Sharing a couple of items here. The 1st, my letter to the editor of the WSJ. I think they do very good work but have been disappointed in some of the more recent coverage of the Gaza War. 2nd is a piece from the Free Press on the same issue. Worth reading and checking it their fare.
Meir
Dear Letters to the Editor Team,
In your recent article U.S. Military Officer Resigns Over Support for Israel’s War in Gaza, dated May 13th, 2023, it states: "The death toll of Palestinians in Gaza surpassed 35,000 on Sunday, most of them civilians, Palestinian officials said. The figure doesn’t specify how many were combatants."
Given the fact that the "Palestinian Officials" are in fact Hamas government workers, this and all other references should clearly state that these numbers are coming from Hamas and not "Palestinian Officials".
In addition, the United Nations Office for Humanitarian Affairs, which also bases its numbers on the Hamas authorities, has adjusted the death toll, now standing at 24,686 identified, and cut the number of children from 14,500 to 7,797 and the number of women from 9,500 to 4,959. The claim of 34,900 still stands meaning there are more than 10,000 unidentified, just over 40%, which makes the claim of over 35,000 killed very spurious!
I would think that the WSJ, with its reputation of solid and in depth reporting, would be more precise in using these numbers. The impact of these numbers on the conversation surrounding the Gazan War is very serious.
Looking at these revisions from the UN, along with Israel estimates of Hamas fighters killed (approx. 13,000), a very different picture is painted of the conflict, especially when comparing it to other urban conflicts over the last couple of decades.
It is harmful to the facts and the story when making claims that 35,000 Palestinaians have been killed, without making a distinction between combatants and non-combatants. It drives a false narrative and affects government policy decisions across the globe.
I would expect the WSJ to be at the forefront of providing as clear and honest a picture as possible of this situation.
Sincerely,
Meir Paltiel
The UN admits the number of civilian deaths in Gaza is 50 percent lower than first reported. Why is everyone ignoring this fact?
Millions have marched across the world demanding Israel end its “genocide” in Gaza, pointing to the number of civilians killed by the war. But the United Nations now concedes that this number—provided by Hamas—is wildly inaccurate.
In a May 6 report, the UN stated the death toll was 34,735, including 9,500 women and 14,500 children, or at least 24,000 civilians.
But two days later, the UN quietly revised its figures, stating that 50 percent fewer civilians had died. The total number of deaths is about the same at 34,844, but that number includes 4,959 women and 7,797 children—a total of 12,756 civilians. (And this from the United Nations, whose General Assembly adopted 15 resolutions on Israel in 2023, compared to seven for the rest of the world combined.)
This revision is the clearest sign yet that Hamas’s statistics cannot be trusted. As David Adesnik, senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, says: “The UN should state clearly that it has lost confidence in sources whose credibility it has affirmed for months.”
While any number of civilian deaths is tragic, “you want to be truthful,” said John Spencer, West Point’s urban warfare expert, who was in Gaza earlier this year. “Truth still does have a place in our media.”
Spencer says that even the revised UN figures probably overstate the death toll, because the numbers aren’t limited to people who were killed in the war. “The UN numbers include every death in Palestine no matter what the cause was,” Spencer told The Free Press. “Every natural death, missing person, anyone killed by Hamas.”
And yet, so far not a single major media platform, save Fox News, has reported on the new UN numbers. (MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough tweeted about them.) On Monday, the Israel advocacy group HonestReporting noted as much, adding that the old casualty figures “continued to be parroted by various media outlets.”
Meanwhile, Spencer said it’s impossible to gather accurate statistics in a time of war. He noted that we still don’t know how many civilians died in the 2016 Battle of Mosul, in which Iraqi Special Forces retook the city from the Islamic State. “It’s been maddening from my angle that anyone could think there could be a number for the dead in a war anytime in human history down to a single digit on a daily basis—it fails common sense—and be run by mass media of the world as fact.”
Read Peter Savodnik’s piece “What Makes a War Just?” and follow him on X @petersavodnik.
And for more from John Spencer on the reality of war in Gaza, listen to his excellent recent appearance on Sam Harris’s podcast, Making Sense.