Medical personnel who claim to have spent some time as volunteers in Gaza, have put out a letter claiming that the death toll in Gaza is “greater than 118,908.” More about its contents can be found here: “‘60,000 Dead From Starvation’: American Doctors Quietly Retract Grotesque Gaza Libel,” by Rachel O’Donoghue, HonestReporting, October 7, 2024:
It’s the attached appendix, however, that truly reveals the absurdity of these missives. It’s a mishmash of outdated reports from groups like Save the Children and Human Rights Watch, littered with contradictory statistics and cherry-picked quotes from U.S. politicians.
In the latest letter, we’re told at least 118,000 people have died in Gaza since October 7—yet this is the exact same figure given in the previous letter months ago. And then they admitted it was “impossible to accurately estimate how many Palestinians in Gaza have died since October 7.”
Make it make sense.
Meanwhile, one of the signatories, Ali Elaydi, has been making the rounds in the media this week, most recently in an interview with ABC News, where he falsely claimed that Israel is restricting medical supplies from entering Gaza.
Elaydi is lying, but neither at ABC News nor at any of the other media outlets where he has appeared has anyone dared to contradict him or, indeed, to ask him what is the evidence for his claim that Israel restricts medical supplies.
In reality, Israel has explicitly stated that it places no such restrictions on medical aid. The allegation, which originated at the UN, appears to be an attempt to deflect from the UN’s own failures in effectively distributing aid throughout the Strip.
The problem with aid in Gaza is not that it hasn’t been arriving in sufficient amounts, but that once those trucks laded with humanitarian aid — food and medicine — are inside Gaza, those trucks are immediately beset by armed members of Hamas who help themselves to large amounts of that aid before it can be evenly distributed to those who need it the most. They not only steal aid for their own extended families, but also to sell some of it to other Gazans. The amount of aid entering Gaza is sufficient, but it is the distribution of such aid that has become so chaotic and unfair due to Hamas’ grand theft.
And then there’s the irony: shortly after urging President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to “withhold military, economic, and diplomatic support from the State of Israel…until good faith negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians lead to a permanent resolution of the conflict,” the signees admit they don’t “claim to have all the answers” because, well, they’re “simply physicians and nurses.”…
But of course that’s exactly what these signees are offering — “all the answers” to the conflict. And their answer is for the US to “withhold military, economic, and diplomatic support” from the state of Israel until it effectively surrenders, declares a ceasefire in Gaza that will allow Hamas combatants to regroup, and then to proclaim to the world that the terror group is still standing despite “all that the Zionist entity” threw at it.
How many antisemites, or members of The Squad, or the simply gullible, will now start posting online — or quoting approvingly from — the letter from these 99 medical personnel, with their crazed claim of 118,000 deaths in Gaza? Who will point out that this figure is almost three times the figure that Hamas itself — and Hamas is well-versed in inflating its own figures — has put out? Who will put out for public consumption the actual number of civilian deaths in Gaza, which amount to 14,400 once one has deducted from Hamas’ own total of 42,000 the 18,000 combatants that, according to the IDF, have been killed, and the 9600 Gazans who have died from natural causes?
Tony Rice says
Do NOT believe Hamas, Hezbollah or Iran, liars the lot plus U N under Guterres not much better. Sadly they all get believed and spouted on by many News media, B B C the worst, no longer to be believed or trusted.
Rufolino says
The BBC openly quotes Hamas as their statistical source !!
They have lost their minds. How are the mighty fallen.
rick says
In an October Associated Press article by Wafaa Shurafa and Samy Magdy there appears this telling comment:
“Fares Abu Hamza, an official with the Gaza Health Ministry’s emergency service, said the bodies of a ‘large number of martyrs’ remain uncollected from the streets and under rubble.”
His descriptive use of the word “martyrs” rather than the more proper word of “victims” or “dead” shows a prejudice towards associating all those killed during this war which would include all Hamas and all civilians as essentially combatants or enemies of Israel and therefore killed by Israel as enemies. This by a member of the group which counts bodies and should distinguish between Hamas combatants and simply dead civilians killed in the line of fire. But he doesn’t and instead counts everyone under the rubble which could be either a Hamas or a civilian as “martyrs” in the cause. This completely obscures the effort to distinguish between those two groups. If everyone dead is a martyr than all of them are Hamas whether they like it or not according to the Gaza Health Ministry. It is also an admission that the Gaza Health Ministry cannot really tell who is a civilian and who is a Hamas when they become dead bodies
tgusa says
“American Doctors Quietly Retract Grotesque Gaza Libel,”
When did the term American Doctors become synonymous with the term Half Wit? I would be embarrassed and hide from the world for the rest of my life but I guess that’s just me. I’m not an American Doctor but I did stay at a Holiday Inn last night.
Magooey says
This is just so much Teqiyya. Not a political word said by a Muslim or one of their sympathizers can be trusted. Not. A. Single. Word.
somehistory says
If a mozlum in America wants to talk publicly about the phobia, or something else to do with islam/mozlums, they say…always, that as a ”mozlum American” blah, blah, blah.
Here, in this “report” the word about their islamic belief system being all important the rest of the time, is left out and they are “American doctors.” Nothing said about the fact that they are mozlum and biased toward lying, esp when it concerns Israel and the war to stop mozlum terrorists from wiping the Jews off the map.
Les says
Last October, these same doctors were claiming categorically that there were no tunnels, military personnel or weapons under the hospitals.