#Abraham Wyner

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Abraham Wyner

Published: Mar 7, 2024

The number of civilian casualties in Gaza has been at the center of international attention since the start of the war. The main source for the data has been the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, which now claims more than 30,000 dead, the majority of which it says are children and women. Recently, the Biden administration lent legitimacy to Hamas’ figure. When asked at a House Armed Services Committee hearing last week how many Palestinian women and children have been killed since Oct. 7, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said the number was “over 25,000.” The Pentagon quickly clarified that the secretary “was citing an estimate from the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry.” President Biden himself had earlier cited this figure, asserting that “too many, too many of the over 27,000 Palestinians killed in this conflict have been innocent civilians and children, including thousands of children.” The White House also explained that the president “was referring to publicly available data about the total number of casualties.”

Here’s the problem with this data: The numbers are not real. That much is obvious to anyone who understands how naturally occurring numbers work. The casualties are not overwhelmingly women and children, and the majority may be Hamas fighters.

If Hamas’ numbers are faked or fraudulent in some way, there may be evidence in the numbers themselves that can demonstrate it. While there is not much data available, there is a little, and it is enough: From Oct. 26 until Nov. 10, 2023, the Gaza Health Ministry released daily casualty figures that include both a total number and a specific number of women and children.

The first place to look is the reported “total” number of deaths. The graph of total deaths by date is increasing with almost metronomical linearity, as the graph in Figure 1 reveals.

[ The graph reveals an extremely regular increase in casualties over the period. Data aggregated by the author and provided by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), based on Gaza MoH figures. ]

This regularity is almost surely not real. One would expect quite a bit of variation day to day. In fact, the daily reported casualty count over this period averages 270 plus or minus about 15%. This is strikingly little variation. There should be days with twice the average or more and others with half or less. Perhaps what is happening is the Gaza ministry is releasing fake daily numbers that vary too little because they do not have a clear understanding of the behavior of naturally occurring numbers. Unfortunately, verified control data is not available to formally test this conclusion, but the details of the daily counts render the numbers suspicious.

Similarly, we should see variation in the number of child casualties that tracks the variation in the number of women. This is because the daily variation in death counts is caused by the variation in the number of strikes on residential buildings and tunnels which should result in considerable variability in the totals but less variation in the percentage of deaths across groups. This is a basic statistical fact about chance variability. Consequently, on the days with many women casualties there should be large numbers of children casualties, and on the days when just a few women are reported to have been killed, just a few children should be reported. This relationship can be measured and quantified by the R-square (R2 ) statistic that measures how correlated the daily casualty count for women is with the daily casualty count for children. If the numbers were real, we would expect R2 to be substantively larger than 0, tending closer to 1.0. But R2 is .017 which is statistically and substantively not different from 0.

[ The daily number of children reported to have been killed is totally unrelated to the number of women reported. The R2 is .017 and the relationship is statistically and substantively insignificant. ]

This lack of correlation is the second circumstantial piece of evidence suggesting the numbers are not real. But there is more. The daily number of women casualties should be highly correlated with the number of non-women and non-children (i.e., men) reported. Again, this is expected because of the nature of battle. The ebbs and flows of the bombings and attacks by Israel should cause the daily count to move together. But that is not what the data show. Not only is there not a positive correlation, there is a strong negative correlation, which makes no sense at all and establishes the third piece of evidence that the numbers are not real.

[ The correlation between the daily men and daily women death count is absurdly strong and negative (p-value < .0001). ]

Consider some further anomalies in the data: First, the death count reported on Oct. 29 contradicts the numbers reported on the 28th, insofar as they imply that 26 men came back to life. This can happen because of misattribution or just reporting error. There are a few other days where the numbers of men are reported to be near 0. If these were just reporting errors, then on those days where the death count for men appears to be in error, the women’s count should be typical, at least on average. But it turns out that on the three days when the men’s count is near zero, suggesting an error, the women’s count is high. In fact, the three highest daily women casualty count occurs on those three days.

[ There are three days where the male casualty count is close to 0. These three days correspond to the three highest daily women’s casualty count. ]

Taken together, what does this all imply? While the evidence is not dispositive, it is highly suggestive that a process unconnected or loosely connected to reality was used to report the numbers. Most likely, the Hamas ministry settled on a daily total arbitrarily. We know this because the daily totals increase too consistently to be real. Then they assigned about 70% of the total to be women and children, splitting that amount randomly from day to day. Then they in-filled the number of men as set by the predetermined total. This explains all the data observed.

There are other obvious red flags. The Gaza Health Ministry has consistently claimed that about 70% of the casualties are women or children. This total is far higher than the numbers reported in earlier conflicts with Israel. Another red flag, raised by Salo Aizenberg and written about extensively, is that if 70% of the casualties are women and children and 25% of the population is adult male, then either Israel is not successfully eliminating Hamas fighters or adult male casualty counts are extremely low. This by itself strongly suggests that the numbers are at a minimum grossly inaccurate and quite probably outright faked. Finally, on Feb. 15, Hamas admitted to losing 6,000 of its fighters, which represents more than 20% of the total number of casualties reported.

Taken together, Hamas is reporting not only that 70% of casualties are women and children but also that 20% are fighters. This is not possible unless Israel is somehow not killing noncombatant men, or else Hamas is claiming that almost all the men in Gaza are Hamas fighters.

Are there better numbers? Some objective commentators have acknowledged Hamas’ numbers in previous battles with Israel to be roughly accurate. Nevertheless, this war is wholly unlike its predecessors in scale or scope; international observers who were able to monitor previous wars are now completely absent, so the past can’t be assumed to be a reliable guide. The fog of war is especially thick in Gaza, making it impossible to quickly determine civilian death totals with any accuracy. Not only do official Palestinian death counts fail to differentiate soldiers from children, but Hamas also blames all deaths on Israel even if caused by Hamas’ own misfired rockets, accidental explosions, deliberate killings, or internal battles. One group of researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health compared Hamas reports to data on UNRWA workers. They argued that because the death rates were approximately similar, Hamas’ numbers must not be inflated. But their argument relied on a crucial and unverified assumption: that UNRWA workers are not disproportionately more likely to be killed than the general population. That premise exploded when it was uncovered that a sizable fraction of UNRWA workers are affiliated with Hamas. Some were even exposed as having participated in the Oct. 7 massacre itself.

The truth can’t yet be known and probably never will be. The total civilian casualty count is likely to be extremely overstated. Israel estimates that at least 12,000 fighters have been killed. If that number proves to be even reasonably accurate, then the ratio of noncombatant casualties to combatants is remarkably low: at most 1.4 to 1 and perhaps as low as 1 to 1. By historical standards of urban warfare, where combatants are embedded above and below into civilian population centers, this is a remarkable and successful effort to prevent unnecessary loss of life while fighting an implacable enemy that protects itself with civilians.

The data used in the article can be found here, with thanks to Salo Aizenberg who helped check and correct these numbers.

-

Abraham Wyner is Professor of Statistics and Data Science at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and Faculty Co-Director of the Wharton Sports Analytics and Business Initiative.

==

The Islamic supremacist terrorist organization lied?

Part of the rampant antisemitism is how "news" outlets simply accept Hamas' claims and parrot them back uncritically.

[pier-carlo-universe]

LE MENZOGNE SU ISRAELE. Parte Terza. NESSUN GENOCIDIO di Andrea B. Nardi

La manipolazione dei numeri nella guerra di Gaza: fonti verificate contro la propaganda

Riceviamo un comunicato da Andrea B. Nardi e pubblichiamo con in calce un’ analisi di Alessandria today sul comunicato: L’ultimo rapporto dell’OHCHR (Alto Commissariato delle Nazioni Unite per i Diritti Umani) ha verificato 8.119 decessi a Gaza fino al 2 settembre 2024. Quindi le cifre di decine e decine di migliaia di morti diffusi quotidianamente in tutto il mondo si rivelano prive di ogni…

[youareprobablywrong]

This is going to be a long response, so buckle up.

I think it is worth pointing out that the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) is not just a think tank, but a registered lobby. Their purpose in life is to sway politicians towards certain legislative outcomes. John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt in their 2008 book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy pointed out that FDD is a neoconservative think tank, that as part of this ideological slant they are extremely pro-Israel. (They argue in this book that a pillar of neoconservatism is being pro-Israel.) The relevance of the FDD in context of lobbying and other efforts by Israel to shape narratives internally and abroad can be seen further in this documentary piece.

Does a motive mean that the FDD is lying? No. But what it does mean is that they are going to attempt to shape a narrative.

I'm going to challenge that narrative now.

First, "incomplete data" is not the same as "fabricated data." What I said was (emphasis added):

What is true is that the quality of data being reported has decreased over time. This is in part driven by the near total collapse of the health system in Gaza. It is the health system (actual doctors and nurses) that is responsible for reporting deaths. Their method for reporting is consistent with other countries (like Israel, United States, EU, etc.) in which they have a name, and a personal identification number (Palestine's version of a social security number). This information is verifiable.

Their "expert analysis" are just quotes from people making assumptions. Case in pint, their senior research analyst (Joe Truzman) alleges that:

...there is also a deliberate effort to downplay the number of terrorists who have been killed by Israel in the war, potentially number more than 10,000.

They give one example to demonstrate a "record of false claims," and this example is nothing more than what happens in all armed conflicts, and in social media every time something bad happens. Their example does not prove or demonstrate that the Ministry of Health is fabricating data.

The FDD's Director of Research wrote an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal on April 4th lamenting the fact that President Biden of giving credibility to the MoH's numbers. In it he points out that casualty data is determined through two sources: medical facilities, and reliable media sources.

Given the deterioration of the healthcare infrastructure, especially in Northern Gaza, and given the fact that more than 100 journalists and media staff have been killed in the last six months, it makes sense that there would be deterioration in quality of data on reported deaths.

It may well be that the numbers reported by media staff are hyperinflated. It could be that as media reports, and the MoH verifies later, that the number whittles down. It could also be that the number is fairly accurate.

What the FDD and other neoconservative think tanks (who seem to be the only think tanks alleging intentional manufacturing of casualty reports, by the way) seem to ignore is that in the 2008, 2014, and 2021 conflicts, Israel and the United States verified the data that was reported by the MoH and came within 2 and 8%.

In other words, if the MoH is intentionally lying about the data, it would be the first time they have ever done so.

In November 2023, Jamaluddine et al., looked at excess mortality in Gaza between October 7 and 26 and found that there was, indeed, a substantial number of people killed.

In December 2023, Huynh et al., found no evidence of inflated mortality reported from the Gaza Ministry of Health.

The Washington Institute in late March (2024) also highlighted issues when relying on media reports of casualties. An article published in August 2023 in PNAS pointed out that media reports can often be wrong during times of armed conflict (in context of Ukraine and Russia).

Spagat (2024) from Action on Armed Violence has also highlighted concerns with the quality of data, but also acknowledge the overwhelming barriers to accurate reporting.

Spagat and Jamaluddine also lend credibility to the strength of the MoH's reporting, especially early on in the conflict.

So, while Gaza's Ministry of Health has a motive in highlighting disproportionate civilian casualties, Israel has in their best interest to conceal unpopular collateral damage.

I am not contesting the potential lack of reliability on reported casualty numbers (especially since February 1, 2024). What I am flatly rejecting is the accusation that the MoH is intentionally inflating numbers.

Now, to address Abraham Wyner's allegations.

This professor did not demonstrate anything other than how to use the least number of data points to justify a position that broader data does not support. If it were up to me, I would censure Wyner for intellectual dishonesty. He knows that most people reading The Lancet are not going to have a background in statistics or understand how to spot faulty inferences.

I'm not one of those readers.

First off, he had access to more than a single 15-day window long before his piece was published so I question why he didn't take the opportunity to have more robust results.

Here's a recreation of Wyner's chart showing cumulative deaths:

Because we're talking about total deaths over time, we will always see this, effectively, as a staircase.

So long as there are still casualties to be reported, that trendline will remain positive.

What Wyner does not show, but alludes to when he is talking about "variation" is daily reported deaths. That image looks entirely different.

Each one of those dots represents the number of people killed on respective days. The first chart though is summing (adding) each day to the rest.

Here's another example for December 21 to January 4:

And daily for the same time period:

What Wyner may have been expecting (for reasons he does not explain or pontificate on) is what the last two weeks look like (between April 4 and April 18), which is this:

And daily reported:

The thing is though, is that a 15-day window (for a sample size of 30) is going to be so small that the data could be due to chance.

(Indeed, statistical analysis shows p-values well above alpha level. Wyner's results have a 68% probability of being due to chance. Put another way, anyone redoing his analysis will get different outcomes 68 out of 100 attempts. Desired is 5 out of 100.)

When we look at the time period from October 7th to April 20th, we get this:

And daily reported deaths:

That trend line (dotted black line running through the dots) is showing that the number of people being reported each day is decreasing. But you will notice that the cumulative continues to go up (and will eventually flatten out if the conflict continues during a ceasefire but there are no casualties being reported).

When we look at average daily death counts, we see the trend still decreasing.

In my original post, I said:

The facts are that the average daily number of people killed and injured has decreased significantly over time. This is while also seeing a higher ratio of killed over injured which suggests that the IDF is using better intelligence and better ordinance to strike legitimate targets.

The first part was in reference to the above daily averages, the second part is in context of this chart:

Share variance is 52.8% between these two variables. That relationship is shown here:

Wyner does not explain why there should be a positive correlation between men and women. But a recent investigation and report on Israel's utilization of Artificial Intelligence ("Lavender") could explain why.

Excerpts below (emphasis added):

"Moreover, the Israeli army systematically attacked the targeted individuals while they were in their homes — usually at night while their whole families were present — rather than during the course of military activity. According to the sources, this was because, from what they regarded as an intelligence standpoint, it was easier to locate the individuals in their private houses. Additional automated systems, including one called “Where’s Daddy?” also revealed here for the first time, were used specifically to track the targeted individuals and carry out bombings when they had entered their family’s residences. The result, as the sources testified, is that thousands of Palestinians — most of them women and children or people who were not involved in the fighting — were wiped out by Israeli airstrikes, especially during the first weeks of the war, because of the AI program’s decisions. In an unprecedented move, according to two of the sources, the army also decided during the first weeks of the war that, for every junior Hamas operative that Lavender marked, it was permissible to kill up to 15 or 20 civilians; in the past, the military did not authorize any “collateral damage” during assassinations of low-ranking militants. The sources added that, in the event that the target was a senior Hamas official with the rank of battalion or brigade commander, the army on several occasions authorized the killing of more than 100 civilians in the assassination of a single commander. ....on several occasions, when a home was struck, usually at night, the individual target was sometimes not inside at all, because military officers did not verify the information in real time.

Wyner's entire assessment relies on a 15-day window during a time that, with near unanimity, the world considered MoH's data to be reliable. He doesn't prove anything, but makes wild claims in direct contravention of actual statistical methodology.

You can read an additional breakdown here (James Willis, Medium, Independent researcher), here (Lior Pacther, Wordpress, Computational Biologist, and anyone can download the data on Gaza and West Bank casualties.

Again, when we're looking at potential issues with data, we should see:

Absence of statistical outliers

Near uniformity in reporting

Increases/decreases that do not make sense given contexts

First and second order digit comparisons

We see statistical outliers, we see downward trends that coincide with Israeli operations and bombing tactics, we see increases and deceases that make contextual sense.

With respect to the last item on first and second order digit comparisons, this is a reference to the Benford-Newcomb law. This law suggests that there are a lot of datasets (from street names to insurance claims) that the leading digit should follow a ratio.

It suggests that 30.1% should be 1s, 17.6% should be 2s until we get to 9s which should be 4.6%. Below is a graph that shows expected Benford-Newcomb curve, compared to reported deaths, injuries, and total casualties:

I cannot speak on whether we should see such a curve in context of armed conflict. This curve is also susceptible to smaller orders of magnitude, and since we're only 200 days into the conflict it may be a while yet. That said, this trend fits fairly well into historic examples of said curvature with notable deviations.

Those deviations could be very easily explained by delays in reporting deaths, among other things.

For example, at least 50 people will be reported dead today that weren't before following a discovery of a mass grave after the IDF pulled out. Not only will this lead to a bump in the number of casualties reported on a single day (which is why I included daily averages to help smooth that out), but this may impact the ability for the MoH to verify identity. This ultimately reduces the quality of data. If a body has been mangled and decomposing for two months it will take a lot of time to verify that person, even though there is, indeed, a deceased person to report. This is just an example that highlights how poor quality data is not evidence of fabrication.

Ergo, there is no evidence to suggest that the MoH is intentionally trying to defraud the world. Evidence shows legitimate, rational, and expected reasons for the precipitous deterioration of data quality.

My goal here is to cut through the ideological grifts here and get straight to the objective nature of events, because when it comes to accusing the MoH of lying that seems to be the only force behind this narrative. To me, that is a red flag.

Is the Gaza Ministry of Health Lying about Casualty Data?

No. There is no evidence to suggest that this is the case. Arguably, the real time reporting on the ground would indicate that the data is likely very accurate, if not still underreported. The MoH (Ministry of Health) has been verified in previous conflicts has having been accurately reported. This verification has been done by independent parties, but most specifically Israel and the United States.

What would be some red flags for faked data?

Some noticeable trends would be:

Absence of statistical outliers

Near uniformity in reporting

Increases/decreases that do not make sense given contexts

First and second order digit comparisons

Why would MoH or anyone lie about casualty data?

Those who have attempted to cast doubt on Gaza's reporting have done so to delegitimize their entire system. They allege that Gaza's Ministry of Health has in their best interest (for the sake of propaganda and to sway the world) to fabricate through casualty reporting the severity of the destruction so as to paint Israel as the aggressor.

While the motive is surely true, the data at present does not support the idea that this is what the MoH is doing.

What is true is that the quality of data being reported has decreased over time. This is in part driven by the near total collapse of the health system in Gaza. It is the health system (actual doctors and nurses) that is responsible for reporting deaths. Their method for reporting is consistent with other countries (like Israel, United States, EU, etc.) in which they have a name, and a personal identification number (Palestine's version of a social security number). This information is verifiable.

There is also satellite imagery that validates the level of physical destruction. This objective means of assessing the spread of damage would, for reasonable people, give the impression that there would be significant numbers of dead and injured.

As of today, that number stands at more than 110,000 casualties (34,000+ dead and 76,900+ injured).

The facts are that the average daily number of people killed and injured has decreased significantly over time. This is while also seeing a higher ratio of killed over injured which suggests that the IDF is using better intelligence and better ordinance to strike legitimate targets. To be fair, two months of carpet bombing that occurred from the outset has left the IDF with no other choice as doing this also diminished Israel's capacity to perpetually monitor every single person within the Gaza Strip.

So, if you hear someone alleging that the Gaza Ministry of Health is fabricating their casualty numbers, kindly tell that person to fuck off. This is simply a rhetorical device that is meant to divest the people of Gaza of any legitimacy, indeed their humanity.

If, as the news has been reporting for several weeks now, Israel executes a ground assault into Rafah, we should expect to see casualty numbers increase with significant spikes, followed by precipitous decreases.

[girlactionfigure]

abbasez

The United Nations seemingly halved the estimated number of women and children killed in Gaza, according to UN data published on May 6 and 8. On May 6, the UN published data showing that 34,735 people had reportedly been killed in Gaza, including over 9,500 women and over 14,500 children. On May 8, the UN published data showing 34,844 people had reportedly been killed, including 4,959 women and 7,797 children. The new figures showed the number of identified deaths as of April 30, which total 24,686 people; the new data also specified that 10,006 men had been killed and 1,924 elderly. (Israel puts the number of male combatants killed at approx. 14,000.) This comes after months of accusations by leading statisticians that the numbers produced by the Gazan authorities cannot possibly be accurate. Washington Institute for Near East Policy released a report in January that showed major discrepancies in the fatality reports. They concluded such discrepancies were most likely caused by manipulation. Professor Abraham Wyner also told Tablet Magazine that the rate of deaths was very unnatural and climbed far too regularly. He claimed that in war, deaths should be irregular as the intensity of war is irregular, but that the death numbers climbed by 270 plus/minus 15%, which he says is statistically impossible.

[eretzyisrael]

by Abraham Wyner

Taken together, what does this all imply? While the evidence is not dispositive, it is highly suggestive that a process unconnected or loosely connected to reality was used to report the numbers. Most likely, the Hamas ministry settled on a daily total arbitrarily. We know this because the daily totals increase too consistently to be real. Then they assigned about 70% of the total to be women and children, splitting that amount randomly from day to day. Then they in-filled the number of men as set by the predetermined total. This explains all the data observed.

There are other obvious red flags. The Gaza Health Ministry has consistently claimed that about 70% of the casualties are women or children. This total is far higher than the numbers reported in earlier conflicts with Israel. Another red flag, raised by Salo Aizenberg and written about extensively, is that if 70% of the casualties are women and children and 25% of the population is adult male, then either Israel is not successfully eliminating Hamas fighters or adult male casualty counts are extremely low. This by itself strongly suggests that the numbers are at a minimum grossly inaccurate and quite probably outright faked. Finally, on Feb. 15, Hamas admitted to losing 6,000 of its fighters, which represents more than 20% of the total number of casualties reported.

Taken together, Hamas is reporting not only that 70% of casualties are women and children but also that 20% are fighters. This is not possible unless Israel is somehow not killing noncombatant men, or else Hamas is claiming that almost all the men in Gaza are Hamas fighters.

Are there better numbers? Some objective commentators have acknowledged Hamas’ numbers in previous battles with Israel to be roughly accurate. Nevertheless, this war is wholly unlike its predecessors in scale or scope; international observers who were able to monitor previous wars are now completely absent, so the past can’t be assumed to be a reliable guide. The fog of war is especially thick in Gaza, making it impossible to quickly determine civilian death totals with any accuracy. Not only do official Palestinian death counts fail to differentiate soldiers from children, but Hamas also blames all deaths on Israel even if caused by Hamas’ own misfired rockets, accidental explosions, deliberate killings, or internal battles. One group of researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health compared Hamas reports to data on UNRWA workers. They argued that because the death rates were approximately similar, Hamas’ numbers must not be inflated. But their argument relied on a crucial and unverified assumption: that UNRWA workers are not disproportionately more likely to be killed than the general population. That premise exploded when it was uncovered that a sizable fraction of UNRWA workers are affiliated with Hamas. Some were even exposed as having participated in the Oct. 7 massacre itself.

The truth can’t yet be known and probably never will be. The total civilian casualty count is likely to be extremely overstated. Israel estimates that at least 12,000 fighters have been killed. If that number proves to be even reasonably accurate, then the ratio of noncombatant casualties to combatants is remarkably low: at most 1.4 to 1 and perhaps as low as 1 to 1. By historical standards of urban warfare, where combatants are embedded above and below into civilian population centers, this is a remarkable and successful effort to prevent unnecessary loss of life while fighting an implacable enemy that protects itself with civilians.

The data used in the article can be found here, with thanks to Salo Aizenberg who helped check and correct these numbers.

[angrybell]

Posted @withregram • @shayaknyc Reposted @abbasez

A world-renowned professor of Statistics & Data Science at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, Wyner provided a detailed analysis of the data from the Gaza Health Ministry, which showed that they had, at the very minimum, been doctored – and at worst, completely faked.

See links in bio for two articles:

“Hamas's Gaza death toll is exaggerated or faked, statistics expert claims”

- March 14th, Jerusalem Post

“How the Gaza Ministry of Health Fakes Casualty Numbers”

By Professor Abraham Winer, Tablet Magazine, 3/6/24 #EndJewHatred #antisemitism #stopantisemitism #jewish #jew #judaism #endantisemitism #israelunderattack #istandwithisrael #israel #israeli #selectiveoutrage #injustice #MeToo_UNless_UR_A_Jew #IsraelHamaswar #FckHms #FckHamas #JustJewIt #jewcrew

[secular-jew]

How the Gaza Ministry of Health Fakes Casualty Numbers; The evidence is in their own poorly fabricated figures

By Abraham Wyner, March 6, 2024

The number of civilian casualties in Gaza has been at the center of international attention since the start of the war. The main source for the data has been the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, which now claims more than 30,000 dead, the majority of which it says are children and women. Recently, the Biden administration lent legitimacy to Hamas’ figure. When asked at a House Armed Services Committee hearing last week how many Palestinian women and children have been killed since Oct. 7, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said the number was “over 25,000.” The Pentagon quickly clarified that the secretary “was citing an estimate from the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry.” President Biden himself had earlier cited this figure, asserting that “too many, too many of the over 27,000 Palestinians killed in this conflict have been innocent civilians and children, including thousands of children.” The White House also explained that the president “was referring to publicly available data about the total number of casualties.”

Here’s the problem with this data: The numbers are not real. That much is obvious to anyone who understands how naturally occurring numbers work. The casualties are not overwhelmingly women and children, and the majority may be Hamas fighters.

If Hamas’ numbers are faked or fraudulent in some way, there may be evidence in the numbers themselves that can demonstrate it. While there is not much data available, there is a little, and it is enough: From Oct. 26 until Nov. 10, 2023, the Gaza Health Ministry released daily casualty figures that include both a total number and a specific number of women and children.

The first place to look is the reported “total” number of deaths. The graph of total deaths by date is increasing with almost metronomical linearity, as the graph in Figure 1 reveals.

The graph reveals an extremely regular increase in casualties over the period. Data aggregated by the author and provided by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), based on Gaza MoH figures.

This regularity is almost surely not real. One would expect quite a bit of variation day to day. In fact, the daily reported casualty count over this period averages 270 plus or minus about 15%. This is strikingly little variation. There should be days with twice the average or more and others with half or less. Perhaps what is happening is the Gaza ministry is releasing fake daily numbers that vary too little because they do not have a clear understanding of the behavior of naturally occurring numbers. Unfortunately, verified control data is not available to formally test this conclusion, but the details of the daily counts render the numbers suspicious.

Similarly, we should see variation in the number of child casualties that tracks the variation in the number of women. This is because the daily variation in death counts is caused by the variation in the number of strikes on residential buildings and tunnels which should result in considerable variability in the totals but less variation in the percentage of deaths across groups. This is a basic statistical fact about chance variability. Consequently, on the days with many women casualties there should be large numbers of children casualties, and on the days when just a few women are reported to have been killed, just a few children should be reported. This relationship can be measured and quantified by the R-square (R2 ) statistic that measures how correlated the daily casualty count for women is with the daily casualty count for children. If the numbers were real, we would expect R2 to be substantively larger than 0, tending closer to 1.0. But R2 is .017 which is statistically and substantively not different from 0.

This lack of correlation is the second circumstantial piece of evidence suggesting the numbers are not real. But there is more. The daily number of women casualties should be highly correlated with the number of non-women and non-children (i.e., men) reported. Again, this is expected because of the nature of battle. The ebbs and flows of the bombings and attacks by Israel should cause the daily count to move together. But that is not what the data show. Not only is there not a positive correlation, there is a strong negative correlation, which makes no sense at all and establishes the third piece of evidence that the numbers are not real.

Consider some further anomalies in the data: First, the death count reported on Oct. 29 contradicts the numbers reported on the 28th, insofar as they imply that 26 men came back to life. This can happen because of misattribution or just reporting error. There are a few other days where the numbers of men are reported to be near 0. If these were just reporting errors, then on those days where the death count for men appears to be in error, the women’s count should be typical, at least on average. But it turns out that on the three days when the men’s count is near zero, suggesting an error, the women’s count is high. In fact, the three highest daily women casualty count occurs on those three days.

Taken together, what does this all imply? While the evidence is not dispositive, it is highly suggestive that a process unconnected or loosely connected to reality was used to report the numbers. Most likely, the Hamas ministry settled on a daily total arbitrarily. We know this because the daily totals increase too consistently to be real. Then they assigned about 70% of the total to be women and children, splitting that amount randomly from day to day. Then they in-filled the number of men as set by the predetermined total. This explains all the data observed.

There are other obvious red flags. The Gaza Health Ministry has consistently claimed that about 70% of the casualties are women or children. This total is far higher than the numbers reported in earlier conflicts with Israel. Another red flag, raised by Salo Aizenberg and written about extensively, is that if 70% of the casualties are women and children and 25% of the population is adult male, then either Israel is not successfully eliminating Hamas fighters or adult male casualty counts are extremely low. This by itself strongly suggests that the numbers are at a minimum grossly inaccurate and quite probably outright faked. Finally, on Feb. 15, Hamas admitted to losing 6,000 of its fighters, which represents more than 20% of the total number of casualties reported.

Taken together, Hamas is reporting not only that 70% of casualties are women and children but also that 20% are fighters. This is not possible unless Israel is somehow not killing noncombatant men, or else Hamas is claiming that almost all the men in Gaza are Hamas fighters.

Are there better numbers? Some objective commentators have acknowledged Hamas’ numbers in previous battles with Israel to be roughly accurate. Nevertheless, this war is wholly unlike its predecessors in scale or scope; international observers who were able to monitor previous wars are now completely absent, so the past can’t be assumed to be a reliable guide. The fog of war is especially thick in Gaza, making it impossible to quickly determine civilian death totals with any accuracy. Not only do official Palestinian death counts fail to differentiate soldiers from children, but Hamas also blames all deaths on Israel even if caused by Hamas’ own misfired rockets, accidental explosions, deliberate killings, or internal battles. One group of researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health compared Hamas reports to data on UNRWA workers. They argued that because the death rates were approximately similar, Hamas’ numbers must not be inflated. But their argument relied on a crucial and unverified assumption: that UNRWA workers are not disproportionately more likely to be killed than the general population. That premise exploded when it was uncovered that a sizable fraction of UNRWA workers are affiliated with Hamas. Some were even exposed as having participated in the Oct. 7 massacre itself.

The truth can’t yet be known and probably never will be. The total civilian casualty count is likely to be extremely overstated. Israel estimates that at least 12,000 fighters have been killed. If that number proves to be even reasonably accurate, then the ratio of noncombatant casualties to combatants is remarkably low: at most 1.4 to 1 and perhaps as low as 1 to 1. By historical standards of urban warfare, where combatants are embedded above and below into civilian population centers, this is a remarkable and successful effort to prevent unnecessary loss of life while fighting an implacable enemy that protects itself with civilians.

[eretzyisrael]

by David Harsanyi

Now, you have no reason to be un-skeptical about Israel’s contentions. All governments will lie. You will notice, however, that only one entity in this conflict is the go-to source for most of the media — and it is not our allies.

If you’re going to argue that the administration and media were merely relying on statistics that were available, they should have known better. The Washington Institute for Near East Policy released a report back in January debunking the “Gaza Health Ministry numbers” the UN relies on. Another study by three professors concluded that the oft-repeated 70 percent civilian casualty rate was statistically impossible.

Abraham Wyner, a professor of statistics and data science at the Wharton School, also debunked the Gaza Health Ministry’s casualty numbers, which were a near-perfect incremental daily uptick, despite the vagaries of battle and numerous other factors. Wyner theorizes that the fake daily numbers vary so little because Hamas does “not have a clear understanding of the behavior of naturally occurring numbers.”

Everyone knows the claims are fake.

Remember that it took Israel, a sophisticated nation, weeks to sift through the carnage of Oct. 7 to get a proper tally of the dead. And yet, miraculously, whenever an Israeli attack is carried out, within hours — sometimes minutes — Hamas determines not only the number of dead but often their ages and sex and whether or not they were civilians.

Don’t get me wrong, Hamas wants more dead women and children. If it didn’t, the group would unconditionally surrender and return the men they kidnapped and women they sexually tortured. That would lead to an immediate cessation of violence. If Israel were in the business of “genocide,” as so many ignoramuses contend, it could have carpet-bombed the place rather than providing it water, electricity, and agricultural equipment for many years.

But, tragically, it is impossible to upend the terror apparatus without some civilian casualties. Hamas is counting on it. And it’s also counting on Westerners, now including the administration, to help it spread its lies.

[angrybell]

Posted @withregram • @ibsinow @tabletmag

・・・

“By historical standards of urban warfare, where combatants are embedded above and below into civilian population centers, Israel’s effort is a remarkable and successful one in preventing unnecessary loss of life while fighting an implacable enemy that protects itself with civilians.”⁠

⁠

Head to link in bio to read more from Abraham Wyner, Professor of Statistics and Data Science at Penn.

[lucien-calore]

google is your best friend!

Avery and Jameson is still the best couple in the series lol the rest of you cope

[matan4il]

Here's the article in full:

One of the marks of anti-Semitism, George Orwell observed in 1945, is “an ability to believe stories that could not possibly be true”. Which brings us smartly to Hamas and how the broadcast media, aid organisations, international bodies and world leaders take its disinformation as gospel. Last week it became clear that this gullibility may have led to a crime against reality.

A new analysis of the group’s casualty statistics indicates that the rag-tag terror army may have pulled off one of the biggest propaganda coups of modern times. The figures, repeated by everyone from the White House to the BBC, are freighted with familiarity: 30,000 dead in Gaza, 70 per cent of whom are women and children. Yet it now seems overwhelmingly likely that these statistics are fabricated.

Professor Abraham Wyner, a data scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, has conducted a thorough analysis. He found that Hamas’s official civilian death toll was statistically impossible. “Most likely, the Hamas ministry settled on a daily total arbitrarily,” he wrote in an incendiary essay in Tablet. “We know this because the daily totals increase too consistently to be real. Then they assigned about 70 per cent of the total to be women and children, splitting that amount randomly from day to day. Then they in-filled the number of men as set by the predetermined total. This explains all the data observed.”

The giveaways were many. For example, the reported death toll mounted “with almost metronomical linearity”, Prof Wyner found, showing little daily variation. Obviously, this bore no resemblance to any plausible version of reality. Then there was the fact that, according to Hamas data from 29 October, 26 men came back to life; and the fact that on several days, no men were apparently killed at all, but only women. Were we really supposed to believe any of this?

In February, Hamas admitted to losing 6,000 of its fighters, representing more than 20 per cent of the total casualties reported. Given its claims that 70 per cent of the dead were women and children, there were two possible conclusions: either almost no male civilians had died, or almost all the men in Gaza were fighting for Hamas. Both were obviously absurd.

Therefore, the number of women and children killed was likely grossly exaggerated. If that is the case – if, as Prof Wyner suggests, “the casualties are not overwhelmingly women and children, and the majority may be Hamas fighters” – where does that leave western outrage? Has the West fallen victim to a monstrous con?

The true ratio of civilian casualties to combatants is likely to be exceptionally low, “at most 1.4 to 1 and perhaps as low as 1 to 1”. This, Prof Wyner says, is a “successful effort to prevent unnecessary loss of life while fighting an implacable enemy that protects itself with civilians”.

By rights, if the central pillar of the anti-Israel edifice has been discredited, the whole structure should come tumbling down. But don’t hold your breath. The reason why Hamas’s dodgy data is so easily believed is confirmation bias. The drip-drip of Israelophobic propaganda over the years has created a powerful tendency to view the Jewish state, Britain’s democratic ally, as a colonialist aggressor and the Palestinians – even as they butcher children – as the “freedom fighters”. Regardless of the evidence, to many people this has become second nature.

It speaks of millennia of inherited anti-Semitism. A 2012 study by economists Nico Voigtländer and Hans-Joachim Voth found that Germans from towns where Jews were blamed for the Black Death and burnt alive in the 14th century were significantly more likely to vote for the Nazis 600 years later. In his 1945 essay, Orwell recalls a “young intellectual, communist or near-communist” remarking: “No, I do not like Jews. I’ve never made any secret of that. I can’t stick them. Mind you, I’m not anti-Semitic, of course.” Depressingly little has changed.

That is the advantage enjoyed by the jihadis of Gaza. They didn’t even need to keep their strategy a secret. Everyone knows they try to get civilians killed for propaganda gains, aiming to curtail Israeli operations with international outrage. Everyone knows that their censors keep dead terrorists away from the cameras, giving the world the impression that Israel is only attacking civilians (look up former AP reporter Matti Friedman’s seminal 2014 essay, “What the media gets wrong about Israel”, for a sense of how long such games have been played). A gang that murdered and mutilated babies may also, on occasion, be tempted to lie. So much should be obvious. But all this is smoothly eclipsed when a greater narrative is at work.

It’s not that there is a lack of journalistic curiosity in large parts of the media. It’s just that, when it comes to Israel, facts are subordinated to assumptions. In February, BBC Verify quoted a World Health Organisation official: The [Hamas] ministry has “‘good capacity in data collection’ and its previous reporting has been credible and ‘well developed’”. This was the same WHO that had singled out Israel for condemnation at an international assembly largely devoted to Covid. And this was the same BBC Verify that had partly based a story on an eyewitness who had reportedly worked for an Iranian state news outlet and celebrated the deaths of Jews on social media.

It is time for us to say: J’Accuse. Just as Emile Zola laid the charge of anti-Semitism at the feet of the French establishment during the Dreyfus Affair in 1898, we must do so to the international establishment today.

by Jake Wallis Simons

Therefore, the number of women and children killed was likely grossly exaggerated. If that is the case – if, as Prof Wyner suggests, “the casualties are not overwhelmingly women and children, and the majority may be Hamas fighters” – where does that leave western outrage? Has the West fallen victim to a monstrous con?

The true ratio of civilian casualties to combatants is likely to be exceptionally low, “at most 1.4 to 1 and perhaps as low as 1 to 1”. This, Prof Wyner says, is a “successful effort to prevent unnecessary loss of life while fighting an implacable enemy that protects itself with civilians”.

By rights, if the central pillar of the anti-Israel edifice has been discredited, the whole structure should come tumbling down. But don’t hold your breath. The reason why Hamas’s dodgy data is so easily believed is confirmation bias. The drip-drip of Israelophobic propaganda over the years has created a powerful tendency to view the Jewish state, Britain’s democratic ally, as a colonialist aggressor and the Palestinians – even as they butcher children – as the “freedom fighters”. Regardless of the evidence, to many people this has become second nature.

It speaks of millennia of inherited anti-Semitism. A 2012 study by economists Nico Voigtländer and Hans-Joachim Voth found that Germans from towns where Jews were blamed for the Black Death and burnt alive in the 14th century were significantly more likely to vote for the Nazis 600 years later. In his 1945 essay, Orwell recalls a “young intellectual, communist or near-communist” remarking: “No, I do not like Jews. I’ve never made any secret of that. I can’t stick them. Mind you, I’m not anti-Semitic, of course.” Depressingly little has changed.

That is the advantage enjoyed by the jihadis of Gaza. They didn’t even need to keep their strategy a secret. Everyone knows they try to get civilians killed for propaganda gains, aiming to curtail Israeli operations with international outrage. Everyone knows that their censors keep dead terrorists away from the cameras, giving the world the impression that Israel is only attacking civilians (look up former AP reporter Matti Friedman’s seminal 2014 essay, “What the media gets wrong about Israel”, for a sense of how long such games have been played). A gang that murdered and mutilated babies may also, on occasion, be tempted to lie. So much should be obvious. But all this is smoothly eclipsed when a greater narrative is at work.

[youareprobablywrong]

@nerdylilpeebee

You said:

The 30k number was a lie. Hamas admitted at least 11k of that number was fabricated. Add in that Israel has proven it's killed at least 10k Hamas fighters and at most 9k+ civilians have been killed.

Where are you seeing that Hamas admitted to "lying" about 11,000 casualties? If you're referring to Dr. Abraham Wyner's piece, he doesn't say that (plus his article is trash). What Hamas has admitted to is incomplete data, which is not the same as saying that it is fabricated. Incomplete data can - and often does mean during times of armed conflict - that they have a body with no ability to determine who that person is through official means (such as dental records, name, age, or identification number).

Palestinian Datasets offers both reported and confirmed. Per their March 29th (updated April 13th, 2024), they had a list of 20,390 names of which 18,769 were confirmed (gender, age, and Palestinian Identification Number (which is similar to a social security number elsewhere)).

The spreadsheet shows that there are 1,621 people that have been reported (i.e., "public submission") that have not been confirmed.

What we know from these confirmed deaths is the following:

3,118 have been girls between 0 and 17

2,928 have been boys between 0 and 15

5,006 have been adult women

11,052 (54%) have been women and children from confirmed data

5,643 (27.6%) are boys and men between 16 and 35, which was considered the age range for Hamas fighters (Times of Israel) in 2014.

This means that 72.3% of reported deaths are women, children, and men above. If we extend that to 60, we get 8,333 confirmed deaths among boys and men, leaving 60% of casualties women and children.

What I think would be high would be more than less than 1% of a population of 2 fucking million. Even if Hamas' lies were true, it wouldn't even break 2% of the overall 2 million. For a war in a country Gaza's size (it's barely the size of New York City), keeping the death toll that low is an INSANE achievement.

If alleged Hamas "lies" are true, and the death toll is 35,128, then 1.7% of Gaza's population has been killed. If Hamas is 40,000 total fighters, then we're talking about 2% of the population getting wiped out.

Currently, the reported deaths are at 0.9165% (which rounded would be 1%).

Reported Injuries stand at a reported 77,908 which is 3.8% of the population, so, reported total casualties (killed/injured) stands at 5.52%.

For those of you that think Israel "isn't committing genocide because if they wanted to do, they would have dropped a nuke already," shut the fuck up.

The Holocaust lasted for more than a decade (1933-1945), with the first concentration camp being erected on March 22, 1933 at Dachau.

The lack of nuclear explosions in Gaza is not evidence that there is not a genocide happening. There are many other variables that go into this determination.

Your ignorance on the suffering and murder of millions of Jews over the course of a decade can stay out of the discussion.

[low-cole-timothy]

that's just false. You make claims put don't provide any reliable sources - https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2024/04/09/hamas-run-gaza-health-ministry-admits-to-flaws-in-casualty-data/

Hamas's Gaza death toll is exaggerated or faked, statistics expert claims

Double-checking the data with independent verification will be impossible due to the lack of independent sources in Gaza.

Professor Abraham Wyner showed that the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry has been "faking" casualty numbers, in an article for Tablet Magazine on March 7.

A professor of Statistics and Data Science at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, Wyner provided a detailed analysis of the data from the Gaza Health Ministry, which showed that they had, at the very minimum, been doctored – and at worst, completely faked.

Wyner first tackles the total reported deaths, which he shows climbed by 270 plus or minus about 15% every day. This, he says, is statistically impossible: "There should be days with twice the average or more and others with half or less."

"The graph of total deaths by date is increasing with almost metronomical linearity," he says – meaning at a regular rate, like a metronome.

Double-checking the data with independent verification will be impossible due to the lack of independent sources in Gaza.

He then says we should see the variation in the number of child deaths that tracks with the variation in women's deaths.

Due to the nature of war, we should see variations in the daily totals of children's and women's deaths, but the overall percentage should stay relatively stable.

"Consequently, on the days with many women casualties, there should be large numbers of children casualties, and on the days when just a few women are reported to have been killed, just a few children should be reported."

A total lack of correlation

However, the data showed an almost total lack of correlation, which Wyner said should be a major signal that the numbers have been faked.

His next piece of evidence is that there should be a strong positive correlation between the deaths of women and men; however, what he found was the opposite. The correlation instead showed a strong negative correlation between men and women, which he says is the third major piece of evidence that the data has been faked.

"If these were just reporting errors, then on those days where the death count for men appears to be in error, the women’s count should be typical, at least on average. But it turns out that on the three days when the men’s count is near zero, suggesting an error, the women’s count is high. In fact, the three highest daily women casualty counts occurs on those three days."

"While the evidence is not dispositive, it is highly suggestive that a process unconnected or loosely connected to reality was used to report the numbers," he says.

"Most likely, the Hamas ministry settled on a daily total arbitrarily," he concludes. "We know this because the daily totals increase too consistently to be real. Then they assigned about 70% of the total to be women and children, splitting that amount randomly from day to day. Then they in-filled the number of men as set by the predetermined total. This explains all the data observed."

He also highlights that by Hamas's own admission, 6,000 Hamas fighters have been killed, which if combined with Hamas's data on deaths, shows that 20% of the total deaths are combatant while 70% are women and children. This implies that "Israel is somehow not killing noncombatant men, or else Hamas is claiming that almost all the men in Gaza are Hamas fighters."

In conclusion, he says, "The truth can’t yet be known and probably never will be. The total civilian casualty count is likely to be extremely overstated."

Is the Gaza Ministry of Health Lying about Casualty Data?

No. There is no evidence to suggest that this is the case. Arguably, the real time reporting on the ground would indicate that the data is likely very accurate, if not still underreported. The MoH (Ministry of Health) has been verified in previous conflicts has having been accurately reported. This verification has been done by independent parties, but most specifically Israel and the United States.

What would be some red flags for faked data?

Some noticeable trends would be:

Absence of statistical outliers

Near uniformity in reporting

Increases/decreases that do not make sense given contexts

First and second order digit comparisons

Why would MoH or anyone lie about casualty data?

Those who have attempted to cast doubt on Gaza's reporting have done so to delegitimize their entire system. They allege that Gaza's Ministry of Health has in their best interest (for the sake of propaganda and to sway the world) to fabricate through casualty reporting the severity of the destruction so as to paint Israel as the aggressor.

While the motive is surely true, the data at present does not support the idea that this is what the MoH is doing.

What is true is that the quality of data being reported has decreased over time. This is in part driven by the near total collapse of the health system in Gaza. It is the health system (actual doctors and nurses) that is responsible for reporting deaths. Their method for reporting is consistent with other countries (like Israel, United States, EU, etc.) in which they have a name, and a personal identification number (Palestine's version of a social security number). This information is verifiable.

There is also satellite imagery that validates the level of physical destruction. This objective means of assessing the spread of damage would, for reasonable people, give the impression that there would be significant numbers of dead and injured.

As of today, that number stands at more than 110,000 casualties (34,000+ dead and 76,900+ injured).

The facts are that the average daily number of people killed and injured has decreased significantly over time. This is while also seeing a higher ratio of killed over injured which suggests that the IDF is using better intelligence and better ordinance to strike legitimate targets. To be fair, two months of carpet bombing that occurred from the outset has left the IDF with no other choice as doing this also diminished Israel's capacity to perpetually monitor every single person within the Gaza Strip.

So, if you hear someone alleging that the Gaza Ministry of Health is fabricating their casualty numbers, kindly tell that person to fuck off. This is simply a rhetorical device that is meant to divest the people of Gaza of any legitimacy, indeed their humanity.

If, as the news has been reporting for several weeks now, Israel executes a ground assault into Rafah, we should expect to see casualty numbers increase with significant spikes, followed by precipitous decreases.