Yossi Schwartz ISL (RCIT section in Israel/Occupied Palestine), 21.03.2024
In the Jerusalem Post, we can find an article titled: “Hostages likely murdered by Hamas, not Israeli airstrikes, researchers say: “The team showed that during the Gaza war, the risk of Israeli hostages being killed in Israeli airstrikes was 10 to 28 times greater than the deaths of Gazans. The team concluded that Hamas probably murdered them.”
And who are the members of the team? Shaare Zedek Medical Center’s Prof. Francis Mimouni, Dr. Sefi Mendlovic, and Dr. Yuval Dadon of the Health Ministry in Jerusalem published the study in the March edition of the Israel Medical Association Journal (IMAJ) under the title “A statistical approach to the high mortality rate of Israeli citizens held hostage in Gaza.” The team used two estimates of hostage death rates, one from Israeli intelligence sources and the other published by a Hamas spokesman. They found that Hamas is likely the one who killed the captive Israelis by the end of December 2023 Can we expect otherwise from this team?
And what is their method of analysis?
The researchers examined whether the estimated death rate of Israeli hostages was similar to the estimated death rate of Gazans and the Hamas claim that many Israeli hostages held in underground tunnels were killed by indiscriminate Israeli airstrikes together with a large number of Gaza residents
The team used two estimates of hostage death rates, one from Israeli intelligence sources and the other published by a Hamas spokesman. They found that by the end of December 2023, the rate of Israeli hostage deaths, according to Israeli sources, was 23 per 238 – and 60 per 238, according to Hamas. Both figures, they wrote, were “strikingly and significantly higher” than the death rate among Gazans, which was estimated to be 19,667 per 2.2 million.
They wrote their study to offer a “statistical approach to the probable cause of the death of Israeli hostages” and suggested that a random, high death rate from Israel Air Force airstrikes was “not plausible.” [i]
According to Zionist intelligence, at the end of December, 129 hostages were being held, and 23 of them were confirmed by Israel to have died in captivity, making the death rate 9.7%. At the same time, Hamas claimed that 60 hostages had been killed in Israeli air strikes – 10 times the death rate of Palestinians in Gaza by Palestinian estimates.
The Zionist intelligence concluded that there are “many possible interpretations for the striking difference in hostage deaths and Palestinian deaths from Israeli air strikes: The first is that the hostages were kept in locations less protected from the air strikes than those of Palestinians.
A second is that the hostages were purposely exposed to the airstrikes, but this is “not logical because many hostages who have been released reported that they had been kept in tunnels located tens of meters below the ground.”
Their third possible explanation that is “more chilling” is that Israeli hostages were not killed during Israeli airstrikes but murdered by Hamas terrorists, the Israeli authors wrote[ii].
On December 3rd according to the Zionist army 800 tunnels were discovered in Gaza, 500 destroyed or sealed. The Military says kilometers of tunnels eliminated, many of which link Hamas’s ‘strategic assets’;[iii]
We don’t know how many tunnels were destroyed by the heavy bombs but this is the reason that the medical team’s research is false. Not only did the researchers not have the training for such research but their method is wrong. The tunnels were the focus of the bombing and this explains the high rate of death of the captive Israelis by the Zionist Air Force.
Not only this but why Hamas will kill the hostages they need for the exchange of prisoners? Not the truth the Israelis are seeking but justification for the genocide.
The Zionist love to lie!
For exchange all for all!
For Palestine red and free from the river to the sea!
Endnotes:
[i] https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-792857
[ii] Ibid
[iii] https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-says-800-tunnels-discovered-in-gaza-op-500-destroyed-or-sealed/