Israel Has Killed 8% of Gaza's Population – the Equivalent of 26 Million Americans.
Relative to population, that's also more than 7,700 September 11th events. The New York Times and the large media outlets are silent on the true scale of the suffering.
Want to understand the extent to which Palestinian suffering is being erased by Israel and most US media outlets? What I’m about to explain likely will never be reported in the New York Times or on CNN.
I’ve run some basic calculations on the back of a napkin (see picture below) and concluded that at least 8% of Gaza’s pre-conflict population of 2.3 million has been killed by Israel in less than one year. This is based on an extremely conservative estimate of 186,000 deaths in Gaza published recently in The Lancet, a prestigious medical journal that calculated both direct deaths (from IDF bombings and targeted assassinations) and indirect deaths due to starvation, disease, and the IDF’s deliberate destruction of medical facilities and sources of food. (For that article, see here.) Since that article was published in July, and relies on data from two months ago, it is likely the actual impact is much worse.
Other credible academics have estimated the actual death toll since October 7 could be at least 300,000 if one compares the rate of indirect death to other wartime conflicts where famine set in. Consumer advocate and lawyer Ralph Nader has suggested the death toll could easily rise to 500,000 or more without a ceasefire, wiping out at least 25% of the territory’s population. Regardless, the actual death toll in Gaza is being dramatically underreported.
Consider: if one compares the rate of killing and death in Gaza since October 7 to population, the territory has experienced the rough equivalent of 7,700 September 11 events in the last year. It would be as if 26 million people in the US were killed in one year relative to our current population. Even the entire combined civilian death toll from Hiroshima and Nagasaki pales in comparison to the extent of Israel’s destruction of civilian life in Gaza in the last year, relative to population.
As horrific as Israel’s mass killing of Palestinians is to witness, the media and both major US presidential candidates — not to mention Hamas itself — are for various reasons sanitizing the reality to make it look far less bad than it actually is. All have a vested interest in keeping the actual number lower than it is.
The reality is that what is happening in Gaza relative to population might be the worst example of a deliberate mass civilian killing in modern history. And it is happening with US weapons and the financial support of US taxpayers while our media ignores the true scope of the impact.
As responsible citizens, we cannot let the truth about the extent of civilian death in Gaza be extinguished by any government or any media outlet.
-Steven
Thanks for sharing this Truth!
The media and our electeds at all levels of government are bought off and complicit.