The number of civilian casualties in Gaza has been at the centre of international attention since the start of the war. The main source for the data has been the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, which now claims more than 30,000 dead, the majority of which it says are children and women. Recently, the Biden administration lent legitimacy to Hamas’s figure. When asked at a House Armed Services Committee hearing last week how many Palestinian women and children have been killed since October 7th, Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin said the number was “over 25,000”. The Pentagon quickly clarified that the Secretary “was citing an estimate from the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry”. President Biden himself had earlier cited this figure, asserting that “too many, too many of the over 27,000 Palestinians killed in this conflict have been innocent civilians and children, including thousands of children”. The White House also explained that the President “was referring to publicly available data about the total number of casualties”.
Here’s the problem with these data: the numbers are not real. That much is obvious to anyone who understands how naturally occurring numbers work. The casualties are not overwhelmingly women and children, and the majority may be Hamas fighters.
If Hamas’s numbers are faked or fraudulent in some way, there may be evidence in the numbers themselves that can demonstrate it. While there is not much data available, there is a little, and it is enough: from October 26th until November 10th 2023, the Gaza Health Ministry released daily casualty figures that include both a total number and a specific number of women and children.
The first place to look is the reported ‘total’ number of deaths. The graph of total deaths by date is increasing with almost metronomical linearity, as the graph in Figure 1 reveals.
This regularity is almost surely not real. One would expect quite a bit of variation day to day. In fact, the daily reported casualty count over this period averages 270 plus or minus about 15%. This is strikingly little variation. There should be days with twice the average or more and others with half or less. Perhaps what is happening is the Gaza ministry is releasing fake daily numbers that vary too little because they do not have a clear understanding of the behaviour of naturally occurring numbers. Unfortunately, verified control data are not available to formally test this conclusion, but the details of the daily counts render the numbers suspicious.
Similarly, we should see variation in the number of child casualties that tracks the variation in the number of women. This is because the daily variation in death counts is caused by the variation in the number of strikes on residential buildings and tunnels which should result in considerable variability in the totals but less variation in the percentage of deaths across groups. This is a basic statistical fact about chance variability. Consequently, on the days with many women casualties there should be large numbers of children casualties, and on the days when just a few women are reported to have been killed, just a few children should be reported. This relationship can be measured and quantified by the R-square (R2) statistic that measures how correlated the daily casualty count for women is with the daily casualty count for children. If the numbers were real, we would expect R2 to be substantively larger than zero, tending closer to 1.0. But R2 is .017 which is statistically and substantively not different from zero.
This lack of correlation is the second circumstantial piece of evidence suggesting the numbers are not real. But there is more. The daily number of women casualties should be highly correlated with the number of non-women and non-children (i.e., men) reported. Again, this is expected because of the nature of battle. The ebbs and flows of the bombings and attacks by Israel should cause the daily count to move together. But that is not what the data show. Not only is there not a positive correlation, there is a strong negative correlation, which makes no sense at all and establishes the third piece of evidence that the numbers are not real.
Consider some further anomalies in the data: first, the death count reported on October 29th contradicts the numbers reported on the 28th, insofar as they imply that 26 men came back to life. This can happen because of misattribution or just reporting error. There are a few other days where the numbers of men are reported to be near zero. If these were just reporting errors, then on those days where the death count for men appears to be in error, the women’s count should be typical, at least on average. But it turns out that on the three days when the men’s count is near zero, suggesting an error, the women’s count is high. In fact, the three highest daily women casualty count occurs on those three days.
Taken together, what does this all imply? While the evidence is not dispositive, it is highly suggestive that a process unconnected or loosely connected to reality was used to report the numbers. Most likely, the Hamas ministry settled on a daily total arbitrarily. We know this because the daily totals increase too consistently to be real. Then they assigned about 70% of the total to be women and children, splitting that amount randomly from day to day. Then they in-filled the number of men as set by the predetermined total. This explains all the data observed.
There are other obvious red flags. The Gaza Health Ministry has consistently claimed that about 70% of the casualties are women or children. This total is far higher than the numbers reported in earlier conflicts with Israel. Another red flag, raised by Salo Aizenberg and written about extensively, is that if 70% of the casualties are women and children and 25% of the population is adult male, then either Israel is not successfully eliminating Hamas fighters or adult male casualty counts are extremely low. This by itself strongly suggests that the numbers are at a minimum grossly inaccurate and quite probably outright faked.
Finally, on February 15th, Hamas admitted to losing 6,000 of its fighters, which represents more than 20% of the total number of casualties reported. Taken together, Hamas is reporting not only that 70% of casualties are women and children but also that 20% are fighters. This is not possible unless Israel is somehow not killing noncombatant men, or else Hamas is claiming that almost all the men in Gaza are Hamas fighters.
Are there better numbers? Some objective commentators have acknowledged Hamas’s numbers in previous battles with Israel to be roughly accurate. Nevertheless, this war is wholly unlike its predecessors in scale or scope; international observers who were able to monitor previous wars are now completely absent, so the past can’t be assumed to be a reliable guide. The fog of war is especially thick in Gaza, making it impossible to quickly determine civilian death totals with any accuracy. Not only do official Palestinian death counts fail to differentiate soldiers from children, but Hamas also blames all deaths on Israel even if caused by Hamas’s own misfired rockets, accidental explosions, deliberate killings or internal battles. One group of researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health compared Hamas reports to data on UNRWA workers. The researchers argued that because the death rates were approximately similar, Hamas’s numbers must not be inflated. But their argument relied on a crucial and unverified assumption: that UNRWA workers are not disproportionately more likely to be killed than the general population. That premise exploded when it was uncovered that a sizable fraction of UNRWA workers are affiliated with Hamas. Some were even exposed as having participated in the October 7th massacre itself.
The truth can’t yet be known and probably never will be. The total civilian casualty count is likely to be extremely overstated. Israel estimates that at least 12,000 fighters have been killed. If that number proves to be even reasonably accurate, then the ratio of noncombatant casualties to combatants is remarkably low: at most 1.4 to 1 and perhaps as low as 1 to 1. By historical standards of urban warfare, where combatants are embedded in and below civilian population centres, this is a remarkable and successful effort to prevent unnecessary loss of life while fighting an implacable enemy that protects itself with civilians.
The data used in the article can be found here, with thanks to Salo Aizenberg who helped check and correct these numbers.
Abraham Wyner is Professor of Statistics and Data Science at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and Faculty Co-Director of the Wharton Sports Analytics and Business Initiative.
This story originally appeared in Tablet magazine and is reprinted with permission.
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What a prize cunt she is.
Bit harsh.. She always talks highly of you..
Ha ha. I don’t usually swear but I couldn’t think of a better way to describe her!
You did well.. ha ha..
Remarkably restrained.
No. Not remotely harsh, ask Alex Salmond.
But what possible use is there for a cunt that size?
What I’d really like to know, is there massive electoral fraud going on, or are people actually voting two-bit sociopathic power-hungry cretins like Sturgeon into power?
The latter. Abject slave zombies vote for power-hungry cretins. Gulag Wales is full of both.
And don’t forget the Republic of Ireland, there it’s almost a prerequisite that politicians are sociopathic, corrupt … and all the better if also stupid.
At one time they even vigorously protested on behalf of a politician because he had been – at the behest of Brussels on condition of a bailout – charged with corruption that amounted to almost a £100,000. The real figure was much higher than this.
So, I suppose when you have these high levels of stupidity, there’s no need to spend money rigging elections.
The Irish got rid of the English – that’s all that matters to them!
The likes of Sturgeon and Drakeford have to be seen to be doing things differently to the English. That’s all that matters to them.
Wales has been turned into a sad joke by the Marxist Cretin put into power by the stupid devolution system forced trough by Blair.
There was a bit of a spat on here a day or two ago where Godwin’s Law was consistently used as a defence. I do not think it unreasonable that we instigate “Bliar’s Law.”
Every current ailment afflicting this country originated with the well known war criminal and oxygen thief, Tony Bliar. Most discussions on here can therefore reasonably default to Bliar’s Law as the last line of defence.
What’s wrong with Annie’s comment, downticker? Imo nail on head.
Sadly, people vote for them, including some in my family.
Why not? It is Scotland after all!
I am afraid, you do not appreciate the whole nonsense up here is based on which party can be the most anti Sassanach.
Scotchland is a wee, poor, sick, ageing, sponging country. All its get up and go got up and went centuries ago, and all that’s left are the genetic dregs, and the New Scotch.
1 in 5 working age Scotch adults are registered as disabled. I’d be astonished if under half of the population isn’t dependent on the State either directly or indirectly, whether through employment, bennies or pensions.
Fear and dependence keeps the collectivists in power. Hatred and jealousy of their English betters and benefactors keeps the votes going to Plaid Commie rather than to Scotch Labour.
The Scotch people (and New Scotch) are so demoralised that their birth rate plummeted to a sporran shrivelling 1.29 in 2020, among the lowest in the world, and demographic suicide. They’ve simply lost up all hope, and are in mis-managed decline.
She is truly raving
A firm, ravishing, and wise, leader.
Kim-Jong-un, of course.
I’m just trying to imagine what a ‘firm ravishing’ by a ‘wise leader’ would be like..
Don’t imagine too hard, George!
Think of Margaret Thatcher in her M&S underwear giving you the come hither. I hope that helps.
Even as a hot blooded young(ish) male I have never considered Sturgeon to be firm and ravishing.
As PJW says “it ALL has to go”
Or Boris will be gone.
To whoever chose that hilarious image of Nicola “I’m a Lesbian and My Marriage is Fake” Sturgeon and Kim Jong-Un, did you know that Kim Il-Sung, founder of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, was raised Presbyterian?
In other news, the MSM have now been told to say that Dominic Cummings will be interviewed by Sue Gray, having previously not even raised the question as to whether he would be (or already had been) or not.
This is worth noting, because the question should have been an OBVIOUS one that anybody following “Partygate” would ask.
Here we have an excellent illustration of how the range of questions that the MSM are allowed to ask is under strict central control. Not only that, but it’s as with a super-injunction: no journalist is allowed to mention the fact. (OK, admittedly most of them are too stupid to notice, or to understand when it’s pointed out to them.)
He was raised Presbyterian, but Calvin’s Geneva wasn’t hard enough for him.
Is Dominic Cummings an arch-Covidian who believes it’s all real, or a spineless pragmatist who got caught out in lockdown 1, or a man of no fixed views apart from trashing BJ?
It might just be my perception, but I think Dominic Cummings is highly impressed by himself, and considers anyone who questions his rather novel methods as a heretic. I think this is mostly a ‘shower of spite’, although the PM has left himself wide open due to his gung-ho style and lack of attention to details, a trait we all see in him I’m sure.
There are doubtless others, but in recent history, he strikes me as a latter day UK Lavrentiy Beria; and look what happened to him.
As slimy as Beria, but Cummings couldn’t kill a guinea fowl.
@BS665 – Are you familiar with the reputation of Klute bar in Durham?
@Hopeless – Marshal Zhukov arrested Beria in the cabinet room… I don’t think Cummings is as personally depraved as Beria, but there probably isn’t a single soul in the Westminster bubble who would disagree with you if you said he has got it coming to him. He’s practically got “I’ve got it coming to me” tattooed on his pate.
Your description of Dommunist Dictator is apt.
Please call him Dommunist Dictator…
‘Big ‘dom cummings’ is my preferred designation, but I’ll see if I can incorporate your preferred moniker, Moist.
He’s a spineless covid bed wetter misfit of no fixed abode, who fled plague ridden nut nut London to go mince pie testing.
stick a spit through her and roast the cunt in front of an open pub fire.
Chuckle bros
Old bag.
Nicola Sturgeon is a masochist’s wet dream.
You wouldn’t know she was stood up anyway.
What should concern freedom-loving Scots (a definite rarity from what I witness every time I’ve been up there over the last couple years), is that the Sturge will likely love being called the Glorious Leader.
She already has her subjects lovingly referring to her as Chief Mammy.
Pretty sick for a childless hag who endorses some of the most evil politics targeting children this country has seen for centuries.
Spooky, same as Jacinda and Angela, the infantilisation in full swing
Macron in France, Rutte in the Netherlands, recently replaced Stefan Löfven in Sweden, and Xavier Bettel in Belgium. And let’s not forget Treasona May signing us up to the Global Compact for (unlimited mass) Migration. It’s very much a pattern.
Even the slightest lifting of restrictions is done as slowly and grudgingly as possible by Nicola Ceausescu.
A “woman” not worthy of comment.
Good gravy – let’s hope Kim doesn’t adopt Dear Leader’s hairstyle!
Triangulated the data? Realised (not from Leitch, Shridhar,Bauld, Reicher) or any of the other control freak innumerates who advised her from the fact that a wave went into exponential decay, from a barely stuttering rise. Then looking at the rage around Scotland and the failure to find ICU even a tenth full, they “triangulated” ie they shat their pants at the prospect of keeping these measures in place. That said plenty of pant-shitting snowflakes in the general hanging on to masks like adult dummies . The next task is to stop wearing them. I have worn them to save staff from the need to confront me but no longer.
https://truth11.com/2022/01/18/the-police-has-been-ordered-to-shut-down-all-vaccine-centres-in-uk/
I think this is Amanda de Buisseret speaking to the police officer in this video where she details the charges against the government, although there is no information on this link
But…but…the virus cloud is above seat height! People will die unless they sit below it! She must be stopped. Please, for the love of William Gates, see sense!
Fortifying the baseline despotism while trumpeting it as freedom. MiniTruth double-confirms: aye, right.
“Nicola Sturgeon was visiting a Scottish primary school and the class
was in the middle of a discussion related to words and their meanings.
The teacher asked Ms. Sturgeon if she would like to lead the discussion on the word ‘Tragedy’.
So the illustrious SNP leader asked the class for an example of a ‘Tragedy’.
A little boy stood up and offered, “If ma best freen, wha’ lives on a ferm, is playin’ in the field and a tractor rins ower him and kills him, that wid be a tragedy.”
“Incorrect”, said Nicola, in her best trying-not-to-sound-too-patronising-Scottish-accent, “That would be an accident.”
A little girl raised her hand, “If a school bus kerryin’ fifty children drove ow’r a cliff, killing a’body inside, that wid be a tragedy”
‘I’m afraid not’, explained Nicola, “that’s what we would refer to as a great loss’’.
The room went silent. No other children volunteered. The First Minister searched
the room. “Isn’t there someone here who can give me an example of a tragedy?”
Finally, at the back of the room, a wee lad raised his hand and, in a quiet voice, said: “If a plane kerryin’ you and your deputy wiz struck by a ‘freendly fire’ missile & blawn tae smithereens, that wid be a tragedy.”
“Fantastic!” exclaimed Ms. Sturgeon, “and can you tell me why that would be a tragedy?”
“Weel”, says the lad, “it has tae be a tragedy, because it certainly widnae be a great loss, and it probably widnae be an accident either!”
Poor Scotland. Nicola destroying a once wonderful place to visit, one silly ccp mandate at a time. What a superstar you are lady.
Forced face-masking is not a baseline corona measure, it’s a baseline Do what the unions demand measure and to which degree the union leaders want that because they’re idiots in the original sense of the word[*] and to which degree because they’re either bought or profit from the mask trade remains open to speculation.
[*] As far as I know, the term goes back to Nikolaus von Kues (Cusanus) who used idiotus to describe a class of people he called die eigensinnig Wissenden in German. That would be people who refuse to learn from other people’s experiences or knowledge. They’re not technically retarded. But to them, only their own opinion on anything counts because it is their own opinion.
So, having destroyed the Hogmanay trade, Kim il Sturgeon graciously opens up in the quietest month of the year. I hope she’s banned permanently from every pub, restaurant and social facility throughout Scotland.
Utterly reckless. The Covid cloud knows your safe when you sit down, but not when you stand up. This will break the NHS.