Historians and analysts have been warning all along that “the fog of war” obscures our perspective. Nowhere is it clearer than with estimates of casualties during a conflict. Much of the anger against Israel from the rest of the world so far has been generated by these numbers. Remember that story back in October about Israel bombing a hospital in Gaza? And then it turned out that it wasn’t Israel that bombed it, but too many news media (including NYT) had relied on Hamas for their information, and therefore believed what they first heard.
But the damage was already done. And it continued, with all of the reports about the horrific civilian casualty toll in Gaza. In the meanwhile, antisemitism in the US (and pro-Palestinian rallies on college campuses) has reached a fever point. The results of this student poll at Harvard are horrifying in this regard. If you don’t think there is any antisemitism afoot, please read it.
I am not saying there have been no civilian casualties in Gaza. Also, as a Christian, I believe that every life lost is a tragedy—the lives of civilians in Gaza just as much as those in Israel. This is a war in which there are many victims, but there is a shared enemy for all–Hamas.
And yet, numbers matter, because it was precisely based on the numbers of civilian casualties that so many have been eager to blame Israel, instead of mourning with Israel the lives lost in the October 7th massacre—and ones lost since then, including the hostages who have been brutally tortured and killed in captivity.
Anyway, a taste from Jake Wallis Simons’ argument for The Telegraph for not trusting numbers of casualties that Hamas provides:
Earlier this month, the United Nations halved its assessment of the numbers of women and children killed in Gaza. Then: 9,500 women and 14,500 children dead. Now: 4,959 women and 7,797 children. In a further seven months’ time, perhaps another few thousand will be resurrected.
A moment’s thought reveals that it is impossible to quickly produce reliable figures. People might be missing but, in the chaos of war, how do the authorities know they haven’t fled, gone into hiding, or died of natural causes? Casualties may be buried under collapsed buildings, vapourised, burnt, or so disfigured that it would take complex forensic analysis to identify them. That is why it took months for Israeli investigators to arrive at a final figure for the victims of October 7, with some remaining unaccounted for.
With war raging, this kind of detailed work is impossible. Yet for months, the UN has trusted figures produced by the same savages who butchered poor Shani Louk and drank chilled water from an Israeli fridge while watching a dying young boy comforting his little brother who was missing an eye. At long last, it has taken a first step towards sanity. But it continues to rely on figures from Hamas as a touch-point.
Gazan civilians are barred from the safety of the tunnels, even though the whole population would fit inside them. This is why they do not have a single air raid shelter. Hamas’s leaders have been doing their best to get their people killed on camera, then fabricated the figures. They have been doing so to brainwash the international media, political leaders, celebrities and the protesters on our streets, to believe the lie of Israeli “genocide”. They want Jerusalem to be pressured to stop the war, leaving them to plot the next act of savagery.
Hamas is the enemy of peace. Its hatred of Israel and all people who live there is clear. But it is just as much the enemy of civilians in Gaza, whom it has been using as human shields in bombings. This much is clear.
What is less clear is why so many Europeans and Americans have been so quick to turn against Israel at a time of national tragedy and sorrow and effectively begin a media war against a country that already has a long liturgy of national suffering, to which another day of mourning has now been added. If the cause is not antisemitism—well, I’m open to hearing other explanations.