel as a political entity in the process. Hamas fighters are largely recruited from unemployed minors, aged under 18.
An October 2023 estimate provides a figure of 40,000 fighters, with expertise in cyber security, naval warfare, and other specialisations.
During the 2023 Gaza war, the IDF published its intelligence about the Hamas military in the Gaza Strip. They put the strength of the Qassam Brigades there at the start of the war at 30,000 fighters, organised by area in five brigades, consisting in total of 24 battalions and c. 140 companies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Izz_ad-Din_al-Qassam_Brigades
Izz ad-Din al Qassam brigades [al-Qassam brigades] who from their very beginning embraced the use of terror tactics against Israel, carrying out their first suicide bombing in 1993 in conjunction with Islamic Jihad. The Qassam brigades was responsible for the brutal massacre on 7 October. Hamas has never balked at using terrorism – indeed it has celebrated it again and again.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/12/what-is-hamas-the-militant-group-that-rules-gaza
https://tapnewswire.com/2024/03/keeping-vaccine-deaths-off-the-news/
Maybe I missed something, but it looks like this article is extrapolated from only 16 days of data & makes no mention of the bodies buried under rubble, in mass graves, or unidentified.
Very shoddy research, & a whitewash, if so.
[…] Read More […]