As the saying goes, a broken clock is right twice a day. The Associated Press beclowned itself for fact-checking Biden’s awkward moment at a D-Day ceremony in France this week. Still, they did well to shatter the rabid antisemite crowd that’s been crowing about genocide in Gaza committed by Israeli forces. There have been non-conservatives who have shredded the genocide myth.
Joe Rogan Guest Sets Him Straight on Why Israel's Military Campaign Against Hamas is Not 'Genocide'
— Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) April 9, 2024
If you've got to watch just one video about the Israel-Hamas war today, this should be the one.
Popular podcast host Joe Rogan actually did something remarkable on a recent show:… pic.twitter.com/yRkIXV30F1
People die in war—it’s unavoidable. The death toll is also unknown since these figures are being fed to us by Hamas, who quietly revised the death toll. The United Nations also did that, reducing the number of women and children killed by half. Now, the AP has analyzed the numbers and found that the figures handed down by the terrorists don’t fit. They also noted a sharp reduction in civilian deaths since the war began, something that Biden officials should probably catch up on as they stall arms shipments due to overblown reports of mass slaughter (via AP):
The proportion of Palestinian women and children being killed in the Israel-Hamas war appears to have declined sharply, an Associated Press analysis of Gaza Health Ministry data has found, a trend that both coincides with Israel’s changing battlefield tactics and contradicts the ministry’s own public statements.
The trend is significant because the death rate for women and children is the best available proxy for civilian casualties in one of the 21st century’s most destructive conflicts. In October, when the war began, it was above 60%. For the month of April, it was below 40%. Yet the shift went unnoticed for months by the U.N. and much of the media, and the Hamas-linked Health Ministry has made no effort to set the record straight.
Israel faces heavy international criticism over unprecedented levels of civilian casualties in Gaza and questions about whether it has done enough to prevent them in an 8-month-old war that shows no sign of ending. Two recent airstrikes in Gaza killed dozens of civilians.
[…]
The Health Ministry announces a new death toll for the war nearly every day. It also has periodically released the underlying data behind this figure, including detailed lists of the dead.
The AP’s analysis looked at these lists, which were shared on social media in late October, early January, late March, and the end of April. Each list includes the names of people whose deaths were attributable to the war, along with other identifying details.
The daily death tolls, however, are provided without supporting data. In February, ministry officials said 75% of the dead were women and children – a level that was never confirmed in the detailed reports. And as recently as March, the ministry’s daily reports claimed that 72% of the dead were women and children, even as underlying data clearly showed the percentage was well below that.
[…]
The ministry said publicly on April 30 that 34,622 had died in the war. The AP analysis was based on the 22,961 individuals fully identified at the time by the Health Ministry with names, genders, ages, and Israeli-issued identification numbers.
The ministry says 9,940 of the dead – 29% of its April 30 total – were not listed in the data because they remain “unidentified.” These include bodies not claimed by families, decomposed beyond recognition or whose records were lost in Israeli raids on hospitals.
An additional 1,699 records in the ministry’s April data were incomplete and 22 were duplicates; they were excluded from AP’s analysis.
Among those fully identified, the records show a steady decline in the overall proportion of women and children who have been killed: from 64% in late October, to 62% as of early January, to 57% by the end of March, to 54% by the end of April.
Yet throughout the war, the ministry has claimed that roughly two-thirds of the dead were women and children. This figure has been repeated by international organizations and many in the foreign media, including the AP.
Well, at least, there’s a little consumption of humble pie there in admitting the media has been peddling fugazi death tolls. You cannot trust terrorists. Hamas has ruled Gaza for nearly two decades. The Gaza Health Ministry is Hamas. Are we taking crazy pills?
There’s never been concrete evidence of genocide because that was never happening. It goes back to basic international relations classes: genocide is mass killing, but not all mass killings are genocide. There are criteria based on international law that explicitly define genocide and the five acts required to meet that crime. The United Nations, which has now gone down an openly anti-Israel path, set the standard ironically.