Nov. 26, 2023
Dear Editor,The New York Times has been running a series of columns uncritically quoting Hamas-provided body counts. In all previous wars, Hamas-issued body counts were found to be totally bogus. Not only were the numbers dramatically lower, the identities of the victims were fudged so that while the majority of the deaths were claimed to be women and children, they were in fact Hamas fighters. Hamas also refused to take responsibility for deaths from misfired rockets that fell within Gaza blaming those causalities on Israel. The IDF claims that 25% of all rockets misfired and fell into Gaza. Considering its population density, they would have resulted in casualties. Obviously, the death count figures were hugely inflated to turn public opinion against Israel.One would think that the media would learn something from this. Sadly it didn’t The same situation exists today confirmed by the New York Times, “Gaza Civilians, Under Israeli Barrage, Are Being Killed at Historic Pace”, Nov. 25, 2023 that failed to question the veracity of Hamas body counts and in fact, constructed an entire column based on these counts. Close to seven weeks after the attack on Israel, Israel has not been able to finalize its casualty figures and nobody is bombing the body counters. How could the Gaza Medical Services provide anywhere near accurate counts when very few buildings have been excavated to check for human remains, and when those doing the checking are hiding in their tunnels? Either the N.Y. Times editors are too lazy to do the fact checking, or they want the casualty numbers to be high. Which is it? Larry Shapiro
