Thanks Andrew. As you say this was a particularly dumbass attempt of the Guardian to justify the genocide blood libel. I hope that you coming out so quickly with this rebuttal will help keep a lid on this lie.
What is interesting is how systematically the Islamists work to discredit every plank of Israeli justification for their actions - and how susceptible the public is to beleive these false claims. That single UN report saying ‘no evidence of food truck looting’ gave Jew haters licence to dismiss the starvation defence. This pseudo analysis will achieve the same with the genocide defense. It does partly explain why Israelis have just lost all interest in explaining themselves.
This is a really good point Andrew. I really think more needs to be done to study the NGO subversion. The public have some natural cynicism of the UN given how many of their bodies are now governed by non-democratic states with horrendous human rights records, and that the block voting problem is well understood. But MSF, the Red Cross etc are considered to be saintly organisations and people really struggle to understand how these orgs could be part of the problem. In the UK, ~50–60% report high trust in charities year after year; globally, NGOs remain among the more trusted institutions in Edelman’s 2025 survey. MSF reports ~98% private funding suggesting claiming independence from political agendas. People just cannot believe why or how these NGOs could have become so subverted, and our experience of people that work for NGOs are that they are usually kind, driven, perhaps forgivably virtue signalling but taking real risks for humanity. I think it has just become a hard won norm to trust NGOs and this needs to be addressed.
Are you familiar with anyone doing this work? The Durban approach would be a great first chapter in this analysis as the watershed for adversarial, lawfare‑style campaigning. But it has got much more sophisticated since then.
UN self-reporting finding "no evidence of food truck looting". Yeah, see also "no evidence of Hamas infiltration of UNRWA being a problem", Special Rapporteur for the Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese's history of antisemitism and accepting remuneration far beyond reasonable expenses from Hamas-linked organization not being enough to prevent her from being reappointed for a second term, etc.
It just beggars belief that UN self-reporting is taken seriously, especially when they have territory of their own to protect, like oversight on the distribution of humanitarian aid. Now we have US Senator Corey Booker advocating for shutting down the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and going back to the corrupt system that saw Hamas being able to maintain a vital revenue stream, courtesy of the taxpayers of the "international community".
Thank you, Andrew. Your efforts to shed light on so much darkness are so appreciated. It is crazy that ANY numbers from a designated terrorist organization are accepted as fact, but even crazier is that no one ever asks why, in 2 years, no one has died of natural causes, terminal illness, or old age, and no one has been killed by Hamas, when Hamas murders Palestinians every day.
People believe these statistics because they want them to be true. That way, they can say “See? Those evil Jews are every bit the bloodthirsty, soulless, depraved killers we told you they were.”
Yes, confirmation bias feels good; while wrestling with the truth does not. Need people to have a spine and work to understand uncomfortable information. Commit to uncovering and understanding the truth, and you will feel strong over time. Remember that "... inquiring minds want to know."
A harsh last sentence: you may draw your own conclusion. Antisemitism has always been under the surface in the Western world and breaks through now this war gives an excuse.
"The problem is not that casualty monitors and journalists care about civilians. The problem is that they are building activist pipelines and selling the outputs as settled science, and the global media is happy to carry the banner. Israel pays the reputational price for the methodological shortcuts of others. If the work cannot survive a real methods audit, it should not be driving the world’s moral verdicts.
The bigger question is why this garbage research is so readily accepted as fact. You may draw your own conclusions."
If the "bigger question" is directed towards the political classes and the broader public who readily accepting dubious research, well, the philosopher Eve Garrard answered that question in 2013 and again in the wake of Hamas's October 7/23 attack online at Fathom Journal:
If it's about the "opinion-forming" classes who should know better than to accept garbage research as prima facie evidence, it's because journalism and academic rigor have given way to activism. NGOs are activist by nature, so they may have become corrupted by such considerations as what brings in donations, as well as being taken over by individuals with their own agendas.
The blood libels are accepted because the entire left which includes the mainstream media and most Western governments has fully absorbed the falsehood that Israel is a colonial oppressor. But that is only one part of the equation. Even if Israel were a colonial oppressor it would still be the job of media to report the news accurately. But they do not and they know they do not. The real scandal is that "journalist" who believe Israel is a colonial oppressor also believe their job is to convince people that Israel should be destroyed even when that means printing agitprop.
One has to wonder two things: first, how/why did the editors sign off on this piece (I suppose Andrew answered that - it's activism, not scholarship/ethical journalism). Second, as an online-only media outlet, it's not a leap to assume they knew clicks/traffic would skyrocket once they published this specific article. They may be activists, but they're also running a business and they need to find ways to stay relevant.
Fascinating article, pseudo academia, the amount of time these pseud activists spend stewing these numbers is staggering. Durban approach, explains it well.
But in my view, when any news involves Israel, most of the western media looks for any excuse to make Israel the culprit. I am an Indian and always was and will be supportive of the state of Israel. They like us, are on the frontline against radical Islam.
Yes they make mistakes. Yes Netanyahu is prolonging this war somewhat to protect his backside. Yes the images of children suffering are horrible.
But Gaza is hardly the only place in the world where horrific violence on civilians is currently on going. Sudan, Darfur, Yemen, Rohingya are also experiencing the same.
The casualty rate of civilians in the war on terror (Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya) was also extremely high, and lets not forget ISIS and the Syrian Civil War, but the word "genocide" wasn't used in any of these cases.
Why now? Why Israel?
What explains the magnifying glass on Israel?: To me it's Anti Semitism that is always there beneath the surface.
The UN and Hamas (essentially the same thing) are known and deliberate liars. The IDF is trustworthy and honest. It will not make a statement without evidence and if it makes an error it's not deliberate. If the IDF says it then it is reliable.
Thanks Andrew. As you say this was a particularly dumbass attempt of the Guardian to justify the genocide blood libel. I hope that you coming out so quickly with this rebuttal will help keep a lid on this lie.
What is interesting is how systematically the Islamists work to discredit every plank of Israeli justification for their actions - and how susceptible the public is to beleive these false claims. That single UN report saying ‘no evidence of food truck looting’ gave Jew haters licence to dismiss the starvation defence. This pseudo analysis will achieve the same with the genocide defense. It does partly explain why Israelis have just lost all interest in explaining themselves.
It’s the Durban approach, now over 20 years old.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13537121.2012.689518
This is a really good point Andrew. I really think more needs to be done to study the NGO subversion. The public have some natural cynicism of the UN given how many of their bodies are now governed by non-democratic states with horrendous human rights records, and that the block voting problem is well understood. But MSF, the Red Cross etc are considered to be saintly organisations and people really struggle to understand how these orgs could be part of the problem. In the UK, ~50–60% report high trust in charities year after year; globally, NGOs remain among the more trusted institutions in Edelman’s 2025 survey. MSF reports ~98% private funding suggesting claiming independence from political agendas. People just cannot believe why or how these NGOs could have become so subverted, and our experience of people that work for NGOs are that they are usually kind, driven, perhaps forgivably virtue signalling but taking real risks for humanity. I think it has just become a hard won norm to trust NGOs and this needs to be addressed.
Are you familiar with anyone doing this work? The Durban approach would be a great first chapter in this analysis as the watershed for adversarial, lawfare‑style campaigning. But it has got much more sophisticated since then.
UN self-reporting finding "no evidence of food truck looting". Yeah, see also "no evidence of Hamas infiltration of UNRWA being a problem", Special Rapporteur for the Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese's history of antisemitism and accepting remuneration far beyond reasonable expenses from Hamas-linked organization not being enough to prevent her from being reappointed for a second term, etc.
It just beggars belief that UN self-reporting is taken seriously, especially when they have territory of their own to protect, like oversight on the distribution of humanitarian aid. Now we have US Senator Corey Booker advocating for shutting down the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and going back to the corrupt system that saw Hamas being able to maintain a vital revenue stream, courtesy of the taxpayers of the "international community".
Thank you, Andrew. Your efforts to shed light on so much darkness are so appreciated. It is crazy that ANY numbers from a designated terrorist organization are accepted as fact, but even crazier is that no one ever asks why, in 2 years, no one has died of natural causes, terminal illness, or old age, and no one has been killed by Hamas, when Hamas murders Palestinians every day.
People believe these statistics because they want them to be true. That way, they can say “See? Those evil Jews are every bit the bloodthirsty, soulless, depraved killers we told you they were.”
Yes, confirmation bias feels good; while wrestling with the truth does not. Need people to have a spine and work to understand uncomfortable information. Commit to uncovering and understanding the truth, and you will feel strong over time. Remember that "... inquiring minds want to know."
A harsh last sentence: you may draw your own conclusion. Antisemitism has always been under the surface in the Western world and breaks through now this war gives an excuse.
Great article. Here's an article from The Council on Foreign Relations: Global Conflict Tracker. https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/power-struggle-sudan Dated 4/15/2025
14,000,000 Sudanese displaced in Sudan
150,000 Sudanese civilians killed
30,000,000 in need of humanitarian assistance.
Did not bother with mainstream media; don't expect them to cover this.
Thank you, sir. you are truly doing the lords work with your articles.
"The problem is not that casualty monitors and journalists care about civilians. The problem is that they are building activist pipelines and selling the outputs as settled science, and the global media is happy to carry the banner. Israel pays the reputational price for the methodological shortcuts of others. If the work cannot survive a real methods audit, it should not be driving the world’s moral verdicts.
The bigger question is why this garbage research is so readily accepted as fact. You may draw your own conclusions."
If the "bigger question" is directed towards the political classes and the broader public who readily accepting dubious research, well, the philosopher Eve Garrard answered that question in 2013 and again in the wake of Hamas's October 7/23 attack online at Fathom Journal:
https://fathomjournal.org/eat-their-skulls-the-pleasures-of-antisemitism-updated-after-7-october/
If it's about the "opinion-forming" classes who should know better than to accept garbage research as prima facie evidence, it's because journalism and academic rigor have given way to activism. NGOs are activist by nature, so they may have become corrupted by such considerations as what brings in donations, as well as being taken over by individuals with their own agendas.
That is a brilliant article. Depressingly true.
The blood libels are accepted because the entire left which includes the mainstream media and most Western governments has fully absorbed the falsehood that Israel is a colonial oppressor. But that is only one part of the equation. Even if Israel were a colonial oppressor it would still be the job of media to report the news accurately. But they do not and they know they do not. The real scandal is that "journalist" who believe Israel is a colonial oppressor also believe their job is to convince people that Israel should be destroyed even when that means printing agitprop.
But the babies! 69,000 babies killed. Today. The media would take that without question. Because. Israel.
One has to wonder two things: first, how/why did the editors sign off on this piece (I suppose Andrew answered that - it's activism, not scholarship/ethical journalism). Second, as an online-only media outlet, it's not a leap to assume they knew clicks/traffic would skyrocket once they published this specific article. They may be activists, but they're also running a business and they need to find ways to stay relevant.
Fascinating article, pseudo academia, the amount of time these pseud activists spend stewing these numbers is staggering. Durban approach, explains it well.
Really well explained.
But in my view, when any news involves Israel, most of the western media looks for any excuse to make Israel the culprit. I am an Indian and always was and will be supportive of the state of Israel. They like us, are on the frontline against radical Islam.
Yes they make mistakes. Yes Netanyahu is prolonging this war somewhat to protect his backside. Yes the images of children suffering are horrible.
But Gaza is hardly the only place in the world where horrific violence on civilians is currently on going. Sudan, Darfur, Yemen, Rohingya are also experiencing the same.
The casualty rate of civilians in the war on terror (Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya) was also extremely high, and lets not forget ISIS and the Syrian Civil War, but the word "genocide" wasn't used in any of these cases.
Why now? Why Israel?
What explains the magnifying glass on Israel?: To me it's Anti Semitism that is always there beneath the surface.
I so appreciate your hard work to reinforce to all of us who are actually paying attention what’s real, what’s true. 💜
Fantastic article.
You say that it’s basically impossible to find accurate numbers, but any idea where one would look to find the most realistic guesses?
With the IDF.
As much as I agree with this, this rarely works in an argument.
Any sources that might be considered more neutral 3rd parties?
No
There are only three authorities in Gaza at the moment: Hamas, the IDF & the UN.
No-one else is in a position to assess numbers or present data in an objective way.
That’s why it’s so hard to know what is going on.
The UN and Hamas (essentially the same thing) are known and deliberate liars. The IDF is trustworthy and honest. It will not make a statement without evidence and if it makes an error it's not deliberate. If the IDF says it then it is reliable.