Exposing the Gaza Death Undercount, By Ralph Nader

Floor Speech

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Mr. LARSON of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record the following article published in the August/September issue of the Capitol Hill Citizen by my constituent, Ralph Nader. I do not endorse everything put forward in the article; however, I believe it is important that it be included as a matter of free speech and discussion.

One way that the annihilator--Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu--flipped off the meek urgings of President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to ``minimize civilian casualties'' in Gaza was to say--Don't lecture me--look at what you did to civilians in Hiroshima (1 40,000 dead), Nagasaki (70,000 dead) and Dresden (25,000 dead) to crush your enemies. That's 235,000 dead in two nations with a population at the time of 150 million.

In Gaza, a tiny enclave of 2.3 million long besieged and impoverished people, nearly half of them children, the Israeli regime, a military nuclear superpower, backed unconditionally by the United States government and its demanding lobbies, has far exceeded that three city devastation.

The following probative evidence and professional assessments point to a death toll of over 300,000 Palestinians in Gaza with that number at least doubling by end of the year.

Why then is the reviled Hamas' official death count now at about 41,000, accepted by the mass media and most governments, regardless of their view for or against the genocide in Gaza?

Hamas is vested in an undercount to temper accusations by their own people that it has not protected them. (Hamas badly underestimated the total savagery of the Israeli response to its October 7 attack through a mysteriously collapsed multitiered Israeli border security complex.) The Israeli government also prefers an undercount to temper the rising level of international condemnation and boycotts.

As a result, the slow rise in the official fatality and injury undercount leaves a widening gap each day compared to the actual toll of death and morbidity on the ground. Normally, there would be an ongoing ``gold standard'' epidemiological estimate.

But war epidemiology has historically been understudied. A 2015 article in the journal Epidemiology found that for the epidemiology of severe acute respiratory syndrome there had been nearly 2.5 academic articles per death, while for the epidemiology of wars and armed conflict there are only 0.00005 articles per death.

Gaza presents additional obstacles. For years, Netanyahu has barred entry by journalists, including Israelis, from free and independent reporting there.

In early July 2024, more than 70 media and civil society organizations signed an open letter urging Israel to give journalists independent access to Gaza.

The organizations--which include the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, BBC, CNN, The Guardian, the New York Times, and the Washinglon Post--said that no independent media access to Gaza has been permitted since the start of the war.

``This effective ban on foreign reporting has placed an impossible and unreasonable burden on local reporters to document a war through which they are living,'' they wrote.

``More than 100 journalists have been killed since the start of the war and those who remain are working in conditions of extreme deprivation. The result is that information from Gaza is becoming harder and harder to obtain and that the reporting which does get through is subject to repeated questions over its veracity.''

Similarly, international humanitarian analysts have been excluded.

``Aid groups have been pointing to Israel restricting the flow of assistance into the territory as a major driver of the crisis,'' Tharoor repeated. ``Some prominent Israeli officials openly champion stymying these transfers of aid.''

Martin Griffiths, the United Nations lead humanitarian officer said weeks ago that ``life is draining out of Gaza at terrifying speed.''

``U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres warned of an `unknown number of people'--believed to be in the tens of thousands--lying under the rubble of buildings brought down by Israeli strikes,'' the Post reported.

On April 5, 2024, then special envoy for Biden on Humanitarian Affairs, David Satterfield told the American Jewish Committee ``there is an imminent risk of famine for the majority, if not all, the 2.2 million population of Gaza.''

``This is not a point in debate. It is an established fact, which the United States, its experts, the international community, its experts assess and believe is real,'' Satterfield said.

A few days later, USAID administrator Samantha Power agreed that it was ``credible'' to assess that famine was already occurring in Gaza.

UNICEF, Save the Children, the World Food Program, the International Rescue Committee, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Palestine Red Crescent Society, and Doctors Without Borders are all relating the same catastrophic conditions getting worse.

Some of these groups have lost valiant staff to Israeli attacks, including while sheltering in clearly marked UNWRA and Red Crescent buildings and vehicles. Israeli war crime violations of international law are legion, according to experts in the field from many nations.

These groups have years of experience working in disaster areas around the world and their reputation for reporting conditions is first rate. They know full well that the terrifying amputations and other disabilities and the corrosive PTSD on civilians, especially children, will long continue for those survivors.

Against this background, the mass media ditto heading the Hamas undercount would have people believe that 98 percent of the Gaza population has survived the Israeli onslaught. This is lethally impossible.

In July, the prestigious UK medical journal The Lancet put out a study of the Gaza undercount conservatively concluding that ``it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186,000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza.''

Finally, there is eye witness clinical evidence by western physicians, nurses and medical support staff returning from their tours of duty in the remaining badly damaged hospitals. Their accounts offer more probative evidence. In a largely ignored, documented letter to Joe Biden, Dr. Jill Biden and Kamala Harris, dated July 25, 2024, 45 of these doctors recounted their clinical observations.

Here are a few of them:

``I've never seen such horrific injuries, on such a massive scale, with so few resources. Our bombs are cutting down women and children by the thousands. Their mutilated bodies are a monument to cruelty.''--Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, trauma and critical care surgeon.

``Gaza was the first time I held a baby's brains in my hand. The first of many.''--Dr. Mark Perlmutter, orthopedic and hand surgeon.

``Specifically, every one of us on a daily basis treated preteen children who were shot in the head and chest,'' the doctors wrote in the letter to the Bidens and Harris. ``With only marginal exceptions, everyone in Gaza is sick, injured, or both.''

``President and Dr. Biden, we wish you could see the nightmares that plague so many of us since we have returned-- dreams of children maimed and mutilated by our weapons, and their inconsolable mothers begging us to save them,'' they wrote. ``We wish you could hear the cries and screams our consciences will not let us forget. We cannot believe that anyone would continue arming the country that is deliberately killing these children after seeing what we have seen.''

``Israel has targeted our colleagues in Gaza for death, disappearance, and torture,'' the doctors wrote. ``We believe that the death toll from this conflict is many times higher than what is reported by the Gaza Ministry of Health.'' ``We urge you to end this madness now.''

Ironically, in December 2023, Dr. Jill Biden told spouse Joe Biden: ``Stop it, stop it now, Joe.'' (Source: Joe Biden). The doctors who signed the letter are asking for a personal meeting with the Bidens and Kamala Harris.

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