The Official Death Toll In Gaza Is A Lie. The Casualty Numbers Are Far, Far Higher

The figures have been stalled for months. The goal is to minimise Israel’s barbarism, while lulling western publics into a false sense of complacency

The death toll in Gaza is way too low by every imaginable metric. We need to be stressing this – all the more so when Israel’s apologists are vigorously engaged in a disinformation campaign to suggest that the figures are inflated.

On 6 May, 7 months into Israel’s slaughter, there were reported to be 34,735 dead. That was an average of 4,960 Palestinians killed each month.

Today, nearly three months on, the reported death toll stands at 39,400 – or an increase of 4,665.

It should not need a statistician to point out that, were the rise linear, the expected number of deaths would stand by this point at around 49,600.

So, even by the simplest calculation, there is a large shortfall in deaths – a shortfall that needs explaining.

Such an explanation is easy to provide: Israel destroyed Gaza’s institutions and its medical infrastructure, including its hospitals, many months ago, making it impossible for officials there to keep track of how many Palestinians are being killed by Israel.

The death toll figures started to stall in the spring, around the time Israel completed its destruction of Gaza’s hospitals and kidnapped much of the enclave’s medical personnel.

More than a month ago, Save the Children pointed out that some 21,000 children in Gaza were missing, in addition to the 16,000 known to have been killed by Israel. Many are likely to have suffered lonely, terrifying deaths under rubble – gradually suffocated to death, or dying slowly from dehydration.

But again, even those shocking figures are likely to be a severe under-count.

The linear figure entirely misses the bigger picture. How?

1. Because in addition to the continuing Israeli bombardments, Palestinians have had to endure three more months of an intensifying faminee...

2. Because Palestinians have had three more months deprived of medical care after Israel destroyed their hospitals and medical institutions. If you have a chronic illness – diabetes, asthma, kidney problems, high blood pressure, and so on – the longer you are forced to go without medical attention, the greater the chance you will die from an untreated condition. Again, the death rate in such circumstances is exponential, not linear.

3. Because without medical care, all sorts of other things that happen in everyday life become more dangerous. Childbirth is the most obvious example, but even cuts and grazes can become a death sentence...

4. Because, for exactly the same reasons, those injured by Israel’s continuing bombardments are likely to have poorer outcomes than those similarly injured in earlier attacks. Fewer doctors means less chance of treatment, means greater chance of dying from your wounds.

5. Because we know that – given the insanitary conditions, the lack of water and food, the weakened health status of the population, and the destruction of hospitals – epidemics now are breaking out. The already warned of a likely outbreak of polio, but there are sure to be other diseases emerging such as cholera, typhoid and dysentery that have yet to be isolated and identified..

A letter from researchers to the Lancet medical journal this month warned about the likely massive under-count of the dead in Gaza, even relying, as they had to, on the established death toll.

Their point was that indirect deaths – of the kind I enumerate above – need to be factored in as well as the direct deaths from Israeli bombs. They very conservatively estimate that the total number who will die over the coming months – not just from bombs but as a result of the lack of medical care, insanitary conditions and famine – is 186,000, or 8 per cent of the population.

🔗SOURCE ➡️ Antiwar.com

Related: 12/20 — As Gaza Death Toll Crosses 20,000, Aid Group Warns True Number Is Higher

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