23.01.2025

BBC would rather worry about other things

Arithmetic of genocide

While the official numbers killed in Gaza is certainly an underestimate, the state, aided by the BBC, tries to muddy the waters, writes Ian Spencer

The attempt to normalise mass murder has been a constant feature of the genocide in Gaza. For good reason, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign was due to protest in front of the BBC in London on January 18 because its coverage of the slaughter has been so muted, especially when one compares it with recent coverage of wildfires in Los Angeles.

The Metropolitan police banned the demonstration from going near the BBC, using the pretext of the proximity of a synagogue, which was not even on the route and even though thousands of Jews were on the march, protesting against the slaughter and defiantly asserting that Israel does not speak for them.

A good illustration of the BBC’s perspective is its coverage of the police disruption of the protest: “In total there were 65 arrests for breach of conditions [of the demonstration] - five for public order offences, two for obstructing police, one for support for a proscribed organisation, one for inciting racial hatred, one for common assault, one for assault on an emergency worker and one for sexual assault.”¹

The scene is thereby set for the portrayal of an entirely peaceful protest, forced into a static containment in Whitehall, being portrayed as an aggressive mob. The BBC account goes on to say that, in a statement, the Campaign Against Antisemitism said the marches posed a “threat” to synagogues and that “It is shameful that the Met has refused to act on that threat until this rally, adding that police should finally limit these marches to static protests, as we have been urging for a year.”

Synagogue

That is a year in which hundreds of thousands of people have peacefully marched and never once caused any disruption to a single synagogue or worshipper. Marches in which thousands of Jewish people have condemned Israel’s genocide in Gaza for what it is - Jewish protestors, including the orthodox, who regard the Zionist state as blasphemous, as well as murderous.

The call to suppress, curtail and limit the solidarity demonstrations has been a rightwing refrain since they began. Whether it is Suella Braverman describing them as “hate marches” or commander Adam Slonecki, who led police operations on January 18 and was quoted by the BBC as saying that it was “deeply disappointing to see a deliberate effort, involving organisers of the demonstration, to breach the conditions and attempt to march out of Whitehall”.

Well, that is one view. Here is another, of an eyewitness to events:

No-one “broke through” a police line. Two lines of police stood aside and even drove their vehicles away from blocking the road. They clearly wanted the marchers to proceed. After Trafalgar Square a third line of police and their vehicles did not move aside and Chris Nineham, chief steward, then attempted to affect the laying of flowers in front of the police. The police wanted the marchers to go through their first two lines, so that they could represent them as an unruly rabble set upon breaking though their lines.²

This view is also supported by MPs Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, who were subsequently interviewed about the events by police, under caution. In a post on X, Corbyn and McDonnell disputed that a group had “forced its way through” police lines. Corbyn called for the release of bodycam footage and added:

I was part of a delegation of speakers, who wished to peacefully carry and lay flowers in memory of children in Gaza who had been killed. This was facilitated by police. We did not force our way through. When we reached Trafalgar Square, we informed police that we would go no further, lay down the flowers and disperse.³

Provocation has been a constant feature of the demonstrations. This has included miniscule Zionist counter-demonstrations. Gideon Falter, chief executive of the Campaign Against Antisemitism, tried to fabricate an ‘incident’, in which he posed as an innocent Jewish man trying to cross the road during a Palestine solidarity demonstration, while being filmed by his minders.

On January 18 the police used a heavy-handed form of ‘kettling’ of peaceful marchers protesting against the slaughter of children.⁴ But all the PSC/Stop the War Coalition demonstrations have been a model of disciplined and peaceful protest that has never once risen to the bait of the genocide apologists.

Death toll

All this took place against the background of the ceasefire between Hamas and the Israel Defence Forces, which was agreed days before the demonstration. It has naturally been welcomed by the PSC, but the question is for how long will it last? The far right, which Netanyahu relies on in part for his grasp on power, has made it clear that they want the killing to begin again as soon as the Israeli hostages are released.⁵

Hamas has already released some hostages, many of whom look better nourished than the population of Gaza. But, while Israel has released some of its thousands of Palestinian hostages, it has simultaneously detained more in the West Bank.⁶

It is also notable that BBC journalists have been protesting about the way the Gaza genocide has been covered.⁷ Behind all of this is a dispute about the manner in which the grisly arithmetic of genocide is calculated. It seems increasingly clear that the estimates of the Gaza ministry of health (MoH), often attacked as an exaggeration by Zionist apologists, are, if anything an underestimate.

Up to June 30 last year, the ‘official’ figure by the MoH for those killed since the IDF assault on Gaza was 37,877. But a peer-reviewed study in The Lancet shows their best estimate is 64,260, or about 2.9% of Gaza’s pre-war population, which means that the health ministry has underreported deaths by 41%. The authors of the article, Zeina Jamaluddine, Hanan Abukmail, Sarah Aly, Oona Campbell and Francesco Checchi, are from highly respected academic and medical institutions: The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Nagasaki University, Japan, Cambridge University, and Yale University, USA.⁸

The authors assume that, if the underreporting of 41% continued from July to October 2024, when the MoH recorded deaths reached 41,909, it is plausible that “the true figure now exceeds 70,000”. Of course, we must add that since October the killings have continued unabated for another three months. Indeed, it would seem that IDF attacks on Gaza increased during ceasefire negotiations, with 62 Palestinians being killed in the 24-hour period up to the January 15.

The confidence interval of 95% means that the deaths could be between 55,298 and possibly as high as 78,525. It is important to note that this is by violent death from IDF action alone. It takes no account of all those who have died because of malnutrition, disease and the consequence of the almost total destruction of medical and public health infrastructure.

In July 2024, The Lancet also published an estimate of all deaths, which suggested that up to 186,000 may have been killed by August 2024. This would represent 7.9% of the population of the Gaza Strip. Rasha Khatib, Martin McKee and Salim Yusuf arrived at their figures by extrapolating from the ratios of traumatic to non-traumatic deaths from other comparable conflicts. The short, but important, research report was published as a letter to the prestigious medical journal. The authors of this study were also from highly reputable academic institutions; Birzeit University, Palestine, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and MacMaster University, Canada.⁹

Predictably, this figure was attacked by Zionist apologists, who suggested that the methodology of extrapolating from death ratios is not substantiated and said: “We must depoliticise our dialogue in academic medicine and come together as rational experts evaluating and presenting data that are substantiated in the most objective manner possible.”¹⁰

Whataboutery

The strategy is clear. Under the guise of a spurious appeal to objectivity the aim is to undermine the evidence and then present an argument appealing to whataboutery and the equivalence of Israeli and Palestinian deaths. Ironically, they did so with reference to only two journalist accounts of the death toll and another study from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, which did not support their view.

The most recent study in The Lancet suggests that Khatib et al are a lot closer to the truth than any estimate put forward by the IDF, which has consistently underestimated deaths way below the Gaza MoH. Jamaluddine et al used capture-recapture analysis, drawing on and triangulating data from three sources. These were MoH hospital lists, an MoH survey and social media obituaries. The capture-recapture methodology has been used to successfully calculate death rates in other conflicts.

Compiling accurate data has understandably been hindered by the IDF destruction of hospitals and other public health infrastructure, which led the authors to use their innovative methods. Even so, there are grounds to think that this may lead to underestimation. Missing persons, possibly buried under the rubble, were not included. Estimates of those buried exceed 10,000.

The trauma-only deaths calculated show that 59.1% of those killed were women, children and the elderly. This is highly indicative of the indiscriminate nature of the killing, given that these groups are less likely to be combatants. It was a mortality pattern that was a feature of the Rwandan genocide. By contrast, a mortality pattern featuring men of military age would be strongly suggestive of direct combat fatalities.

Incidentally, the BBC reported the findings in The Lancet, but also included a quote from the Israeli embassy, which predictably said that “any information that derived from Gaza cannot be trusted” and was likely to favour Hamas.¹¹

Trump

Since the ceasefire in Gaza, the killing of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank has continued, often by settlers, acting unchecked by the IDF. On January 22, 10 were killed and dozens wounded in the Jenin refugee camp, as the IDF prevented ambulances from reaching them.¹²

This comes at the same time as one of the first acts of Donald Trump, after his inauguration, was to lift the very limited sanctions against West Bank settlers by the Biden regime. Trump also reinstated sanctions against the International Criminal Court, which had indicted Netanyahu and his former defence minister for “crimes against humanity and war crimes”. A powerful signal, if one were needed, that the Trump administration will have only a tenuous relationship to the ‘rule of law’ and that Israel will be allowed to do as it pleases.

Trump has also lifted restriction of the use of ‘bunker buster’ bombs, the export of which was one of the very few restrictions on Israel by ‘Genocide Joe’.¹³ Trump has also expressed his lack of confidence that the ceasefire will hold - although, of course, he has the power to make it hold, if he chooses. But then, he is a real-estate capitalist and his appraisal of the real-estate potential of a future Gaza is instructive: “Gaza is interesting. It’s a phenomenal location. On the sea. Best weather, you know, everything’s good … some fantastic things could be done with Gaza.”¹⁴

However, according to Trump, Gaza has “got to be rebuilt in a different way”. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that such a “different way” will be without Palestinians. The grim reality of capitalism means that the arithmetic of genocide will be coupled with the arithmetic of real-estate values.