Count out premature victory in Gaza

THE EDITOR, Madam:

One of the selling points of the narrative recently sponsored by the Biden administration, in its effort to bring the conflict in Gaza to what the current Israeli government considers a premature end and victory for Hamas, is that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is not taking care to spare the civilian population. The inference, of course, is genocide.

A recent statistical analysis, however, done by a highly respected US business school professor, suggests that even within the data Hamas is providing about its casualties, military and civilian, something was not right. It suggested the data had been manipulated.

Reading his comments, I drifted back to some of my collegiate maths and realised that I understood his argument very well as likely being an accurate one, though, at the same time, it occurred to me that, given the ordinary person’s typical maths ability, few others would understand it. So, who can you trust? All I can do is testify.

Democrat leader in the US Senate, Chuck Schumer, recently went as far as suggesting that Israel’s Netanyahu be replaced. Many consider such comments as an act of inappropriately meddling in the governmental affairs of another nation, and I agree. But Schumer seemed to have no reticence about doing it, as it seemed to go along with the Biden administration’s storyline of trying to impose a ceasefire on the parties involved. Again, the truth is really in the numbers.

Here, I thought to myself, is another example of how important even simple mathematics can be in our lives, and how it can so easily be abused. If the maths involved doesn’t ‘add up’, to put it simply, then we cannot use it to bolster our opinions.

It would appear Hamas was inflating the number of civilian casualties in order to give Biden a reason to carry out another foreign policy debacle. It would be one that any of Hamas’ fighters would likely be glad to be part of, no doubt, since the alternative is the concrete graveyard they insist Rafah become around them, regardless of how many virgins are waiting in some heavenly ‘somewhere else’.

ED MCCOY

Bokeelia, Florida