Without mentioning that the Hamas terror organization runs the Gazan health ministry, the British, Japanese and American researchers stated that the ministry underreported the mortality rate by 41%, and that women—those under 18 and those 65 or above—made up 59.1% of the deaths for which such biographical information was available.

The article refers to “an exceptionally high mortality rate in the Gaza Strip during the period studied.”

“Our findings validate concerns raised by Palestinian and international organizations, including reputable human rights and humanitarian organizations and U.N. special rapporteurs, about the scale of civilian casualties,” the researchers wrote. “Our study supports the view that the Ministry of Health figures are more likely to underestimate than overestimate mortality.”

“This evidence confirms the need for urgent international interventions to prevent further loss of life and address the long-term health consequences of the Israeli military assault in Gaza,” they add.

In a letter published in the Lancet on June 7 and titled “Gaza deaths and lawful warfare,” Dr. Joel Zivot, an associate professor of anesthesiology and surgery at Emory University, and colleagues in Jerusalem, London and Toronto, wrote that the February article missed the mark and was unfairly biased toward the Jewish state.

The Hamas lies rerguritated by Lancet in above video

“International agreements govern the legality of going to war. Once conflict commences, the conduct of war should conform to International Humanitarian Law and the four Geneva Conventions, both of which foresee civilian deaths due to military necessity,” wrote Zivot, also an adjunct professor of law and liberal arts at the Atlanta academic institution, and colleagues.

“These deaths are tragic, but statistical models cannot comfort the dead,” they wrote.

Jamaluddine and her co-authors “frame their study as a war crime investigation against the Israeli military,” the scholars wrote. “After multiplying the recorded deaths by up to threefold, the authors call for unspecified interventions to prevent further loss of life. The authors conclude that the death rate was excessive and much higher than previously observed, and that the pattern of death, especially among women and children, was incompatible with lawful war.”

Zivot and his co-authors wrote that “justice and science demand impartial investigation, but this study shows evidence of bias.”

If Israel killed civilians indiscriminately, “age and sex ratios would be flat,” they wrote. “The pattern of age-specific deaths they show for males aged 15-29 years and 30-44 years is roughly three times higher than other age groups, an excess that the authors characterise as a moderate peak.”

A pattern in which the Israel Defense Forces targets combatants and civilians who die due to being at risk amid urban warfare is likelier than Israel killing women and children indiscriminately and putting men from 15 to 44 at high risk, Zivot and colleagues wrote.

“Moreover, death rates over age 60 years are roughly four times as high for males and three times as high for females than at age 0-14 years,” they wrote, which likely reflects “age-related conditions, not combat trauma.”

“The biggest flaw here is that death rates do not indicate whether a war is lawful. The fact that traumatic death was a consequence of an urban war prepared for and launched by Hamas is not mentioned,” Zivot and his co-authors write. “No claims of indiscriminate killing can be made without analyzing each battle. When the shooting stops, the impartiality of the law of armed conflict will help sort through the aftermath for both sides of this tragic conflict.”

Zivot told JNS that the practice of medicine “has always been an arm of state power, and the use of power to advance a political agenda that departs from bioethics is the end of medical professionalism.”

“Now, more than ever, we must strive to keep the apolitical nature of medical practice at the forefront of our actions,” he told JNS.

Zivot cited the early 19th-century Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz, who referred to the “fog of war.”

“This occurs because of incomplete information, unpredictable enemy actions and the inherent chaos of combat. The fog makes it difficult for commanders to make informed decisions under pressure,” Zivot told JNS. “By failing to make mention of Hamas—an essential party in this conflict—rather than piercing the fog, the authors have produced more fog by penning a paper rife with anti-Israel opinion.”

“The real problem,” Zivot told JNS, is that “although the paper purports to be a precise accounting of a death rate, the supplied data, particularly a graph within the paper, is missing details.”

“The authors present arguments purporting to be quantitative, but due to the use of estimations, they are ultimately qualitative,” he stated. “More importantly, the rate of who, how and when death occurs must be known for the authors to use the phrase ‘exceptionally high mortality rate.’”

Zivot told JNS that the “math is intentionally confusing to cover the partiality of the authors.”

“This is classic data torturing,” he said. “If you torture your data long enough, it will tell you whatever you want to hear.”