Horror Beyond Comprehension: Gaza Death Toll Realistically Assessed At 186,000, But Could Be As High As 600,000

Medical experts, in a letter to The Lancet, have finally broken through the medical community’s silence regarding the deaths caused by Israel’s genocide in Gaza, adding an estimate of the number of indirect deaths to the confirmed number of direct deaths, indicating that the minimum total death toll will be 186,000.

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Many thanks to three medical experts, research scientist Rasha Khatib, Professor Martin McKee and Professor Salim Yusuf, who have finally broken the global medical establishment’s silence regarding the true death toll of Israel’s genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip, now in its tenth month, pointing out, in correspondence printed in The Lancet, one of the world’s most respected academic medical journals, that, at a conservative estimate, the total death toll is likely to be at least 186,000, and maybe much higher.

The experts’ assessment is based on multiplying the known, direct deaths of Israel’s unprecedentedly brutal assault on the nearly 2.4 million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip (2,375,259, as of 2022), which is widely understood to be around 37,000 (37,396, as of June 19, according to the Gaza Health Ministry), by a factor of five, to include the indirect deaths that, as established through detailed research into armed conflict since the 1990s, always exceed direct deaths many times over.

The experts’ main source for indirect deaths in wartime appears to be the Geneva Declaration Secretariat’s ‘Global Burden of Armed Violence’ report, published in 2008 after the Geneva Declaration on Armed Violence and Development was adopted by 42 states at the conclusion of a ministerial summit in June 2007, which “recogniz[ed] that the fight against the global scourge of armed violence and the prospects for sustainable development are closely linked.”

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Despite the Landslide, Labour Have No Vision and Only Won the UK General Election Because the Tories Lost So Spectacularly

A composite image of the outgoing Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, and his replacement, Sir Keir Starmer.

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So the good news is easy. After 14 years of cruelty, incompetence and corruption, the Tories were wiped out in yesterday’s General Election in the UK, suffering their worst ever result, and ending up with less MPs than at any other point in their 190-year existence.

Of the 650 seats contested, the 365 seats that the Tories had when Rishi Sunak unexpectedly called a General Election on May 22 were slashed to just 121 (a loss of over two-thirds), with their vote almost halved, from 13,966,454 in 2019 to just 6,814,469 yesterday.

High-profile Tory losses included Liz Truss, the disastrous 43-day Prime Minister, whose vote plunged from 35,507 in 2019 to 11,217 in South West Norfolk, the absurd and offensive pro-Brexit toff Jacob Rees-Mogg, and a number of ministers until six weeks ago including the vacuous Tory pin-up Penny Mordaunt, the empty Grant Shapps and Mark Harper, the far-right ideologues Liam Fox and Johnny Mercer, and the offensive Thérèse Coffey and Gillian Keegan.

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A Million Palestinians Face Death by Starvation After Eight Months of Israel’s Genocide in Gaza

Palestinians seeking food in Deir el-Balah in the Gaza Strip in December 2023. Israel’s “complete siege” on Gaza has meant widespread shortages of food throughout the last eight months, but repeated blocking of humanitarian aid deliveries by Israel has meant that it is now estimated that a million Palestinians face death by starvation by mid-July. (Photo: Majdi Fathi).

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Eight months of unmitigated horror in Gaza demonstrates the absolute moral degradation of Israel, and the unparalleled moral failure of the west.

It’s eight months since Hamas and other militants broke out of the “open-air prison” of the Gaza Strip, where they, and the entire Palestinian population of 2.3 million people, had been subjected to a land, sea and air blockade for 16 years, and embarked on a brief but deadly killing spree in southern Israel, killing 1,068 Israelis (695 civilians and 373 members of the military and the police), as well as 71 foreign nationals, and kidnapping around 235 others, around half of whom were Israeli.

In response, as happened on numerous previous occasions when Israel was attacked by Palestinian military forces resisting the occupation of their land, Israel began carpet bombing the Gaza Strip, destroying key infrastructure, levelling apartment blocks with disproportionately heavy-duty bombs provided mainly by the US and Germany, and killing vast numbers of civilians.

In 2014, when Israel undertook the most savage of its many previous attacks on the Gaza Strip, a seven-week campaign killed over 2,300 Palestinians, wounded nearly 11,000 (including 3,374 children, of whom over 1,000 were permanently disabled), and led to the destruction of 7,000 homes, with an additional 89,000 damaged, before a ceasefire was finally reached.

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Andy Worthington

Investigative journalist, author, campaigner, commentator and public speaker. Recognized as an authority on Guantánamo and the “war on terror.” Co-founder, Close Guantánamo and We Stand With Shaker, singer/songwriter (The Four Fathers).
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