The human cost of Biden’s Israel policy
Polygraph | Newsletter n°237 | 27 February 2024
Situation
A new public health report from Johns Hopkins and University of London projects how many Palestinians will be killed in Gaza over the next six months under three different scenarios: ceasefire, status quo, and escalation.1
Even in the best-case scenario — an immediate and permanent ceasefire — the researchers project 6,550 excess deaths (deaths that wouldn’t have occurred if not for Israel’s military offensive) by early August, mostly from infectious diseases. Traumatic injuries would likely be the leading cause of death in the next two scenarios. If Israel continues bombing Gaza and blocking humanitarian aid like it is now, the number of projected deaths jumps to 58,260. If Israel escalates its war — including by carrying out the full-scale assault on Rafah it’s been talking about — researchers project 74,290 Palestinian deaths. All these numbers get bigger when accounting for possible epidemics: 11,580, 66,720, and 85,750 deaths in each scenario, respectively.2
Analysis
The chart below illustrates the researchers’ estimates for each scenario, but with additional context: From October 7 to February 6, Israel had already killed 27,585 Palestinians in Gaza, while the projection period for the aforementioned study is February 7 to August 6. So six months from now, it’s possible that Israel’s war will have caused more than 100,000 direct and indirect deaths in Gaza. The joint US-Israel policy of rejecting ceasefires is a policy of mass murder. If that wasn’t clear already, it should be now.
The White House says it’s working on a ceasefire deal, but isn’t that the same as not calling for a ceasefire? (After all, Biden could force Israel to accept one with a simple phone call). And based on his actions, Biden has invested in the status quo and escalation. The bombs Biden has provided since October 7 can reportedly sustain Israel’s military campaign for another four months. His pending foreign aid bill could sustain an escalated campaign for years.
^Alt text for screen readers: Israel is on track to kill 94 thousand Palestinians by August 6. This column chart shows the projected number of Palestinian deaths from 7 October 2023 to 6 August 2024, by scenario. If there’s an immediate ceasefire, 39 thousand; if the status quo holds, 94 thousand; if Israel escalates its campaign, 113 thousand. Data via the UN, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Johns Hopkins University (February 2024). More: stephen semler dot substack dot com
-Stephen (@stephensemler; stephen@securityreform.org). Follow me on Bluesky.
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Zeina Jamaluddine, Zhixi Chen, Hanan Abukmail, Sarah Aly, Shatha Elnakib, Gregory Barnsley et al. (2024). Crisis in Gaza: Scenario-based health impact projections. Report One: 7 February to 6 August 2024. London, Baltimore: London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Johns Hopkins University.
These (higher) figures are the ones I chose to express in the chart. I typically default to the lower/more conservative estimate, but I couldn’t this time. The risk of epidemics was too glaring to omit, based on what I gathered from the report (the probability of epidemics causing 1,000 or more deaths over these six months for each scenario: 23 percent, 27 percent, and 34 percent, respectively), medical journal articles, and doctor testimonies.