In early July, the Lancet, a leading journal of the British medical profession, carried an article entitled “Counting the dead in Gaza: difficult but essential”. (R Khatib, M McKee and S Yusuf, 5 July 2024)
It pointed out that by 19 June the officially declared death toll of people (overwhelmingly civilians) killed in Gaza by the Israeli military had reached 39,396. It also stated that with 35 percent of buildings completely destroyed by the end of February (and many more partially destroyed) there were likely to be 10,000 more people buried underneath the rubble.
The authors went on to point out that a realistic estimate of total deaths caused by Israel’s assault on the Palestinian population is between three to 15 times the number of directly recorded deaths through bombing, as counted rather conservatively by the Gaza health ministry.
The authors gave their own conservative estimate of 186,000 deaths – that is, 7.9 percent of the total population.
An earlier report in the Lancet published last November, “Excess mortality in Gaza: 7-26 October 2023”, gave details of a study that had investigated the accuracy of the death toll that was being reported by the Palestinian health ministry, and concluded that its initial examination suggested reasonable data quality. (Z Jamaluddine, F Checchi and OMR Campbell, 26 November 2023)
They reviewed past mortality trends in Gaza and estimated expected deaths as a result of the war. The authors concluded that the high excess mortality in the Gaza is likely to have been concentrated among the civilian population.
The zionist government and the western corporate media continually stigmatise Palestinian mortality information by referring to it as coming from Gaza’s “Hamas health authorities”, implying that this means it is not to be trusted. Yet Israeli intelligence services use these figures, and both the United Nations and World Health Organisation (WHO) consider the information to be reliable.
So much for the propaganda warfare. The US, British and EU-backed genocide is part and parcel of the imperialist settler-colonial project that has long sought to maintain dominance in the region, the easier to plunder resources – especially oil.
As the vicious campaign grinds on, there is nothing to indicate that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s stated war aims are being met: ie, defeat of Hamas and the release of the hostages. Palestinian resistance groups continue to inflict a steady stream of casualties on the Israeli armed forces, and hostages continue to be killed by Israeli bombardments.
The genocidal zionist aims of complete ethnic cleansing are being consistently worked towards, however, as evidenced by the destruction of hospitals, schools, civilian and cultural infrastructure, and places of worship; the murder of doctors, journalists and humanitarian workers; the deliberate destruction of Gaza’s energy and water supplies and the resultant proliferation of a multitude of disease epidemics (including, most recently, polio); and the regular displacement of the population to ‘safe areas’ that are then bombed.
British support and complicity unabated
In Britain, despite regular massive demonstrations against genocide and in support of the Palestinian people, the government and parliamentary opposition continue to express their support for zionist war crimes.
This was seen most clearly after 7 October when Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer openly endorsed Israel’s right to carry out collective punishment by cutting off water and power supplies to the 2.2 million people living in the Gaza Strip.
The party tried to put a positive spin on its complicity in order to provide some cover for Labour candidates in the recent election. Now in government, however, Labour’s genocidal policies are being brought back into the open – as shown by foreign secretary David Lammy’s fawning meeting with Netanyahu in Jerusalem on 14 July.
Lammy responded to a parliamentary question about continued arms sales to Israel with the usual zionist talking points, saying: “This is one of the toughest neighbourhoods in the world and Israel is surrounded by people who would see its annihilation; it’s been attacked by the Houthis, with missiles firing from Hezbollah.”
Naturally, he had nothing to say about what Israel has been doing during this time, or for the 76 years leading up to the launch of the resistance’s Al-Aqsa Flood operation on 7 October. Indeed, he recently described the horrific Nuseirat refugee camp massacre, which left 274 Palestinians murdered and 700 more wounded as ‘collateral damage’ in a bloody Israeli-US ‘hostage rescue operation’, as “a glimmer of hope in the darkness”.
Meanwhile, the Lancet article brings us back to the true enormity of Israel’s crimes, even after the International Court of Justice found grounds for plausible genocide back in January and demanded that Israel take effective measures to halt the genocide and to prevent the destruction of evidence.
The article concluded by re-asserting what everyone who cares for human life cannot but be aware of: that “an immediate and urgent ceasefire in the Gaza Strip is essential”, and that this must be “accompanied by measures to enable the distribution of medical supplies, food, clean water and other resources for basic human needs”.
The longer Israel continues on its present path, and the longer the imperialist powers continue to arm it and give it media and diplomatic cover, the more they will expose themselves and their barbarous system in the eyes of the world and force the majority of the world’s people towards the self-evident conclusion that there is simply no way to coexist with such inhumanity.
It is not only zionism that is digging its own grave in the killing fields of Gaza, but the entire system of imperialist domination of the globe.
