‘Hard to question’ Gaza deaths after The Lancet report
Israel’s longstanding claim that the death toll tallied by Gaza’s Hamas-led Health Ministry is inflated will be hard to uphold after a study published by The Lancet concluded the number of casualties was underreported, according to Tamer Qarmout, associate professor in public policy at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies.
“The fact that this is a report by The Lancet and that its methodology is so rigorous sends a message,” Qarmout has told Al Jazeera. “It’s really hard to question this study.”
The peer-reviewed statistical analysis published by one of the world’s most renowned academic journals conducted by Yale University and other institutions estimated the death toll at 64,260, while the official figure stood at 37,877.
It concluded that the toll was likely undercounted by 41 percent in the first nine months of the conflict.
Qarmout said that once the war stops and forensic experts gain access to Gaza, “the reality will be grim and we will learn about a lot more losses”.
‘Indifference and apathy’: Israelis don’t care about Gaza death toll
Earlier we reported on a new study that says the number of deaths in Gaza during Israel’s war is likely substantially higher than official statistics.
Menachem Klein, a professor at Bar-Ilan University, says the Israeli public will unlikely be moved by the research.
“The brain of the Israeli public is washed by the government and the mainstream media. Unfortunately, the genocide operation and the criminal acts in Gaza are made by ordinary people, and it’s very difficult for ordinary people to accept that they, their relatives, and their neighbours are criminals,” Klein told Al Jazeera.
“The self-perception is ‘we fight terrorism so we’re doing a good job, we’re not the bad guys, they are the bad guys’. All this combined builds up Israeli apathy and indifference to the death toll in Gaza.”
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