Easily 200,000 Dead in Gaza?
On Destroying Gaza to Save It
Israel is obliterating Gaza and blaming Hamas in the process. If only Hamas would surrender! Israeli officials say. Then the halcyon antebellum days of Gaza being an open-air prison could return. But of course those apartheid days of suffering won’t return because Israel has rendered Gaza uninhabitable, with no hospitals, no schools, no food markets, no nothing.
Joshua Frank knows the score. He wrote a powerful piece for TomDispatch in which he cites Ralph Nader and what may well be the real death toll in Gaza. While the official death count sits at 36,400 or so, the real death count may be up to five times that, when you factor in the level of destruction and the number of bombs Israel has dropped.
Here’s an excerpt from Frank’s article:
But death figures can also impart meaning, as the long-time consumer-rights activist Ralph Nader recently pointed out. He happens to believe that Israel could have killed at least 200,000 Palestinians in Gaza, a mind-boggling figure, but worth examining. So, I called on him to elaborate.
“The undercount is staggering,” said Nader, whose Lebanese parents emigrated to the United States before he was born. “The U.S. and Israel want a low number, so they look around. Instead of themselves estimating — which they don’t want to do — they cling to Hamas’s [figures], and Hamas doesn’t want a realistic number because they don’t want to be seen as unable to protect their own people. So, they developed these criteria: to be counted, the dead must first be certified by hospitals and morgues [which barely exist].”
“The whole thing [Gaza] is one death camp now. It’s easily 200,000 deaths in Gaza,” he insisted, citing the number of bombs dropped, which have, by some estimates, exceeded 100,000. We know that at least 45,000 missiles and bombs had been used in Gaza within three months of the beginning of Israel’s military campaign. As a result, as many as 175,000 buildings have been damaged or destroyed by Israel. So, he seems to be on to something.
“Eventually [the real number of the dead] will come out,” he adds. “They’ll do a census, whoever takes over. The one thing the extended families in Gaza know is who’s been killed in their families.”
Of course, his assertion is circumstantial and he knows it, but he’s making a point. With so much of the Gaza Strip facing imminent starvation, nearly all hospitals out of commission, just about no medicine left, and very little clean water or food, 35,000 deaths are likely, in the end, to prove a drastic undercount.
And nearly all that destruction is made possible by U.S. military aid to Israel.
Meanwhile, the top two stories in my CNN feed this morning were Trump’s conviction and the decision by Congress to invite Bibi Netanyahu to address a joint meeting. In 2015, Bibi got 23 standing ovations when he addressed Congress, and 39 ovations in total. A 30-minute speech took an extra 10+ minutes because of the rousing and raucous applause he received from Members of Congress eager to be seen as rabidly pro-Israel.
What’s the over-under on standing ovations for Bibi this time? Forty?
And the over-under on deaths in Gaza?
The U.S. will do what it usually does: take the show on the road to somewhere else, assisted - as always - by the compliant MSM. Gaza will join the catalogue of mass murder aided or committed by the U.S. that includes: 2 million dead Vietnamese and 4.5 million dead in the GWOT.
And most U.S. citizens will forget, if they ever knew, and the empire will continue killing until it collapses - taking us with it. Though we likely deserve it.
I keep wondering when a university president will grow enough of a spine to state what you know they want to say. The latest and perhaps most pathetic I’ve seen is Jonathan Holloway, president of Rutgers. A black president and scholar of African American history for god’s sake!
As Rep. Good (in name only) asked, “Do you think Israel’s government is genocidal?” Holloway responds, “Um sir, I don’t … have an opinion on Israel’s um …in terms of that phrase.”
Would it really take so much courage to say, “HELL YES!” I’m sure he has plenty to retire on and live comfortably all his days. What a betrayal of an historically oppressed people!