RALPH NADER, via Info@csrl.org, @RalphNader
Available for a limited number of interviews, Nader just wrote the piece “Stop the Worsening UNDERCOUNT of Palestinian Casualties in Gaza,” which states: “Since the Hamas raid penetrated the multi-tiered Israeli border security on October 7, 2023 (an unexplained collapse of Israel’s defensive capabilities), 2.3 million utterly defenseless Palestinians in the tiny crowded Gaza enclave have been on the receiving end of over 65,000 bombs/missiles plus non-stop tank shelling and snipers.
“The extreme right-wing Netanyahu regime has enforced its declared siege of, in its genocidal words, ‘no food, no water, no electricity, no fuel, no medicine.’
“The relentless bombing has destroyed apartment buildings, marketplaces, refugee camps, hospitals, clinics, ambulances, bakeries, schools, mosques, churches, roads, electricity networks, critical water mains — just about everything.
“The U.S.-equipped Israeli war machine has even uprooted agricultural fields, including thousands of olive trees on one farm, bulldozed many cemeteries and bombed civilians fleeing on Israeli orders, while obstructing the few trucks carrying humanitarian aid from Egypt.
“With virtually no healthcare left, no medications, and infectious diseases spreading especially among infants, children, the infirm and the elderly, can anybody believe that the fatalities have just gone over 30,000? With 5,000 babies born every month into the rubble, their mothers wounded and without food, healthcare, medicine and clean water for any of their children, severe skepticism about the Hamas Health Ministry’s official count is warranted.
“Netanyahu and Hamas, which he helped over the years, have a common interest in lowballing the death/injury toll. But for different reasons. …
“The Health Ministry is intentionally conservative, citing that its death toll came from reports only of named deceased by hospitals and morgues. But as the weeks turned into months, blasted, disabled hospitals and morgues cannot keep up with the bodies, or cannot count those slain laying on roadsides in allies and beneath building debris. Yet the Health Ministry remains conservative and the ‘official,’ rising civilian fatality and injury count continues to be uncritically reported by both friend and foe of this devastating Israeli state terrorism. …
“Then came the December 29, 2023, opinion piece in The Guardian by the Chair of Global Public Health at the University of Edinburgh, Devi Sridhar. She predicted half a million deaths in 2024 if conditions continue unabated.
“In recent days, the situation has become more dire. In the March 2, 2024, Washington Post, reporter, Ishaan Tharoor writes: ‘The bulk of Gaza’s more than 2 million people face the prospect of famine — a state of affairs that constitutes the fastest decline in a population’s nutrition status ever recorded, according to aid workers. Children are starving at the fastest rate the world has ever known. Aid groups have been pointing to Israel restricting the flow of assistance into the territory as a major driver of the crisis. Some prominent Israeli officials openly champion stymying these transfers of aid.’
“Tharoor quotes Jan Egeland, chief of the Norwegian Refugee Council: ‘We must be clear: civilians in Gaza are falling sick from hunger and thirst because of Israel’s entry restrictions.’ ‘Life-saving supplies are being intentionally blocked, and women and children are paying the price.’
“Martin Griffiths, the United Nations lead humanitarian officer, said ‘Life is draining out of Gaza at terrifying speed.'”
Nader cites other sources and then writes: “Yet, and get this, in this article, the Post still stuck with the ‘more than 30,000 people in Gaza have been killed since the ongoing war began.’
“Just like the entire mass media, many governments, even the independent media and critics of the war would have us accept that between 98 percent and 99 percent of Gaza’s entire population has survived — albeit the sick, injured and more Palestinians about to die. This is lethally improbable!
“From accounts of people on the ground, videos and photographs of deadly episode after episode, plus the resultant mortalities from blocking or smashing the crucial necessities of life, a more likely estimate, in my appraisal, is that at least 200,000 Palestinians must have perished by now and the toll is accelerating by the hour. …”
Nader is author of many books including Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-In Dangers of the American Automobile, Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State and most recently, The Rebellious CEO: 12 Leaders Who Did It Right.
