Doing Math In Public

We hear in an article from the Jerusalem Post that a former US presidential candidate has a very interesting view of the Gaza war:

Former US presidential candidate Ralph Nader claimed that over 400,000 Gazans have been killed by the IDF, without evidence, since the start of the war in October 2023, in a Monday article on the left-wing online magazine CounterPunch.

Nader obviously has a very strong case of antisemitism which no doubt has him using unrealistic views of the war and stated these as his “facts:”

In his article, titled "The Vast Gaza Death Undercount," he says that Gaza's civilian population would not "withstand over 115,000 tons of bombs, plus artillery, grenades, and snipers targeting civilians, with uncontrollable fires everywhere." He also makes the claim that "five thousand babies a month are born into the rubble."

The failed presidential candidate ran but never won:

Nader had run in the US presidential elections on four separate occasions, but never as a Democrat or a Republican. In 1996 and 2000, he ran under the Green Party, with the latter year acting as the party's nominee for the presidency. In 2004 and 2008, he ran as an Independent.

Now his estimates of the war casualties exceed even the figures given by the less than objective Hamas counts:

Nader's estimate is also nearly eight times the amount of what the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry reported as the death toll, which they claim has passed 50,000 last month. However, he rebutted Hamas's numbers, claiming that the terror group is reporting lesser numbers "to lessen the ire of its people for not protecting them."

Now that is an interesting bit of logic. Somehow Nader seems to know more about the deaths and seems to be counting what he calls indirect deaths:

His argument for the death toll reaching 400,000 also includes indirect deaths and mentions higher estimates than Hamas's numbers, which were made by UN agencies and The Lancet, the latter of which claimed in a publication last July that the death toll was around 186,000, but is less than half of the number that the former presidential candidate claimed.

He also thinks the Hamas undercounting is because they are only reporting on limited stats:

Nader also wrote that the terror group "Hamas counts only names of the deceased given by hospitals and mortuaries."

Lower Numbers

It seems that while Nader is inflating the casualty numbers, others are revising them down:

The day after Nader's piece was published, non-profit organization Honest Reporting's Salo Aizenberg told The Telegraph that the terrorist organization had quietly removed the names of thousands of Palestinians it had previously alleged were killed during the war after looking at the terror groups' casualty updates from last month.

Hamas is now admitting that 75% of those killed in the war are their soldiers which is a stark admission of truth compared to their previous accounts:

Hamas's updated list shows that nearly three-quarters of those killed were men aged 13-55, which is the demographic that makes up the Palestinian terrorist organization.

The terror group had previously claimed that 70% of their casualties were women and children. Israel, meanwhile, has said that 20,000 Hamas terrorists have been killed since the beginning of the war as of late March.

I always take the counts thrown around by the lamestream media with a grain of salt and now hearing these various people tossing out numbers like this I can see why some folks are up in arms over the war against Hamas. But I know that Israel is waging a war following the restrictive rules on the international rules of war. Some of the regulations put forward by the Geneva Convention include:

  • protecting those not involved in conflict
  • protecting those who cannot fight
  • prohibiting the targeting of innocent civilians
  • prohibiting the targeting of hospitals, medical workers, and medical vehicles
  • protecting prisoners from maltreatment and torture
  • prohibiting the use of sexual violence in conflict

Israel is doing all of these things while Hamas is breaking every single one of them. But try telling that to these rabid antisemites. They are willfully ignorant about this and much more. As for the Christian community, we need to do better starting by reading our Bibles and rejecting the replacement theology which is rearing its ugly head once again. Israel is still God’s chosen people and still the apple of His eye. Yes, they are secular and are not following Him as they should, but like the prodigal son, He will bring them back to Him.