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Numbers Game: How Many Civilians Were Killed in Gaza?

[New Republic] Simona Weinglass - On March 12, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) reported that 926 civilians and 236 fighters were killed in the Gaza fighting. On March 26, the Israel Defense Forces reported 709 Hamas terror operatives dead, along with 295 "uninvolved Palestinians." How is there such a big disparity between the two sets of numbers? Former Israeli intelligence officer Jonathan Dahoah Halevi asserts, "PCHR's list is inaccurate. I get the impression they intentionally tried to inflate the civilian numbers." "Why is Said Siyam" - the de facto defense minister of Hamas - "listed as a civilian?" he asks. "Muhammad Dasouki Dasliye?" Halevi says that Dasliye was a Palestinian Resistance Committee operative and suspect in the terrorist attack against three American security guards in Gaza in October 2003. "Nizar Rayan, he's a civilian?" News reports describe Rayan as a militant cleric who mentored suicide bombers and sent his own son on a suicide mission in 2001, killing two Israelis. Halevi has a list of 171 people the PCHR defines as civilians that he claims he can prove are actually combatants affiliated with Hamas or other terrorist groups. His contention is based on a simple principle: When fighters die, they leave a paper trail. Martyrdom posters, photographs of funerals, articles celebrating heroes' exploits, lists of payments to families - these sources help disprove that a particular fatality was a civilian as opposed to a fighter. As for fatalities among "non-combatant" police officers, Halevi says, type one of the names into a Google search and up pops a web site with photos showing the Gaza cop sporting a martyr's headband and M-16.
2009-05-07 06:00:00
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