How Hamas fakes casualty figures (and the Israel haters are loving it)
Plain math to disprove their numbers
It shames me. How large parts of the “woke left” portray Israel. How they cry for a “ceasefire,” call out the Palestinians victims but completely omit the horrors carried out by Hamas — and Palestinian civilians — on October 7th. Completely omit, that more than hundred hostages are still being kept in Gaza — probably being raped and tortured every day — and with the Israeli army desperately trying to free these, and free the people of Gaza from Hamas — all we hear is: “Israel is committing genocide.”
Thus, in this post we will have a look at the casualty numbers published by Hamas — and use plain math to prove that these are fake — in an attempt to at least eradicate one of their many lies.
Notes: Without discussion the situation in Gaza is problematic. However, I strongly believe first terror needs to subside, and all hostages freed — if there is any chance for peace. Further, I was not able to obtain original numbers — and thus will just cite works from authors who have seen these. If anyone knows how, please let me know how to get these — and I will re-do all computations myself.
The facts — quick version
To begin with, let’s overview the findings from Abraham Wyner, a professor of statistics from Pennsylvania — whose report we will follow along in this post [1, 2]. So, what can we read from the casualty figures of Hamas?
- The increase in casualties is metronomical, with hardly any deviation per day. Real data would show at least some variance, strongly suggesting that the numbers are fake — and someone is just adding fictional deaths to a counter.
- There is hardly any correspondence between women and children casualties. We would assume this to be the case for real data, as supposed strikes on civilian targets would mean women and children casualties at the same time. However, there is hardly any correlation between these numbers, strongly indicating that these measures are fabricated.
- There is a negative correspondence between women and men casualties. In war, one would expect a positive correspondence between these numbers — think of airstrikes, military operations on specific days, etc. However, in Gaza supposedly this is not the case, the correlation is negative even. This does not make sense at all, strongly indicating that also this data is made up — and probably simply an attempt of Hamas to downplay the number of killed terrorists, and complaining about supposed civilian casualties.
Problems with getting data
Next, I will detail my findings when trying to replicate those results myself — only to be locked out by the UN. You can try to register to obtain such data at https://opt-registration.azurewebsites.net/Register.aspx, but won’t get access — as data is only available for select organizations, and further there are strict conditions of use:
Let’s go over this one by one. To start with: Why restrict access to such data at all? Shouldn’t information be free, and the world be notified of tragedies? This does not make sense to me, and I don’t like it.
Next, why allow access to only specific organizations? Let’s play a game and guess many of these are “pro-Palestine,” how many of these would like to see Israel obliterated from the map, and how many of these employ terrorists themselves. Unfortunately, this only fits too well into the UN’s anti-Israel stance which was shown so often recently.
Lastly, the terms — pretty strict and scary, huh? Look at point number four — why would I not be allowed to use data, statistics, in any way I want?
The facts — more math
Now, let’s dive a bit deeper into what Professor Wyner found, and discuss his findings and data — going through the points of above one by one:
Metronomical increase
Let’s look at the daily number of reported casualties:
Even without considering any statistics, it is obvious that such numbers are not natural. If this was the case, the Israeli Army would shoot people like clockwork on purpose.
Correlation of women and children casualties
Let’s have a look at the reported number of women and children casualties and plot them against one another:
Here, we would expect some variance due to the number of strikes, the targets, etc. — but due to more strikes meaning more casualties, would expect there to be a correlation between these two numbers. We can try to fit a linear regression to this data, and measure its “goodness.” The result of the linear regression is indicated by the blue line, however, even by just looking the data, we can see that the corresponding points are more or less just spattered all over the XY-plane. This is confirmed by a low “goodness” (R2) score of 0.017 — which is close to 0 (indicating no correlation), the lowest value. Thus: There is no correlation between these numbers, which seems highly unlikely.
Negative correspondence between men and women casualties
Lastly, let’s look at the correspondence between men and women casualties:
Also for this, due to the nature of conflicts with strikes and attacks flaring up and dying down, we would expect a correlation between these two numbers. Indeed, we now find a strong correlation between them (our goodness measure of linear regression is 0.835, close to 1) — however the correlation is negative! Meaning: The more men are killed, the less women, and vice versa. That doesn’t make any sense at all — what would that even mean? Israel carefully selecting their targets, one day only targeting men, the other only women? My explanation for this is Hamas simply trying to hit a desired number of women casualties — trying to frame Israel as the bad guys — while also trying to downplay the number of killed terrorists.
Conclusion
In this post we followed the findings by Professor Wyner, disputing nearly all of the numbers around the Gaza conflict published by Hamas using statistics.
To this, my conclusion is clear, and contains a simple ask: Do not let yourself by played by Hamas. Do not join so-called “pro-Palestine” marches around the world, in which you were manipulated into joining a radical show of forces. Do not trust numbers of a terror organization without questioning. And when Israel provides evidence of massacres, women and children being raped and beheaded — please do not ask for even more “evidence” — trust in facts, science, and numbers — and pick the right side.
Sources
[1] https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/how-gaza-health-ministry-fakes-casualty-numbers
[2] https://www.jns.org/hamas-fakes-casualty-figures-the-numbers-are-not-real/
