A Guardian cover story promoted a claim so clearly false that even those of us who are rarely shocked anymore by what’s published at the anti-Zionist project are scratching our heads over the failure of editors to do the most basic fact-checking.
The Aug. 21 report, which is described as a “joint investigation by the Guardian, the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call”, was written by Emma Graham-Harrison, the Guardian’s chief Middle East correspondent, and Yuval Abraham from +972.
The claim in the headline, which was used as the cover story both in the print and online versions, alleges that Israeli data shows that “83% of Gaza war dead are civilians“, which is based on the text in the opening paragraphs:
Figures from a classified Israeli military intelligence database indicate five out of six Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza have been civilians, an extreme rate of slaughter rarely matched in recent decades of warfare.
As of May, 19 months into the war, Israeli intelligence officials listed 8,900 named fighters from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad as dead or “probably dead”
At that time 53,000 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli attacks, according to health authorities in Gaza, a toll that included combatants and civilians. Fighters named in the Israeli military intelligence database accounted for just 17% of the total, which indicates that 83% of the dead were civilians.
That apparent ratio of civilians to combatants among the dead is extremely high for modern warfare, even compared with conflicts notorious for indiscriminate killing, including the Syrian and Sudanese civil wars.
The investigation, replete with charts and other visuals purportedly illustrating that “the apparent ratio of civilians to combatants among the dead” is one of “the worst in modern warfare”, is based on a truly absurd calculation: asserting that the 8,900 listed names of terrorists killed necessarily represent every terrorist death. So, by subtracting 8,900 from the Hamas ministry’s tally in May, which was 53,000, the article insists, we learn that the ratio of civilians killed by Israel is at 83%.
Read the full article at CAMERA UK.