The Israeli ambassador to Australia says his country should be “commended” for the “low number of uninvolved civilians that were actually killed” in Gaza since October 7, 2023, arguing there is no genocide taking place.
Hillel Newman, addressing the National Press Club, rejected a figure of 70,000 dead in the region, saying it was a number provided by Hamas:
If you take into consideration natural deaths, distinction of those that were combatants and those [who were] not combatants, we know more or less the number of combatants that have been killed. You take into consideration those that were killed by Palestinian fire, and … in the end you come to a ratio of one to 1.5. That’s the lowest ratio of civilian … casualties in warfare, in urban warfare.
There was no genocide in Gaza. The numbers do not depict what people on the streets think because they don’t look into the numbers and then understand the meaning of the numbers. The ratio [of civilian to combatant casulaties] in the end is the lowest in urban warfare, and therefore, in many ways, Israel should be commended for the low number of uninvolved civilians that were actually killed.”
A United Nations commission of inquiry in September last year found that Israel had committed genocide in the Gaza Strip, accusing the nation of having committed four genocidal acts, “namely killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of the Palestinians in whole or in part, and imposing measures intended to prevent births”.
