This report by the Henry Jackson Society doesn’t come as a surprise to me. Perhaps the lengths to which Hamas went in order to obfuscate the truth are even more comprehensive than I’d imagined, but the bottom line is that the research conducted here serves to confirm what so many of us have known and been saying all along – the Hamas terror organization has been actively and consciously inflating the numbers of civilian deaths in Gaza since the beginning of the war.
Hamas is claiming 44,000 deaths. There are no distinctions between civilians and combatants – of which there are at least 17,000. The research findings show that the numbers include the approximately 5,000 deaths that happen each year in Gaza due to natural causes. It includes cancer patients. The findings also show cases where men who had died were often listed as women or children, and that adults were frequently given the ages of children in order to show more deaths among children. And of course, Hamas doesn’t state how many of those killed were actually killed by Hamas themselves, through misfired rockets or purposeful killings (at least one – regarding a 17-year-old boy gunned down by Hamas while trying to get food aid for his family – is mentioned in the report).
Hamas wants you to believe that the overwhelming majority of the deaths they are reporting are women and children killed by Israel, but even if we look only at the numbers I’ve given here (which all come from the report), the actual numbers of civilians killed is half of what Hamas is reporting—22,000—“might” be civilian deaths resulting from IDF actions. The death of every innocent civilian is a tragedy, but people die in war. There are no wars where innocents aren’t killed. And obviously, there would be no war-related deaths or destruction in Gaza right now if Hamas had not started this war on October 7th of last year.
When will it finally begin to dawn on you that Hamas is manipulating you, and that you are willingly allowing it to happen? You are actively choosing to believe the unverifiable figures supplied by a known terror organization that abides by neither laws nor morals, whose partners and supporters in the West are infusing society with toxic, insidious levels of ignorance and Jew hatred. And when I say “you”, I’m referring collectively to news organizations, human rights organizations, governmental bodies, the UN, and far too many individuals. It is utterly shocking to me that the desire to delegitimize and vilify Israel has organizations and individuals accepting the words of depraved terrorists without question, and that instead of a desire to develop a better, more nuanced understanding of what’s happening, so many are remaining steadfast in their refusal to internalize that the situation here bears only the merest of superficial resemblances to Apartheid in South Africa or the racial history and injustices in the US. This is not about “white oppressors” and “oppressed brown/black people”, regardless of what that ignorant, arrogant, Jew hating POS Ta-Nehisi Coates would like you to believe. I wish you would open your eyes and do better to understand, though I believe the damage that’s been done already—especially in terms of the antisemitism that’s been allowed to flourish under the guise of anti-Israel/anti-Zionist sentiment—will take decades to fix. Are you okay with that?
Make no mistake. This war, like all wars, is awful. It has taken a terrible, tragic toll on both the people of Israel and the people of Gaza. But with that, this report demonstrates that what is happening in Gaza is not genocide – not even remotely close. I hope that you’ll read it (or at least parts of it), and that you’ll do so with a willingness to admit that maybe the situation is not as you believed it to be. That perhaps there is truth in what we Israelis have been saying all along about Hamas and how they are manipulating the narrative in and coming out of Gaza.
But even if that happens, my honest, sad truth is this. As grateful as I will be if people finally start to see the light (though based on experience, I’m not optimistic), no matter what our relationship is – no matter how close we might be, your choice to demonstrate that you prefer to believe the best of Hamas (and take their words at face value without question) and the worst of Israel (or whether you have minimized or been dismissive of my knowledge, experience, or concerns) means that you have irrevocably altered the dynamic of our relationship and how I see you. Your words and actions during this time have, at least to some extent, broken “us”, because I will never be able to forget how they – you – made me feel.
