Statistics have been used to devastating effect since the outbreak of the October 7 war.
From Hamas-curated death tolls reported in the Gaza Strip to the disputes over the number of aid trucks entering the Strip, the spread of misleading or outright false data has done considerable harm to Israel’s reputation.
The latest example of such stats being weaponized to smear Israel comes in the form of an op-ed by Alan J Kuperman, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, whose research reportedly focuses on the causes and preventions of genocide.
Unfortunately, Kuperman’s expertise in the crime of genocide hasn’t stopped him from fudging his calculations to supposedly make the case for the greatest and most persistent anti-Israel libel in existence: that it is committing genocide against the Palestinians.
In ‘Civilian deaths in Gaza rival those of Darfur – which the US called a “genocide”,’ the academic states the “death rate in Gaza has equaled or exceeded that in three other recent cases that US presidents did call ‘genocide’.”
Incorrect figures, faulty calculations, relying on Hamas statistics, & the hideous comparison of Israel to Darfur – there are almost too many problems to list with Alan Kuperman’s @guardian piece.
Lucky it was filed in the op-ed section because the article is a work of fiction.… pic.twitter.com/arFcVqll0J
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) April 17, 2024
Comparing the war in Gaza to the outbreak of the still-ongoing Darfur war in 2003, Kuperman writes that from “late 2003 to early 2004” up to 10,000 civilians were killed per month, in addition to the displacement of 2 million civilians.
He goes on to compare this to Gaza, claiming that Israel retaliated to the October 7 Hamas massacre “by attacking Gaza so indiscriminately that nearly 20,000 Palestinians, mainly civilians, were killed during the first two months alone.”
“In January, a US official confirmed that ‘more than 25,000 civilians have been killed’. Gaza officials now say the toll exceeds 33,000 people. Netanyahu himself has conceded 28,000 deaths,” he adds.
Kuperman argues these figures demonstrate that Israel’s “killing rate of civilians in Gaza is roughly equivalent to that in Darfur and higher than in the other two recent cases, all of which our government labeled ‘genocide’.”
A Lesson in Skewing Stats
First, the headline of Kuperman’s piece claims “civilian deaths in Gaza rival those in Darfur,” which misleadingly implies there has been an equivalent death toll. But in the piece, Kuperman fails to state the overall number of civilian deaths in Darfur, instead referring to the average number of people who died during an undefined period from the start of the Darfur conflict.
He states that the Gaza death toll reached 33,000 in the six months since the war began (an average of 5,500 per month). However, he then claims that the “killing rate of civilians” matches that of Darfur, where 10,000 were killed from “late 2003 to early 2004.” Misleadingly, he is actually comparing the first two months of the October 7 war, during which 20,000 people in Gaza were killed. Of these, 7,000 were confirmed as Hamas terrorists, resulting in a civilian death count of 13,000.
Additionally, Kuperman does not provide the metrics necessary for a thorough comparison. We do not know the exact timeframe of the deaths in Darfur, nor the population sizes of Gaza and Darfur at the time.
In 2003, Darfur’s population was 6 million, three times larger than Gaza’s 2 million. Furthermore, no information is given about the geographical landscapes of the conflicts. Israel is fighting terrorists in Gaza, a densely-populated enclave of 141 square miles, while Darfur consists of rolling plains stretching over 170,000 square miles.
Interestingly, if one applied Kuperman’s “killing rate of civilians” calculation to support a claim of genocide, it would reveal that the October 7 massacre, which resulted in 1,200 victims slaughtered over 12 hours—or a rate of 100 people per hour—has the highest death rate of all.
Kuperman closes the piece with an appeal for people to consider the “facts” before defending Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.
What a shame he didn’t take his own sage advice to heart before rushing out such a misleading article.
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