Editor:
Thadeus Greenson chose propaganda over accurate information in his attempt to explain the background for the (silly) class action lawsuit (“Group Brings Class Action Suit Against Huffman,” Dec. 26).
Space limitations will not allow me to address the U.N. Commission’s allegations as well as the ICC “investigation” which are not what they seem, but I will address the absurd 45,000 number.
Figures from the Gaza Ministry of Health and the Government Media Office — both Hamas-run institutions — have provided a focus for global horror, providing metrics that have been relied on almost universally by international media and NGOs, reporting them as verified facts without any disclaimers that a party to the conflict provided them. Nor have they acknowledged the near impossibility of providing precise real-time fatality counts under wartime conditions.
I refer Greeson and readers to the following organizations as examples demonstrating proof of the falsity of these claims.
“Questionable Counting: Analysing the Death Toll from the Hamas-Run Ministry of Health in Gaza” by the Henry Jackson Society finds “distortion of statistics, misreporting of natural deaths, deaths from before the war started and a high likelihood of combatant deaths being included on the list.”
“How Hamas Manipulates Gaza Fatality Numbers” by The Washington Institute for Nearest Policy also notes the general pattern of statistics showing an improbably low proportion of deaths among males. Hamas’s Gaza Health Ministry “is particularly active in pushing the narrative that a large majority of deaths are women and children.” None of the analysis presented diminishes the scale of the human tragedy in Gaza since Hamas sparked the war with Israel in October of 2023. However, Hamas endangers the lives of the people of Gaza by embedding itself in civilian areas and then purposely fails to distinguish between civilians and combatants as it seeks to obscure its military losses and magnify civilian deaths. Its use of these human shields presents an advantage on the battlefield and to manipulate public opinion.
Readers will find further details in these reports.
Nan Abrams, Eureka
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This article appears in ‘A Big Family’.
Letter to the Editor:
The heading of Nan Abrams letter (NCJ Jan. 16, 2025, ’Propaganda’) should more accurately be ‘Hasbara,’ the Hebrew word used by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) for their counter-intelligence propaganda. I say this because the two sources used—the Henry Jackson Society (HJS) and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP)—are ardent anti-Islamists and supporters of Israel who parrot the Anti-Palestinian Racism of the IDF.
According to Wikipedia, HJS “Co-founder Matthew Jamison,.. wrote in 2017 that he was ashamed of his involvement, having never imagined the Henry Jackson Society ‘would become a far-right, deeply anti-Muslim racist … propaganda outfit to smear other cultures, religions and ethnic groups’”.[63]
Also, according to Wikipedia “WINEP was established in 1985 with the support of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).…[5] John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt described WINEP as ‘part of the core’ of the Israel lobby in the United States.[6″
The premise of the articles referred to—that so many “fighting-aged” Palestinian men were killed it justifies a postmortem determination that they were all Hamas fighters—is being used to dilute the reality that in Gaza Israel has massacred about 50,000 (identified) Palestinians with thousands more decomposing in buildings destroyed with U.S. bombs from U.S. F15s flown by Israeli Military. The reality of this Genocide has been confirmed both by the January, 2025 ruling by the International Court of Justice against the State of Israel; and by the November, 2024 International Criminal Court issuance of arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant because of the War Crimes they committed carrying out this Genocide.
The live-streaming of the U.S.-Israeli Axis of Genocide’s killing of Palestinians in Gaza, and now The West Bank, prompts international outrage and opposition. Local opposition began with the Student Sit-In at Cal Poly Humboldt—home of the “Boinking Waterbottle”–and continued with weekly pro-Palestine/anti-genocide rallies at the Court House in Eureka. Last week on January 17 about 30 people rallied at Rep. Huffman’s Office in Eureka and presented a letter with 224 signatures opposing the Genocide and supporting a Ceasefire.
Prior to October 7, 2023 IDF Hasbara propagandists lied to hide the truth about Apartheid Israel and its 76 year Occupation of Palestine. Today they are lying to minimize and deny the extent of its Genocide, the depravity of the Zionists War Crimes. We must not, will not, let them get away with it.