[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1000-E1001]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




           EXPOSING THE GAZA DEATH UNDERCOUNT, BY RALPH NADER

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. JOHN B. LARSON

                             of connecticut

                    in the house of representatives

                        Tuesday, October 1, 2024

  Mr. LARSON of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record the 
following article published in the August/September issue of the 
Capitol Hill Citizen by my constituent, Ralph Nader. I do not endorse 
everything put forward in the article; however, I believe it is 
important that it be included as a matter of free speech and 
discussion.

       One way that the annihilator--Israeli Prime Minister 
     Benjamin Netanyahu--flipped off the meek urgings of President 
     Joe Biden and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to 
     ``minimize civilian casualties'' in Gaza was to say--Don't 
     lecture me--look at what you did to civilians in Hiroshima (1 
     40,000 dead), Nagasaki (70,000 dead) and Dresden (25,000 
     dead) to crush your enemies. That's 235,000 dead in two 
     nations with a population at the time of 150 million.
       In Gaza, a tiny enclave of 2.3 million long besieged and 
     impoverished people, nearly half of them children, the 
     Israeli regime, a military nuclear superpower, backed 
     unconditionally by the United States government and its 
     demanding lobbies, has far exceeded that three city 
     devastation.
       The following probative evidence and professional 
     assessments point to a death toll of over 300,000 
     Palestinians in Gaza with that number at least doubling by 
     end of the year.
       Why then is the reviled Hamas' official death count now at 
     about 41,000, accepted by the mass media and most 
     governments, regardless of their view for or against the 
     genocide in Gaza?
       Hamas is vested in an undercount to temper accusations by 
     their own people that it has not protected them. (Hamas badly 
     underestimated the total savagery of the Israeli response to 
     its October 7 attack through a mysteriously collapsed 
     multitiered Israeli border security complex.) The Israeli 
     government also prefers an undercount to temper the rising 
     level of international condemnation and boycotts.
       As a result, the slow rise in the official fatality and 
     injury undercount leaves a widening gap each day compared to 
     the actual toll of death and morbidity on the ground. 
     Normally, there would be an ongoing ``gold standard'' 
     epidemiological estimate.
       But war epidemiology has historically been understudied. A 
     2015 article in the journal Epidemiology found that for the 
     epidemiology of severe acute respiratory syndrome there had 
     been nearly 2.5 academic articles per death, while for the 
     epidemiology of wars and armed conflict there are only 
     0.00005 articles per death.
       Gaza presents additional obstacles. For years, Netanyahu 
     has barred entry by journalists, including Israelis, from 
     free and independent reporting there.
       In early July 2024, more than 70 media and civil society 
     organizations signed an open letter urging Israel to give 
     journalists independent access to Gaza.
       The organizations--which include the Associated Press, 
     Agence France-Presse, BBC, CNN, The Guardian, the New York 
     Times, and the Washinglon Post--said that no independent 
     media access to Gaza has been permitted since the start of 
     the war.
       ``This effective ban on foreign reporting has placed an 
     impossible and unreasonable burden on local reporters to 
     document a war through which they are living,'' they wrote.
       ``More than 100 journalists have been killed since the 
     start of the war and those who remain are working in 
     conditions of extreme deprivation. The result is that 
     information from Gaza is becoming harder and harder to obtain 
     and that the reporting which does get through is subject to 
     repeated questions over its veracity.''
       Similarly, international humanitarian analysts have been 
     excluded.
       ``Aid groups have been pointing to Israel restricting the 
     flow of assistance into the territory as a major driver of 
     the crisis,'' Tharoor repeated. ``Some prominent Israeli

[[Page E1001]]

     officials openly champion stymying these transfers of aid.''
       Martin Griffiths, the United Nations lead humanitarian 
     officer said weeks ago that ``life is draining out of Gaza at 
     terrifying speed.''
       ``U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres warned of an 
     `unknown number of people'--believed to be in the tens of 
     thousands--lying under the rubble of buildings brought down 
     by Israeli strikes,'' the Post reported.
       On April 5, 2024, then special envoy for Biden on 
     Humanitarian Affairs, David Satterfield told the American 
     Jewish Committee ``there is an imminent risk of famine for 
     the majority, if not all, the 2.2 million population of 
     Gaza.''
       ``This is not a point in debate. It is an established fact, 
     which the United States, its experts, the international 
     community, its experts assess and believe is real,'' 
     Satterfield said.
       A few days later, USAID administrator Samantha Power agreed 
     that it was ``credible'' to assess that famine was already 
     occurring in Gaza.
       UNICEF, Save the Children, the World Food Program, the 
     International Rescue Committee, the UN High Commissioner for 
     Human Rights, the Palestine Red Crescent Society, and Doctors 
     Without Borders are all relating the same catastrophic 
     conditions getting worse.
       Some of these groups have lost valiant staff to Israeli 
     attacks, including while sheltering in clearly marked UNWRA 
     and Red Crescent buildings and vehicles. Israeli war crime 
     violations of international law are legion, according to 
     experts in the field from many nations.
       These groups have years of experience working in disaster 
     areas around the world and their reputation for reporting 
     conditions is first rate. They know full well that the 
     terrifying amputations and other disabilities and the 
     corrosive PTSD on civilians, especially children, will long 
     continue for those survivors.
       Against this background, the mass media ditto heading the 
     Hamas undercount would have people believe that 98 percent of 
     the Gaza population has survived the Israeli onslaught. This 
     is lethally impossible.
       In July, the prestigious UK medical journal The Lancet put 
     out a study of the Gaza undercount conservatively concluding 
     that ``it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186,000 
     or even more deaths could be attributable to the current 
     conflict in Gaza.''
       Finally, there is eye witness clinical evidence by western 
     physicians, nurses and medical support staff returning from 
     their tours of duty in the remaining badly damaged hospitals. 
     Their accounts offer more probative evidence. In a largely 
     ignored, documented letter to Joe Biden, Dr. Jill Biden and 
     Kamala Harris, dated July 25, 2024, 45 of these doctors 
     recounted their clinical observations.
       Here are a few of them:
       ``I've never seen such horrific injuries, on such a massive 
     scale, with so few resources. Our bombs are cutting down 
     women and children by the thousands. Their mutilated bodies 
     are a monument to cruelty.''--Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, trauma and 
     critical care surgeon.
       ``Gaza was the first time I held a baby's brains in my 
     hand. The first of many.''--Dr. Mark Perlmutter, orthopedic 
     and hand surgeon.
       ``Specifically, every one of us on a daily basis treated 
     preteen children who were shot in the head and chest,'' the 
     doctors wrote in the letter to the Bidens and Harris. ``With 
     only marginal exceptions, everyone in Gaza is sick, injured, 
     or both.''
       ``President and Dr. Biden, we wish you could see the 
     nightmares that plague so many of us since we have returned--
     dreams of children maimed and mutilated by our weapons, and 
     their inconsolable mothers begging us to save them,'' they 
     wrote. ``We wish you could hear the cries and screams our 
     consciences will not let us forget. We cannot believe that 
     anyone would continue arming the country that is deliberately 
     killing these children after seeing what we have seen.''
       ``Israel has targeted our colleagues in Gaza for death, 
     disappearance, and torture,'' the doctors wrote. ``We believe 
     that the death toll from this conflict is many times higher 
     than what is reported by the Gaza Ministry of Health.'' ``We 
     urge you to end this madness now.''
       Ironically, in December 2023, Dr. Jill Biden told spouse 
     Joe Biden: ``Stop it, stop it now, Joe.'' (Source: Joe 
     Biden). The doctors who signed the letter are asking for a 
     personal meeting with the Bidens and Kamala Harris.

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