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All for a silly PR stunt so Genocide Joe could salvage an electoral hail Mary before November, when all he had to do was get Netanyahu on the phone and demand he lets those aid trucks into Gaza. The US really are pathetically hamstrung by their fear of doing anything to upset the Israelis, even if its morally and objectively the right thing to do. Textbook case of the tail wagging the dog.
The Lancet link is a Correspondence and I don't believe it is peer-reviewed according to their guidelines. However, you should be able to submit a Response to Correspondence.
People who have spent the last five months telling you that massive numbers of civilian casualties are unavoidable because Hamas uses human shields, hides within the civilian population, and builds tunnels below every heavily-populated civilian building, are now turning around and telling you "we avoided it."These pro-Zionist lot really are shameless.
Just his own observation, I presume. He is a well-respected journalist who has been to most war sites in the last 20, 30 years. Let me also address some of your remarks regarding the article.
1) THE UNRWA 190/13'000 thing:
I agree with you here, this is an odd thing to include and doesn't help the article at all in my opinion. Which is a shame, because there are some interesting nuggets in there.
2) The Daily Total
If you look at Figure 1. in the article, you can see what he means. From a statistical perspective, it's just not very likely that a phenomenon in the natural world behaves this regularly. You'd just expect more outliers. For example, there should be days where an Israeli offensive is particularly devastating and others where they are far less effective. I'd also be curious where you get your numbers from (196 and 341 as min/max) as I cannot see them in the article.
3) What I think the total number is
Honestly, I have not got a clue. Could be 25'000, 30'000 or 50'000. I would however say that what's important about this article is not what the total number, but rather the ratio between civilian and combatant loss. Let me do a few quick examples. Let's assume that the Total number of casualties is 24'000 for sake of easy maths:
If 6'000 out of 24'000 are Hamas fighters (which are the Hamas numbers according to the article) that gives you a ratio of 1:4
If 12'000 out of 24'000 are Hamas fighters (which is the number according to the IDF) that gives you a ratio of 1:2.
The author claims that the ratio is even closer to 1:1, because he claims that total casualties are not that high to begin with. Whatever the ratio is, it is at least in my view an important indicator to judge to what extent Israeli action can be considered genocidal or not. For this reason both sides, obviously have incentive to manipulate the numbers in their favour.
The total number is quite important since a lot of people don't agree that Israel has the right to kill an endless number of Palestinian civilians as long as they kill a corresponding number of Hamas fighters.
Interesting, Thank you. To be fair to Wyner he addresses this in his article, where he says:
"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."
Now, Wyner seems to think this assumption does not hold, whereas Huynh, Chin and Spiegel seem to think that it does, but they don't seem to be able to provide any evidence for that (Neither does Wyner apart from the accusations against UNRWA).
This is an awful point to make. There's been approximately 15,000 kids killed, and approximately 11,000 women. As another poster states, these are people that have been verified with IDs and permits issues by the occupation. How is that justified in any type of ratio? It's a nonsensical point to make.
Hamas killed IDF reservists and personnel on Oct 7th. Is the number of women and innocent civilians they killed justified because they managed to kill some IDF members?
I think the journalists inside Gaza would be able to give a clearer picture of the number of people killed by the terrorist idf.
...if they weren't also killed by the terrorist idf that is.
...if they weren't also killed by the terrorist idf that is.
Yeah, kind of an issue huh.
Well that's an AnTiSemETiC thing to say isn't it?
Joking.
feck Israel.
We are days away from Ramadan, will the Israeli Govt and the IDF be able to restrain their blood lust, or will they carry out the next massacre in Rafah?
Morally, it is difficult to disagree with you. Obviously, every single life lost is a tragedy. But, at least in my view, any accusation of genocide should be supported by evidence, which is why it is such a difficult thing to prove. Genocide is not simply about killing lots of people. It's killing lots of people with the goal of wiping out a "genus" i.e. a group of people. How do you prove that? It's very difficult, unless you have some documentation, which was for example key evidence after WWII. Nazi Germany had kept thousands of pages of official records about the "Judenfrage" and the "Endlösung" and what happened in the concentration camps
So this ratio (even if I'd agree that it's very morbid) can be very important as a higher ratio would imply a recklessness on behalf of the IDF and could be used as evidence for genocidal intent.
Which is why he should be ignored.
The ICJ has said it is a plausible genocide.
Here's GenocideWatch on the same topic:
The ratio that you talk about is horseshit. Israel is indiscriminately killing Palestinians, and has laid wanton destruction to Gaza. Its collective punishment and it does amount to genocide, and genocidal intent. Quibbling over whether it constitutes as genocide based off of ratios is just idiocy and serves no purpose.
The galling thing is that the rhetoric that many of the Israeli politicians come out with is literally genocidal in nature, and we're seeing the result of that in real time, but we should still give them the benefit of the doubt? How does that make sense?
Well this is the issue. How is he going to confirm anything when he's in Israel and not stepped foot in Gaza? An average Israeli is no more able to tell us the composition of Gazan casualties than an average Frenchman. Perhaps even less so, considering their current desire for revenge. Its also an interesting place. I visited there and the West Bank years ago now. Had a soldier tell me that the reason they shoot at kids is because of them throwing stones. Saw graffitti saying Free Israel in Hebron, as I saw Palestinians go through animal like checkpoints and be humiliated by Israeli teen soldiers. Or saw Jews walking through the city, in roads now closed off to Palestinians. You get a very certain narrative there for sure.
1. It does a bit more than 'not help the article'. He's trying to have it both ways. He's using some statistics, as well as using his title of professor of statistics, to give credibility to what he is saying. Mathematics and statistics are the ultimate objective measure, the ultimate black and white. Yet within this, he purposely uses subjective and emotive language.
2. I've looked at figure 1. I initially wrote that its a shame he didn't provide his source. Then I realised that at the very bottom, just above the box in red writing about his title, he does provide a link in italics, to the data he himself is using, with the following:
There he provides the table form of the raw data he is using. I'm struggling to make sense of how the data he's provided in that table matches with the graph he's produced in chart 1? Could you help with this?
3. That's fair enough about your opinion but you're probably not really the target audience of the question. Many of these people want to say not many have died but don't want to come out and say it.
Hamas has denied this information. (6k fighters killed).
Thank you for the data. That's interesting. On first glance, I would agree with you that the 270 +- 15% is not accurate. It's probably closer to 270 +-30%. Again, it's an odd mistake to make as it's not only quite easy to disprove, it also doesn't really change his argument about chance variability. We would expect to see a day with maybe 800 victims and another day with "only" 50 victims.
Also it's important to stress that this does not conclusively proof that the data is fake. But it does make this scenario more likely. The same is true for Wyner's other arguments. Is it theoretically possible that male and female deaths are this strongly negatively correlated? I guess so, but it seems very unlikely given the nature of war. It would imply that the IDF would chose to kill primarily men on day x and women on day y, which I cannot get my head around why and how they would do that to be honest.
Genocide has nothing to do with the number of those who have been killed, it is merely an intent question.
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
Article II
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
- Killing members of the group;
- Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
- Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
- Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
- Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
and this was South Africa's case, Just look at Gaza and read specifically point B and C
The "daily deaths" isn't meant to be a count of how many died that particular day, but how many were documented. If 500 are killed one day, and 100 the next, but they document 300 the first day and the rest the second, then the daily count will be 2x300.
The negative correlation between the deaths of men and women is largely explained by how the count is updated: the total death toll and the composition doesn't happen at the same time. As you see on the list, adult men isn't getting counted, it's the remaining value after the amount of women and children are subtracted from the total. As you see on 10/29/2023 you have negative 26 daily adult men deaths. This wasn't a ressurrection, it was an update on the amount of dead women and children that adjusted the amount of dead men down. On other days they didn't update the amount of dead women, so they're all counted as men by this list. This guarantees the sort of negative correlation we're seeing, it's not a surprise.
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Hmm.
"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 noncombatant 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 centers, this is a remarkable and successful effort to prevent unnecessary loss of life while fighting an implacable enemy that protects itself with civilians."
"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 noncombatant 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 centers, this is a remarkable and successful effort to prevent unnecessary loss of life while fighting an implacable enemy that protects itself with civilians."
I absolutely agree with you. It's not about numbers . But the thing is: Intent is extremely difficult to prove in a legal context. You'd have to look "inside the head" of the accused party to actually know. In most cases we can only assume/imply that intent was there.
So do we do this? The easiest case is the one I already outlined with Nazi Germany. In that case the documentation recovered by the allied forces was overwhelmingly clear. In most other cases we need some sort of alternative proof. Now, I am sure many will say that the statements made by some Israeli officials show genocidal intent and I would in some cases agree with that. I think some of things said by Ben Gvir for example are repulsive. The more difficult thing is proving intent on a bigger scale. And in this case I'd argue that the ratio of civilian to combatant loss can be an useful tool to make a case for genocidal intent.
The initial argument from the Lancet correspondence is that UNRWA and Health Ministry death rates are approximately similar because they are both representing similar populations ('normal' people who live in Gaza). The counterpoint is that UNRWA death rate is not representing a civilian population, because its members are disproportionally Hamas and more likely to be killed on the frontlines. The problem is that this does not actually explain why the UNRWA numbers and Health Ministry numbers are approximately similar.
The issue is that I'm not sure it is a mistake. He is (according to him and I have no reason to doubt him) a statistics professor at one of the top business schools in the world. Yet within this article, he (seemingly, again willing for someone to correct me) makes multiple mistakes and some of his own numbers don't match up.
The issue becomes therefore that I find it difficult to take any of the rest of his conclusions and data seriously. If he's telling me that all of the casualties fall within a 270 average +/-15% (which seem to be demonstrably wrong from the data he himself has put up), why should I trust the data he has put forward about the daily casualties for men and women, which I cannot check?
I also don't think I accept the premise of the likelihood of massively differing casualties within the first couple of weeks of the war, where the pace of attacks seemed pretty consistent. We're not talking about 2nd week of October and first week of March (where the rate of casualties does seem to have slowed), where the pace of attacks and distribution of the population would have been very different.
Considering this is directed towards me. You don't know the person you're talking to or where they're from and whether smashing on a keyboard is all they do. It's something I have zero interest in talking about here, which is why I ignored your first reply about marching.
Regarding the aid convoy, my words came out wrong calling it out an empty gesture but it was more of a comment about the practicality of it all which is where I disagree with you. I don't think it was, they probably would agree too. If their goal was to show the difference in treatment between them and the ones blocking the aid then it's a job well done.
The author also says "this is strikingly little variation. There should be days with twice the average or more and others with half or less." It really must be noted that in a scientific article you can't simply assert what variance there "should" be.
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I didn't say smashing on a keyboard, I was talking about smashing (ie criticising) the protestors. Which just seemed to me a really odd target of ire, considering the circumstances.
You've said since you meant it in a different way than how it came across, its fine and we moved on. It just came up in a different thread in a context that I felt to be totally different from the main point.
Your (sadly rare) posts are a breath of fresh air in any thread.
How about the fact that almost half of the munitions dropped on Gaza have been unguided 'dumb' bombs? The fact that approximately 70% of the buildings in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed by Israel's bombing campaign? I'd say both are far more compelling evidence than this ratio you speak of.
Yeah, I agree with this. I've seen them after my post getting harsher criticism from both sides which definitely didn't seem fair to me.
Sorry about the misunderstanding.
No worries and apologies if my response seemed heavy handed, that wasn't my intention.
I think, I agree with you on your second point. It's clearly been too long since my last statistics class. I am curious what do you make of the lack of correlation between female and child deaths? I guess it could be a case of families being increasingly separated or a process issue (i.e. counting female bodies on day x and the "correlating" child bodies on day x+1)
It's a documentation issue as well, because children here is anyone under the age of 18. It can be pretty difficult to discover if a dead body is that of a 16 year old or 20, especially if it has been bombed, shot in the head or ran over.
A link is given at the very end to a table. You can see the daily totals in the final column.
The problem I have is that this guy has clearly chosen the period that he reckons shows the least variability, ok, but let's acknowledge that that's the reason he picked it. Then he opts to use a cumulative bar chart zoomed out to the thousands in order to illustrate a comparison between daily figures in the hundreds. Why? The best way to demonstrate variance between daily figures would be side by side daily totals with an average line running through them so the deviation from the mean could clearly be seen. Using his own figures here's what that would look like:
There's also trouble with an important data point the author uses. According to OCHA the death toll reported on 27th of October was 7326 deaths. The data in the author's table says 7362 deaths. This causes the author to miscalculate the number of deaths between Oct 27th and Oct 28th as 341. The correct figure is 377. That figure would be 40% higher than the mean. The 196 figure is 27% below the mean. The author translates this as "plus or minus about 15%". Also the figure of 196 and 377 dead highlight quite a large degree of variation on their own. Basically his analysis seems pretty misleading.
I haven't bothered to look too deeply into his claims regarding women and kids but my best guess would be that gender/age related information isn't collated as frequently and so is added to the overall numbers in a more haphazard fashion. That's why you have a couple of days where 0 female deaths were reported. Essentially gender/age data takes longer to filter through than the headline figure. When that data is finally announced (x women y children have died) it no longer relates to that specific day, but rather offers extra information regarding the total number of dead from any number of days previous. I'm not even sure if the actual headline figure itself is necessarily related to the actual dead of the day rather than an update given as and when information is received. It's probably closer to it, but still not completely accurate. If you remember back to covid, daily totals were constantly being revised days, weeks and even months into the future - and that's in a reasonably functioning system.
I don't like that the author has ignored basic explanations for the observed discrepancies.
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Feck me. Just stop. Justifying genocide with propaganda makes you almost as bad as those carrying out the genocide.
That isn't how intent is interpreted in most cases. Usually if an action or set of actions can be forseen to have an outcome and they're still committed that's intent.
Given the genocide definition shared and the actions committed by Israel it's very hard to argue they didn't intend those consequences. They'd need to successfully argue they didn't forsee the deaths and harm caused which seems ludicrous.
I am not justifying anything. I was simply trying to relay the points made in this article. As we’ve since seen in this discussion there are other explanations for why the data looks the way that it looks which on first glance can seem suspicious.
I think that’s great, because that’s how we learn things and become more informed.
I alluded to this earlier in the thread. When you level entire neighborhoods at once, you can't claim that you didn't intend to kill everyone in said neighborhood. Even if your point was that out of thousands of people a few hundrands were Hamas members, your intent was to kill everyone.
I agree with you insofar as I’d also say that Israel seems to move with great aggression and little regard to civilian life in order to reach their military goals.
What I am less sure about is if that’s enough for the ICJ to get to a verdict of a genocidal intent.
Now, I guess what should also be said is that even if you are not quite committing genocide that doesn’t mean that you’re in the clear. Israel is clearly breaking international law and should be punished for it.