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The Truth About Casualties: Comparing Gaza to the Iraq War

An Israeli police officer stands next to the remains of a rocket after rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip towards Israel, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Palestinian Islamist terrorist group Hamas, in Herzliya, Israel May 26 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Nir Elias

Last December, The Wall Street Journal contrasted the number of munitions dropped in the Gaza war with numbers from the US war in Iraq. In the roughly two months that had elapsed since the Oct. 7 massacre, Israel dropped 29,000 weapons in Gaza, the Journal explained, whereas the US military dropped just 3,678 munitions on Iraq from 2004 to 2010. The clear takeaway was that Israel was uniquely trigger-happy.

If history started in 2004, those statistics might faithfully tell the story. But the invasion of Iraq began — and ended — in 2003. That was the year Iraq’s cities fell to US forces, the year the regime was overthrown, and the year Saddam Hussein was captured.

If the Journal were interested in comparing what is comparable, readers would have learned that while Israel dropped 29,000 weapons in two months in 2023, the US in 2003 dropped that same number in half that time.

This example is one of many media manipulations, which have bent and stretched statistics from the Iraq war and others. And it has frequently been on the basis of such tampered evidence that the media has argued Israel’s fight against Hamas dramatically stands out compared to other wars throughout history.

To help make its case that the Gaza war “is different,” for example, The New York Times contrasted casualties over two months of fighting in Gaza to “the entire first year of the invasion of Iraq.”

In fact, the 2003 invasion lasted about one month, during which most of the Iraqi casualties mentioned by the newspaper were killed. (Never mind that in the Gaza war, the Times has also relied on undependable Hamas casualty breakdowns.)

If the Iraq comparison is important enough to cover, then it’s important enough to cover without downplaying the casualty rate in Iraq.

So let’s look at what The New York Times conceals. How different was Gaza than Iraq, really?

Over the 22 days from March 19, 2003, when invasion of Iraq began, and April 9, when the Saddam Hussein regime is understood to have collapsed, the US invasion led to the death of civilians at a higher rate than the best, albeit rough, estimates over that same time span in Gaza.

Our graph plots the number of Iraqi civilian deaths that have been verified by Iraq Body Count alongside estimates based on Hamas figures for total deaths in Gaza. (Hamas updates hide the number of combatants killed.)

We call our highest estimate of civilian casualties the “Hamas extrapolation,” since it takes Hamas’s overall numbers and assumes 80 percent of them are civilians, as a Hamas official cited by Reuters once charged.

Our lowest estimate, the “Israel extrapolation,” assumes 60 percent of Hamas’s stated casualties are civilians, in line with Israeli estimates (but ignoring a lower estimate used by Benjamin Netanyahu). The “Egypt extrapolation” in the middle assumes 70 percent of the deaths were civilians, in line with a projection by Egyptian intelligence officials who said the number falls between the belligerents’ estimates.

And what about the numbers after the first 22 days of fighting in Iraq and Gaza?

For the remainder of the year, the rate of deaths in Iraq fell to a trickle, as might be expected after the fall of the regime. In Gaza, fighting raged on, so the casualty totals quickly surpassed those in Iraq.

Still, the casualty rate in Gaza steadily declined, a fact that seems to have been lost in the media’s coverage of the fighting. The graph below, which also relies on Hamas’ casualty totals, shows how every month that has passed, the rate of casualties fell further below the rate during the invasion of Iraq.

This continuous decline in casualties as Hamas lost ground in Gaza is unsurprising, since Israel’s stated objective is to beat back Hamas and end its control over the territory.

Those who insist Israel’s intent is to destroy the Palestinian people — in other words, those throwing around the “genocide” slur — might have a harder time explaining the decline.

To note that the rates of munitions and casualties during the fight to unseat the Iraqi regime exceeded the rates in Gaza serves as a corrective to media misrepresentations. It doesn’t diminish the real suffering in Gaza, any more than a tallying of Hamas and Hezbollah rockets diminishes the hardship of thousands of Israeli families forced from their homes by those rockets, or the pain of Israelis whose children were murdered or kidnapped during Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre.

If war is hell, then urban war merits a worse description. In Gaza, we have an urban war in which Hamas terrorists dig themselves under the densely packed civilians they rule, a literal inversion of the humane arrangement.

If civilian casualties mean so little to Hamas, of course it refuses to surrender itself and its hostages. And in light of Hamas’s promises to repeat the Oct. 7 slaughter again and again, Israel’s obligation to its citizens is to do everything it reasonably can, politically and certainly militarily, to eliminate the threat.

To understand how the Gaza war is different, the press should start there — and stop manipulating the numbers.

Gilead Ini is a Senior Research Analyst at CAMERA, the foremost media watchdog organization focused on coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The post The Truth About Casualties: Comparing Gaza to the Iraq War first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Egypt Rejects Israeli Opposition Leader’s ‘Egyptian Solution’ for Gaza

Yair Lapid, Israel’s opposition leader, presents his Gaza plan at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, DC, Feb. 25, 2025. Photo: Screenshot

Egypt has rejected any responsibility for governing the Gaza Strip after the Israel-Hamas war, reiterating its opposition to a proposal by Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid, who suggested Cairo take over reconstruction efforts.

“Cairo rejects any proposal to manage the Gaza Strip,” the Saudi television channel Al-Hadath quoted sources as saying. “Gaza will be managed by the Palestinians and in coordination with them. Cairo is committed to rebuilding Gaza without displacement.”

At an event hosted by the Washington, DC-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) think tank on Tuesday, former Israeli Prime Minister Lapid, who currently serves as the leader of the opposition in Israel’s parliament, presented “The Egyptian Solution” as his alternative plan for reconstruction efforts in Gaza after the war, proposing that Egypt take over administration of the enclave for 8-15 years in exchange for the cancellation of its $155 billion external debt.

“Egypt is a key strategic partner and [has been] a reliable ally for almost 50 years,” Lapid said. “A strong, moderate, pragmatic Sunni state, a crucial player in the region.”

According to the Egyptian state news agency MENA, Foreign Ministry spokesman Tamim Khalaf declared that any proposals contradicting Egypt and the Arab world’s established stance on Gaza are “rejected and unacceptable,” asserting that the territory must be under “full Palestinian sovereignty and management.”

Cairo has also previously rejected US President Donald Trump’s plan to “take over” the Gaza Strip to rebuild the war-torn enclave, while relocating Palestinians elsewhere during reconstruction efforts.

Trump called on Egypt, Jordan, and other Arab states to take in Palestinians from Gaza after nearly 16 months of war between Israel and Hamas.

Like many other Middle Eastern leaders who rejected Trump’s proposal, Egypt has advocated a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Lapid explained on Tuesday that his plan aims to strengthen Israel’s security in the south, which borders Gaza, by enabling reconstruction and administration without Hamas’s involvement, ultimately resulting in a complete “divorce” from Gaza.

“Down the road, 10 years from now, the best solution is for Israel to separate from the Palestinians in a way that contributes to Israel’s security,” he said.

Under Lapid’s plan, Egypt would be responsible for demilitarizing Gaza and stopping weapons smuggling during its control. In return, he proposed that the international community and regional allies pay off Egypt’s massive debt to support Gaza’s management and reconstruction.

“The situation whereby a terrorist organization controls a country or territory and leaves it for others to manage the civilian affairs – like Hezbollah in Lebanon – is unacceptable,” Lapid said.

He added that Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the countries that normalized relations with Israel under the Abraham Accords could play a role in gradually integrating the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority into governing Gaza. “But that must be done in coordination with Israel and the United States, and with a constant focus on Israel’s security needs,” he emphasized.

Last week, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi met with leaders from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the UAE, and Qatar to discuss his country’s alternative to Trump’s plan and urged the global community to support rebuilding Gaza without displacing its residents.

During a press conference in Madrid alongside Spain’s prime minister, the Egyptian president reiterated that the international community must support reconstruction efforts without displacing Palestinians.

“We stressed the importance of the international community adopting a plan to reconstruct the Gaza strip without displacing Palestinians — I repeat, without displacing Palestinians from their lands,” he said.

On March 5, Egypt will host an emergency Arab summit to discuss what it described as “dangerous” developments for Palestinians, according to a statement from the Egyptian foreign ministry. The statement also said the summit was being called in response to a Palestinian request.

The post Egypt Rejects Israeli Opposition Leader’s ‘Egyptian Solution’ for Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Anti-Zionist Group Occupies Barnard College Building

Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) members occupying an administrative building on Feb. 26, 2025. Photo: Screenshot

The anti-Zionist group Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) has occupied the Milbank Hall administrative building at Barnard College in New York City to protest recent disciplinary sanctions imposed on student activists.

The highly anticipated action comes one day earlier than CUAD advertised on Monday, when it announced its intention to hold a demonstration on Thursday. In preparation for the event, which many feared would be disruptive of normal campus operations, college officials have spent the last several days tightening campus security — forbidding, for example, non-students from accessing campus, unmasking people who conceal their identities with masks or other garments, and performing random searches of “backpacks, purses, luggage,” and other effects.

Barnard College vice president of strategy Kelli Murray formally announced the measures, first reported by The Columbia Spectator, on Tuesday in an email to the campus community. However, by taking over Milbank Hall on Wednesday, when the college’s guard was down, CUAD has claimed an advantage in what could be a hotly contested struggle for control of the building.

Posting on Instagram during the late evening, CUAD said its members are “flooding the building despite Barnard shutting down campus. Barnard expelled two students and hundreds more rise up!”

Since then, a staff member has been assaulted, according to a source with knowledge of the situation.

CUAD’s demonstration gives expression to its fury over Barnard’s expelling two students who last month stormed Columbia professor Avi Shilon’s course on modern Israeli history and proceeded to distribute antisemitic literature and spew pro-Hamas propaganda.

This week, CUAD resorted to promoting antisemitic tropes to mobilize its supporters for the event, alleging that “Zionist billionaires” influenced the administration’s decision to expel the students.

“This is the first official expulsion of a Columbia affiliate over a protest against the ongoing genocide, ethnic cleansing, and occupation of Palestine by israel [sic],” CUAD said on Monday in an Instagram post. “Barnard’s decision to expel two students marks a serious escalation in the crackdown against students advocating for divestment from the israeli war machine…Barnard’s arbitrary timing and level of punishment is heavily influenced by external pressures from billionaires, donors, and government officials.”

Spinning conspiracies of Jewish control, it continued, “Numerous articles have exposed how billionaires have pressured Columbia administrators to suppress campus activism for Palestine. Zionist networks have specifically targeted the Palestine class disruption activists for harassment, doxxing, and school discipline as part of a coordinated wave of repression against Palestinian activism.”

Columbia University has struggled to contain CUAD — which just last month committed an act of infrastructural sabotage by flooding the toilets of the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) with concrete — and plug the stream of negative publicity and scrutiny it draws. In September, during the university’s convocation ceremony, the group distributed a pamphlet which called on students to join the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s movement to destroy Israel. Several sections of the document were explicitly Islamist, invoking the name of “Allah, the most gracious” and referring to Hamas as the “Islamic Resistance Movement.” Proclaiming, “Glory to Gaza that gave hope to the oppressed, that humiliated the ‘invincible’ Zionist army,” it said its purpose was to build an army of Muslims worldwide.

In April 2024, CUAD members commandeered a section of campus and, after declaring it a “liberated zone,” lit flares and chanted pro-Hamas and anti-American slogans. When the New York City Police Department (NYPD) arrived to disperse the unauthorized gathering, hundreds of CUAD members and their affiliates reportedly amassed around them to prevent the restoration of order. During the ensuing clashes with law enforcement, one student screamed “Yes, we’re all Hamas, pig!” while others shouted “Long live Hamas!” and filmed themselves praising the al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas.

CUAD demonstrated again the challenge it poses to the university’s security apparatus when it attacked SIPA. Numerous reports indicate the action was the premeditated result of planning sessions which took place many months ago at an event held by Alpha Delta Phi (ADP) — a literary society, according to the Washington Free Beacon. During the event, the Free Beacon reported, ADP distributed literature dedicated to “aspiring revolutionaries” who wish to commit seditious acts. Additionally, a presentation was given in which complete instructions for the exact kind of attack which struck Columbia were shared with students. However, security officials were unable to amass any intelligence on the group’s plan before it unfolded.

Barnard College has said that it will not tolerate CUAD’s behavior, a statement it reinforced by suspending the protesters who invaded Professor Shilon’s class.

“Barnard will always take decisive action to protect our community as a place where learning thrives, individuals feel sage, and higher education is celebrated,” college president Laura Rosenbury said in a statement shared with The Algemeiner on Monday. “This means upholding the highest standards and acting when those standards are threatened.”

She continued, “When rules are broken, when there is no remorse, no reflection, and no willingness to change, we must act. Expulsion is always an extraordinary measure, but so too is our commitment to respect, inclusion, and the integrity of the academic experience. At Barnard we fiercely defend our values. At Barnard, we always reject harassment and discrimination in all forms. At Barnard, we always do what is right, not what is easy.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post Anti-Zionist Group Occupies Barnard College Building first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Australian Nurse Charged for Threatening Israeli Patients as Spy Chief Flags Antisemitism as Top Concern

Members of the Jewish community and supporters gather for a protest rally against rising antisemitism at Martin Place in Sydney, Jan. 21, 2025. Photo: AAP Image/Steven Saphore via Reuters Connect

An Australian nurse working at a hospital in Sydney has been charged with making threats after saying in comments caught on video that she would refuse to treat Israeli patients and instead kill them.

The latest legal step comes amid law enforcement’s scramble to combat a wave of antisemitic incidents in recent months that Australia’s spy chief has called his agency’s top priority.

On Tuesday night, 26-year-old Sarah Abu Lebdeh was arrested and charged with federal offenses, including threatening violence against a group and using a carriage service to threaten, menace, and harass, New South Wales (NSW) Police said in a statement. If convicted, she faces up to 22 years in prison.

The arrest follows an incident at Bankstown-Lidcombe Hospital in Sydney, in which Abu Lebdeh and her fellow nurse, Ahmed Rashid Nadir, were seen in an online video posing as doctors and making inflammatory statements during a night-shift discussion with Israeli influencer Max Veifer.

The footage, which circulated widely, showed Lebdeh stating she would refuse to treat an Israeli patient and instead kill them, while Nadir used a throat-slitting gesture and claimed to have already killed many.

“It’s Palestine’s country, not your country, you piece of s—t,” Lebdeh told Veifer.

“One day your time will come, and you will die the most disgusting death,” she added in a sentence riddled with obscenities.

After reviewing patient records, the hospital found no evidence that Lebdeh or Nadir had harmed patients.

NSW’s Health Minister Ryan Park confirmed that both nurses had been suspended and would be permanently barred from employment within the state’s health system.

According to the NSW Police statement, Lebdeh was released on bail and is set to appear in court on March 19. At this time, Nadir has not been charged.

The incident is the latest in a surge of antisemitic acts across Australia since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza in October 2023, with Jewish institutions targeted in arson attacks and businesses defaced.

Law enforcement in Sydney and Melbourne, home to the majority of Australia’s Jewish population, is actively investigating hate crimes, including the recent discovery of a trailer containing explosives and a list of potential Jewish targets.

In a Senate committee hearing on Tuesday, Mike Burgess, the director-general of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO), the country’s domestic intelligence agency, said that antisemitism is now the agency’s top priority.

“In terms of threats to life, [antisemitism is] my agency’s number one priority because of the weight of incidents we’re seeing play out in this country,” Burgess told the Senate. “Antisemitism and significant antisemitism acts are prominent in our investigation caseload at this point in time.”

In a recent 2025 threat assessment declassified by ASIO, Burgess warned that the surge in antisemitic attacks across Australia could escalate, as extremists are increasingly self-radicalizing and “choose their own adventure” toward potential terrorist activity.

“Threats transitioned from harassment and intimidation to specific targeting of Jewish communities, places of worship, and prominent figures,” he said. “I am concerned these attacks have not yet plateaued.”

After the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel, several Jewish sites in Australia have been relentlessly targeted with vandalism and even arson.

A recent report from the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) found that antisemitism in Australia quadrupled to record levels following the outbreak of the Gaza war, with Australian Jews experiencing more than 2,000 antisemitic incidents between October 2023 and September 2024.

Burgess also described how narratives originally centered on “freeing Palestine” have expanded to include incitements to “kill the Jews.”

During the Senate hearing, Burgess praised the “strong law enforcement responses,” stating that the police “have done exceptionally well.” However, he also addressed criticism over delays in arrests and responses to antisemitic incidents, saying investigations take time and are necessary to fully grasp the problem.

The post Australian Nurse Charged for Threatening Israeli Patients as Spy Chief Flags Antisemitism as Top Concern first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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