Journalists can be very bad at understanding the very news they are reporting. For example, a couple of weeks ago Hezbollah denied firing a missile that killed a dozen children playing soccer. Journalists kept suggesting that perhaps Hezbollah didn’t fire that missile—ignoring our own National Security Council, which stated categorically that Hezbollah did. So why would Hezbollah deny this particular attack? When you realize all the murdered children were Druze (a Muslim sect) instead of Jews, it all makes sense.
This illustrates major failings of the press today—ignoring for now the question of sheer bias. First, journalists are so busy chasing their next story that they aren’t learning enough about their subject matter or background. Second, they don’t stop to mull things over or put pieces together. They hear something, they report it fast, they move on.
When it comes to numbers, journalists are just as bad. They seem to think that once they state a number, their job is done. The following examples demonstrate that nothing could be further from the truth.
“A Third (or Half) the Gazans Who Died Are Children!”
This figure gets reported frequently, implying that Israel must be doing something that selectively kills children.
But a quick look at Gaza’s demographics shows you that fully half of Gaza’s population are children. In 2023 the median age in Gaza was 18. Their population has been booming, making it one of the youngest on earth. As horrific as it is to talk of children dying, Israel is clearly not doing anything that specifically targets children.
There’s more. Hamas is notorious for inducting children into their terrorist armies. (Hezbollah, too.) Hamas regularly enlists children ages 14 and up—even some as young as 12. Rules of warfare dictate that Israel treat them as any other soldier, awful as that may seem. So, many of those kids under 18 who died were full-fledged Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists, not innocent at all.
Child soldiers are nothing new. I recall Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge enlisting kids as young as 9 into their ranks. They turned out to be the most brutal and vicious soldiers of all. Today child soldiers are used in countries like Afghanistan, Yemen, Sudan and Syria. Iran used them extensively in the 1980 Iran-Iraq war, to horrific ends.
Even worse, Hamas introduces children to weapons at a very young age. They use children as young as 9 years old for ancillary operations like running ammunition, or as lookouts. Under all rules of warfare, these kids are also classified as enemy combatants, and are not considered civilians.
“Israel Dropped Thousands of Massive 2,000-Pound Bombs”
It’s true. Yet if you think about it, 1,000 of those 2,000-pound bombs would have been sufficient to kill every man, woman and child in Gaza. Yet, we don’t see 2 million dead. What’s going on behind these numbers that journalists missed?
Israel doesn’t discuss tactics or strategy, but it’s clear they’ve been trying to destroy the underground tunnels. Hamas builds them so incredibly deep that individual “bunker-busting” bombs don’t do the job. So it seems Israel has been dropping several big bombs on the same spot, one after another, hoping to eventually penetrate far enough to disrupt those deep tunnels. Doubtless there were civilians who were unintentionally killed by such bombings, but civilians were not the target at all. (Israel’s brilliant invention of “sponge bombs” are not sufficient on their own to defeat the tunnels.)
450 Miles of Tunnels
Before the war, Israel estimated Hamas had dug 250 miles of tunnels, as deep as 7 stories. During the war, Israel eventually raised its estimates, and U.S. intelligence agencies confirmed, there were about 450 miles of tunnels as deep as 15 stories, with vertical shafts connecting to almost every hospital, school and mosque in Gaza (even to childrens’ bedrooms in private homes). The underground network was electrified, aerated, often tiled luxuriously, with fully functioning kitchens, bathrooms, conference rooms, massive munition stockpiles, sleeping chambers, extensive booby traps, massive iron doors, even garages.
Now consider some numbers. Gaza is about 141 square miles; 450 miles of tunnels gives us a ratio of about 3.2 miles of tunnel per square mile. (I never heard any journalist make even that simple calculation.) Just what does that 3.2 really mean?
For comparison, look at figures for “paved roads” in America. Not tunnels, just regular roads like the street you live on, or the highways you drive. In the USA, 46 states have less than 3.2 miles of paved roads per square mile. In other words, Hamas tunnels are denser than the road system of nearly every state. Of the other four states, our own New Jersey actually is the most paved in the USA, at 4.5 miles of road per square mile.
Think about that as you travel around New Jersey. We can barely afford to re-pave our pothole-ridden streets, but Hamas spent untold billions on elaborate tunnels a dozen stories deep, almost equivalent in scope to New Jersey’s roads. Imagine how much infrastructure potential Hamas soaked up, crippling Gaza, by building those tunnels.
The immense density of that tunnel network is undoubtedly a major obstacle to Israel’s ability to destroy Hamas. Knowing about that vast tunnel network changes our understanding of many news events of these past 10 months of war.
For example: Israel’s initial war plans were apparently to move Gaza’s civilians south, fight Hamas in the north, then move Gazans north and fight Hamas in the south—which would have greatly minimized civilian casualties. But as soon as Israel cleared Hamas out of the north, terrorists slipped back—most likely through hard-to-find tunnels. So Israel could not move Gazan civilians back north. Or, think of Al-Shifa hospital, which Israel cleared—and then Hamas somehow slipped back in, requiring successive clearing operations. Tunnels could explain how Hamas slipped back in. Don’t forget Israel’s difficulty controlling the Rafah border, which was riddled by tunnels, running deep into Egypt, that Hamas used to re-arm itself.
Hamas’ Casualty Figures vs. Israel’s
Readers certainly know that figures we hear like “20,000 Gazans killed” come from Hamas, not a trustworthy source—and those numbers do not distinguish terrorists from civilians. The concurrent figures from Israel saying, “We killed 8,000 Hamas terrorists,” are rarely reported in tandem. Hamas produces their figures frequently, and the press repeats them like clockwork, but Israel’s figures come out less frequently, so they are reported less often. That results in a distorted perspective.
Hamas’ figures might have been accurate extremely early in the war (when casualties were reported by name and I.D.) but that quickly deteriorated as conditions in Gaza deteriorated. The press then began reporting numbers they could not confirm, and of unknown accuracy. Israel’s numbers, based on drone footage and infrared heat signatures they use in almost every operation, are probably a good deal more precise.
The fact that Israel also periodically reevaluates its information and sometimes adjusts numbers downward, is also lost on journalists, but is an indicator of Israel’s honesty with its numbers.
When the Numbers Stopped Climbing
As Israel zeroed in on Hamas strongholds, and gained a foothold in the vast underground system, consequently its methods for fighting Hamas changed, and collateral civilian deaths stopped climbing. I recall that it took a very long time for the number to inch up from 37,000 to 38,000. Yet, journalists were oblivious to it all, and continued to report “37,000” daily in harsh criticism of Israel. The pitch of anti-Israel rhetoric even seemed to rise. (It resembled the way we Americans sense inflation by looking at high grocery prices, without noticing that the 8-9% inflation rate dropped to about 3%—we just notice high prices that persist from two years prior.)
So How Good or Bad Were The Casualty Numbers?
Putting Hamas’ and Israel’s numbers together, however imprecise a combination that might be, gets you a casualty ratio, civilian to terrorists, of roughly 1.5 to 1. Is that good or bad? Well, we can compare that ratio to other wars. In Iraq and Afghanistan, where the U.S. faced an enemy who also used some civilian cover in their warfare, although not nearly as extensively as Hamas, the casualty ratio of civilians to fighters was roughly 2.5 to 1. So Israel seems to be doing better in Gaza than the U.S. did in Afghanistan and Iraq.
But most telling, in 2022 a United Nations study of current wars worldwide reported that the typical ratio was approximately 9 to 1. (U.N. sc/14904) That is dramatically different. In other words, on average, nine civilians died in wars for every one soldier killed. In Gaza, that number was considerably less, at 1.5. Keeping in mind that no other terrorist or guerrilla group has ever hidden behind and under civilians the way Hamas does, one can only conclude that Israel has been making herculean efforts to keep civilian casualties low. And doing so very successfully. Quite the opposite of the general wisdom expressed by so many journalists. To put it another way, 125,000 Gazans are alive today because Israel pursued this war in a far more careful manner than most other armies.
The Ridiculous Concept Of Proportionality
More than a few journalists comment that Hamas killed 1,200 Israelis, then Israel killed 38,000 Gazans … so proportionality has been lost! The absurdity of this thinking can be seen in the following comparison. When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, about 7,000 Poles were killed. When the Allied powers responded (World War II) far more than 40 million civilians died. Yet no one is so foolish as to question WWII’s proportionality. Once a war is justified, particularly after a horrific, barbaric, sex-suffused murder spree like October 7, peacetime concepts like proportionality do not apply.
Fewer Truckloads of
Food Are Entering Gaza
Before October 7, about 300 trucks entered Gaza daily. During the bitterest part of the war, that number dropped to nearly zero. Israel was severely criticized. But for comparison, the USA never supplied food to cities it was besieging, e.g., Mogadishu (1993), Kinduz (2001) Fallujah (2004) and Basrah (2007). Could you imagine the U.S. sending food to Berlin in 1945?
After a very rocky start, Israel began sending about 150 truckloads of food and medicine per day into Gaza. Yet, many journalists compare 300 to 150, and demonize Israel for sending in “only half” of what Gaza needs.
That criticism showed a terrible lack of thought. Before the war, those 300 trucks brought in a huge amount of material other than food. Building materials. Concrete. Beams. Studs. Pipes. Wiring. Tools. Books. Cars. Appliances. Toys. Clothes. Fuel. And yes, also food and medicine. But now, during the war, those 150 trucks daily bring in only essential food and medicine. Israel is delivering what Gazans need. Problems of distribution, or Hamas stealing food, are issues Israel cannot deal with—admit it or not, Israel is not in full control of Gaza.
How many Americans did Hamas kill on October 7? Hamas killed 32 Americans. I bet you never heard that number from a major news outlet. Ask yourself why.
How many American hostages are in Gaza? And I’ll bet you never heard that number in regular news, either. The answer is eight, of whom three are dead.
I well remember 1980 when Walter Cronkite signed off the evening news with a daily reminder “and that’s the news [today], the [n]th day of the hostages in Iran.” He did that 444 times. I remember nonstop coverage of hostages such as Terry Anderson (1985) or Brittney Griner (2022). True, not all hostages become household names—but eight American hostages who are ignored, amid the most intensively examined war of recent memory, is a shocking oversight by the press. Perhaps they consider dual American-Israeli citizens to be not quite American enough?
Do not forget, that one of those eight American hostages is Bergen County’s own Edan Alexander, a 2022 Tenafly High School graduate, now 20 years old. May he be brought from despair to light and comfort.
The Biggest Numbers
The United States has roughly 33 times the population of Israel. I’m not the first to describe Israel’s trauma by scaling up October 7 to America’s size, or comparing it to 9/11, but it’s worth repeating. I do note that Israel had already experienced the equivalent of hundreds of “9/11’s” over its 75 years fighting terrorists. During the “bus bombing” decade, the Israeli death rate was equivalent to as many as two 9/11’s per week.
These comparisons may be ineffective because even the memory of 9/11’s horror is waning. Almost 40% of us are too young to have any visceral memory of that tragedy. And even 9/11, where 19 terrorists used planes to kill en masse, pales in comparison to October 7, in which 3,000 terrorists hand-slaughtered and desecrated 1,200 people. It’s a whole new level of terrorism.
Scaling up from Israel’s to the USA’s size, try to imagine 99,900 terrorists streaming down from Canada, murdering, raping, dismembering 43,500 Americans attending a Springsteen concert, then taking 8,400 hostages back to Canada into a deep network of tunnels stretching from Montreal to Toronto to Vancouver, with access shafts to virtually every school, hospital and church along the border. Again, that number is 43,500 killed in one day. No nation ever suffered anything even remotely on that scale, per capita.
So, the U.S. invades Canada to destroy the terrorists and to find 2,600 remaining hostages (of the original 8,400)—and the world condemns the USA because Canadians are suffering in the war. The pressure to stop the war is huge, international, threatening the USA’s very existence.
Protesters worldwide shout, “Arizona, Pennsylvania, give it all to Canada!” Other nations start firing rockets at the USA.
As my grandmother (born 1890) used to say, “The oilem is a goilem—The world is a monstrosity.”
(Do you know anyone who seems a bit too critical of Israel, and might benefit from reading this article? Send them a copy!)
Dan Dyckman received his M.D. from Brown University in 1984, followed by an internship year in a Connecticut hospital, a master’s degree in biostatistics from the Harvard School of Public Health in 1987, and a computer science degree from UC Berkeley in 1991. He is now retired.
