Even If They Were Accurate, Hamas’s Casualty Figures Wouldn’t Condemn Israel

Jan. 19 2024

A chief engine of anti-Semitic propaganda are the casualty figures from Gaza, cited constantly by Israel’s critics and by reporters—despite the fact that they are generated by a branch of Hamas. Oved Lobel shows systematically that these statistics don’t support any of the conclusions drawn by those who cite them:

During the Bosnian War (1992–1995), for instance, according to the best data available, of the approximately 100,000 killed or missing, the overwhelming majority, 59 percent, seem to have been combatants. This number would tell us nothing about how that war was fought or the extent of atrocities, including what was judged to be an act of genocide at Srebrenica.

Similarly, while there are no reliable figures for casualties from the Syrian civil war, all available figures show that the majority of deaths since 2011 were combatants. You would never know about the Syrian regime’s use of chemical weapons and starvation sieges, the massacres of civilians and political prisoners, and a plethora of other horrific war crimes from this topline figure.

Even if one were to trust the casualty estimates coming out of Gaza, one would have to know the usual civilian-combatant casualty ratios in wars, particularly in comparable wars. . . . But for those genuinely interested in how the war against Hamas compares to other, at least superficially similar operations, the figures available strongly suggest that it is neither especially deadly nor especially destructive.

Read more at Fresh Air

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, Laws of war

Egypt Is Trapped by the Gaza Dilemma It Helped to Create

Feb. 14 2025

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.

Read more at The Editors

More about: Egypt, Gaza War 2023