The Israeli human-rights group B’tselem today released its final report on the death toll in Gaza from the highly asymmetrical fighting of last December-January.
Their figures differ a little from those released yesterday by the Gaza-based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights.
PCHR put the complete death toll among Gazans at 1,419. B’tselem put it at 1,387. That’s a difference of 32 people. The difference could perhaps be explained by what they were counting: PCHR was counting the number of Palestinians “killed during the Israeli military offensive on the Gaza Strip”, while B’tselem was apparently counting Palestinians killed by the Israeli security forces.
B’tselem also counted the number of Israelis killed during the 22 days of fighting:
- Palestinians killed 9 Israelis during the operation: 3 civilians and one member of the security forces by rockets fired into southern Israel, and 5 soldiers in the Gaza Strip. Another 4 soldiers were killed by friendly fire.
Given the intensity of combat operations, friendly fire deaths are not particularly surprising.
PCHR counted that 1,167 non-combatants were killed, along with 252 “resistance activists.” It specified that,
- The non-combatants include civilians and civil police officers who were not involved in hostilities, [who are] protected persons of international humanitarian law. Investigations conducted by PCHR indicate that 918 civilians were killed… The civilian victims include 318 children… and 111 women.
B’tselem, by contrast, is not quite so sure how to characterize the conbatant/non-combatant status of the police killed. They write that of those killed,
- 773 did not take part in the hostilities, including 320 minors and 109 women over the age of 18. Of those killed, 330 took part in the hostilities, and 248 were Palestinian police officers, most of whom were killed in aerial bombings of police stations on the first day of the operation. For 36 people, B’Tselem could not determine whether they participated in the hostilities or not.
There is very little difference between these two reports regarding the numbers of women and children killed. The main differences are in how they distribute the adult male death among combatants and non-combatants.
The B’tselem report notes that this about the Israeli military’s claims about the Palestinian death toll:
- Israel stated that 1,166 Palestinians were killed in the operation and that 60% of them were members of Hamas and other armed groups. According to the military, a total of 295 Palestinians who were “not involved” in the fighting were killed. As the military refused to provide B’Tselem its list of fatalities, a comparison of names was not possible. However, the blatant discrepancy between the numbers is intolerable. For example, the military claims that altogether 89 minors under the age of 16 died in the operation. However, B’Tselem visited homes and gathered death certificates, photos, and testimonies relating to all 252 children under 16, and has the details of 111 women over 16 killed.
Of course, definitions and methodology are very important in such documentation. B’tselem is counting 320 “minors”, meaning presumably under the age of 18, but only 252 “children under 16”. It is also very specific about the methodology it used to verify each claimed death of a minor.
I dare say that when we see the final report in English from PCHR, they too will be specific about the methodology they used. I have great respect for the careful work and documentary objectivity of the PCHR, which is Palestinian and operates under extremely difficult circumstances from its downtown Gaza headquarters. I would imagine that its researchers have the opportunity to do even more meticulous fieldwork than that done by B’tselem, which is based in Jerusalem and has faced many obstacles placed by the Israeli authorities in being able to get its research teams into Gaza.
I was just looking at this news article by AP’s Karin Laub today. It is built around B’tselem’s release of its report.
I really question why she gave such prominence to that report, while making only a fleeting reference to PCHR’s work and not even mentioning it by name? Is it because she is in based in Jerusalem, or because she is reluctant to give any credence to the work of a Palestinian organization?
Anyway, the big discrepancies are not between the reporting of B’tselem and PCHR, but rather those between the reporting of these human-rights groups and the Israeli military.
Especially as regards the numbers of deaths of minors.
Laub reported that,
- The military said Wednesday that it believes B’Tselem’s findings are based on flawed research, including reliance on what it said are exaggerated death tolls by Palestinian human rights groups.
This is a serious libel.
Quite clearly, B’tselem has met that (quite evidently fabricated) “concern” by explicating the time-consuming and sometimes actually dangerous methodology it used in the case of reported deaths of minors.
And what “methodology” did the Israeli military use in its compilation of its numbers.
Helena,
A charitable explanation (and I don’t know of a reason not to be so minded) of Laub’s preference for B’Tselem’s reporting may be that it is more difficult to oppose. I realize that’s problematic in itself but we see this all the time, not only in the Palestinian context but in almost any conflict or confrontation between “them” and “us”.
When we were shooting Meeting Resistance in 2003/4 we would regularly hear from Iraqi families and other Iraqi’s working for western media outlets that gross abuses of prisoners – including rape and torture – were being perpetrated by US forces in Abu Ghraib. This was clearly verifiable fact as far back as October of 2003 but, because the allegations were being made by Iraqi’s they were regarded – at best – as uncorroborated rumour. Only with the publication of the photo’s taken by those carrying out the policies did the story acquire legitimacy. Were it not for the ill discipline and sense of immunity among those involved in these crimes, they would probably not have seen the light of day, except perhaps in the Arab media.
“what “methodology” did the Israeli military use in its compilation of its numbers.”
The same “methodology” used by the Council of Foxes when they investigate last night’s raid on the hen house. “Who, US?!”
Steve, I am inclined to be charitable towards Karin’s reporting as i’m sure she comes under a lot of pressure there. But still, the preference for “white” sources is notable and should be underlined when it exists. I didn’t mean to impugn her motives, but I would love her explanation.
Re the Abu Ghraib reports, people were sending me horrible photos of alleged abuse in US-run jails in Iraq in October-November 2003. I was very disturbed by them and asked the sender to give me provenance, provenance, provenance, as there was no way I would publish them or pass them on to anyone else to publish without that.
But the people who sent them could never provide provenance.
I still feel really bad about that. maybe I should have passed them on to a big news org with well-financed reporting capabilities, who could have investigated a lot further.
but yes, I’m sure Karin needs to cover her rear-end as much as she can.
No, Helena, you’re absolutely right, pitiful and racist though it is, that only the “white” person is a credible witness in our war of narratives. In the case of the Iraq war a whole history has been hidden by this kind of reporting failure.
You were absolutely right to require provenance for the photo’s but would you have dismissed them if you had received them in Baghdad where you’d be able to interview witnesses and victims with credibility building corroborative stories? Almost everybody knew but they didn’t do the work. Although doing the reporting, as you know, is only half the battle. Getting it past an editor is quite another.
I would suggest the horrific assault on Gaza last January-February, produced a subtle but important critical-mass turning point in world opinion regarding Israel and the Palestinians. Even in the U.S., though the government and media remain (and likely will remain for the foreseeable future) incredibly skewed toward Israel, you’ve seen an opening of the discourse and a shift of consciousness with Americans. I mean, that number of Palestinian children slaughtered? And recent IDF soldiers’ testimonies of the contempt shown toward civilian life in Gaza during the assault. White phosphorus dropped on civilians, etc., the list of calumny just goes on and on.
I think Israel’s longstanding rationalizing structures for its butchery just broke down when put up against what people around the world started to hear (and some extent see) coming out of Gaza, notwithstanding the attempted media black-out by Israel. Even the NY Times’ Roger Cohen spoke a little to this issue on Charlie Rose, toward the end of Operation Cast Lead.
It’s a tragic testimony to how otherized and de-humanized the Palestinians are and have been in American discourse that it would take such a pile of dead children, and civilians overall, to wake people up a bit to start questioning Israel’s actions, but at least the questioning did begin, however circumspect and qualified.
I also think the more that people become aware of the nature of the Blockade on Gaza and the effect it’s having on the Palestinians there, the more they’ll be horrified by it (or at least I’d hope so). For pete’s sake, even surf-boards have been denied entry (at least that’s what I heard last). I guess anything that might even make Palestinians look too much like ‘normal fun-loving human beings’ is anathema to Israel. I just can’t get over the level of de-humanization implicit in all of this.
Can some one explain to me why, if the IDF was engaged in widespread and indiscriminate killing of civilians during Operation Cast Lead, do women account for only 12% of the fatalities reported by the PCHR and B’Tselem?
I am also curious as to how many of the minors under the age of 16 were over the age of 14, as opposed to 14 and younger.
Ms. Cobban writes:
“PCHR put the complete death toll among Gazans at 1,419. B’tselem put it at 1,387. That’s a difference of 32 people. The difference could perhaps be explained by what they were counting: PCHR was counting the number of Palestinians ‘killed during the Israeli military offensive on the Gaza Strip,’ while B’tselem was apparently counting Palestinians killed by the Israeli security forces.”
So does the difference represent the number of Palestinians who were summarily killed by the Hamas security forces during the fighting?
Helena,
In this posting, you made the following incorrect claim: “NGO Monitor and prominent rightwing Israeli politicians have proposed banning the provision by foreign governments of funding to groups like Breaking the Silence.”
As head of NGO Monitor, I am on record as opposing legislation to ban of this practice of massive European government funding for Israeli non-governmental organizations (in reality, they are GONGOs — government funded NGOs– clearly an oxymoron). The largely top-secret and naively manipulative European funding (estimated at over tens of millions of Euros/year — a serious amount in the Israeli framework) all focused on “ending the occupation”, but without any realistic program, is entirely ineffective within Israel (other than to anger Israelis who do welcome such recolonization by Europeans, thank you very much). But it does promote the demonization and isolation of Israel, via the Durban strategy of boycotts, Goldstone commissions, etc.
Nevertheless, my position, as stated clearly in both the Hebrew language media and the Jerusalem Post (2 August 2009), under the heading “Transparency, not ban …” , is that such foreign government funding to private Israeli entities regardless, of political allegiance should be made public. As I wrote, “Prohibitions in democracies are generally undesirable …..”.
But the Israeli public (and I would assume the European taxpayers who foot the bill) certainly have the right know who is paying for the large advertisements calling for protests that appear regularly in Israeli newspapers, the political and media campaigns of various (mostly unsuccessful) politicians, as well as pseudo-academic conferences and unverifiable reports repeating Palestinians allegations on civilian deaths in Gaza, “war crimes”, etc. B’tselem and Breaking the Silence are two of the many such Israeli political NGOs that receive European largesse (as does Gaza-based PCHR).
Professor Gerald Steinberg
President, NGO Monitor
and Political Science Department, Bar Ilan University
Gerald, i don’t think I made that claim in this post, but I’ll answer you here by saying Thank you for the correction re NGO-M’s position on government funding.
Of course, many governments, including yours there in Israel, provide financial and other forms of support to NGOs. That’s not in any way anomalous…. And then there are those group of bodies that the Brits call QUANGOs (Quasi-non-governmental organizations). I would argue that in the Zionist movement you also have things called Supra-governmental organizations (SUGOs?)– bodies like the Jewish National Fund that operate at or above the level of the national government there.
But transparency on funding is absolutely a core requirement. You and I evidently disagree on amany matters (including, I disagree strongly with much of your analysis above.) But we can agree on the need for transparency.