I have made a detailed and documented Submission (below) in response to the Call for input for the report of the Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory to the Human Rights Council 58thsession. My position is that a major contributor to the horrific and ongoing Palestinian Genocide and specifically the ongoing Gaza Genocide is lying by omission and lying by commission by Western Mainstream media. Genocide ignored yields genocide repeated.
Dr Gideon Polya, Melbourne, responding to the Call for input for the report of the Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory to the Human Rights Council 58th session, deadline 30 November 2024 : https://www.ohchr.org/en/calls-for-input/2024/call-input-report-special-rapporteur-occupied-palestinian-territory-human .
Put simply and bluntly, a major contributor to the ongoing Palestinian Genocide by Apartheid Israel and the ongoing Gaza Genocide in particular is massive and remorseless lying by omission and lying by commission by Western Mainstream journalist, editor, politician, academic and commentariat presstitutes. Presstitute is defined thus by Wikipedia: “Presstitute is a term that references journalists and ‘talking heads’ in mainstream media who give biased and predetermined views misleadingly tailored to fit a particular partisan, financial or business agenda, thus neglecting the fundamental duty to report news impartially” [1].
War is the penultimate in racism and genocide the ultimate. The core ethos of Humanity is Kindness and Truth. More specifically, the key moral imperatives from the WW2 Jewish Holocaust – and indeed from all WW2 holocausts and from all of about 70 genocides and holocausts – are “zero tolerance for lying”, “zero tolerance for racism”, “bear witness” and “never again to anyone”. However these moral imperatives are resolutely ignored by Western Mainstream presstitutes lying to hide numerous genocidal atrocities in living memory by the US and the US Alliance, including Apartheid Israel.
I trained as a biochemist (BScHons, University of Tasmania; PhD, Flinders University; fellowships at Cornell University and Australian National University), researched and taught science students at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia over 4 decades. I published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, notably a huge pharmacological reference text “Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds” (2003). I also researched plant energy and signal transduction and biochemical pharmacology and also published 9 huge humanitarian books, namely “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (2007, 2021), “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” (1998, 2008, 2022), “US-imposed Post-9-11 Muslim Holocaust & Muslim Genocide” (2020), “Climate Crisis, Climate Genocide & Solutions” (2020), “Free Palestine. End Apartheid Israel, Human Rights Denial, Gaza Massacre, Child Killing, Occupation and Palestinian Genocide” (2024), and contributed to Soren Korsgaard (editor) “The Most Dangerous Book Ever Published – Dangerous Deception Exposed!” (2020). For images of my huge paintings for the Planet, Peace, Mother and Child see [2].
I have been researching and writing about avoidable deaths from imposed deprivation for 3 decades and published my findings in hundreds of large and exhaustively referenced articles [3-5] and in 9 huge books (including massively updated editions) [6-11]. My initial impetus was discovering how successive generations of British historiographers had blatantly ignored or grossly minimized British-imposed famines in India from the 1769-1770 Great Bengal Famine (10 million killed) to the 1942-1945 WW2 Bengali Holocaust (WW2 Indian Holocaust, WW2 Bengal Famine; 6-7 million Indians deliberately starved to death for strategic reasons in Bengal, Bihar, Assam and Odisha by the British with food-denying Australian complicity). However the WW2 Bengali Holocaust was largely deleted from British history by successive generations of lying Anglosphere presstitutes. Indeed my British- and Australian-educated and Bengali- and Bihari-origin late wife (all her grandparents were British-indentured 5 year slaves to Fiji) was unaware of this horrific atrocity. This led me to quantitatively address variously ignored or undercounted deaths from violence and imposed deprivation in wars, subjugations and occupations in the post-1950 era [6], a period for which detailed UN demographic data is available. As exampled below for Palestine and the Muslim world in general there is massive and remorseless presstitute lying about post-WW2 US and US Alliance atrocities.
Whether a child is killed by bullets and bombs or from imposed deprivation, the death is just as final and the perpetrator culpability the same. Avoidable mortality (excess mortality) from deprivation can be readily assessed from UN Population Division data as the difference between the actual deaths in a country and the deaths expected for a peaceful and decently governed country with the same demographics. In the 2007 and 2021 editions of “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” I documented annual avoidable mortality and under-5 infant mortality for every country in 2003 and 2020, respectively, and also documented total avoidably mortality and under-5 infant mortality for the period 1950-2005 [6]. For humanity as a whole under-5 infant mortality is about 70% of the total avoidable mortality, this permitting rapid assessment of avoidable mortality [6]. Usefully, the 2007 and 2021 editions of “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” also contained succinct, avoidable mortality-related histories of every country [6]. In this huge endeavour I was inspired by WW2 Polish hero Jan Karski who tried to tell an unbelieving world about WW2 Nazi atrocities as they were happening. I was driven by the truth that history ignored yields history repeated, and genocide ignored yields genocide repeated.
I used this methodology to estimate deaths from violence and imposed deprivation in the 2003-2011 Iraq War (2.7 million) and in the 2001-2021 Afghan War (6.8 million). Violent deaths in Iraq were estimated from reports of expert epidemiological surveys and violent deaths in Afghanistan were assessed on the basis that the Afghan War was 4 times less violent than the Iraq War. The estimated deaths from violence and imposed deprivation in the Iraq plus Afghan wars totalled 9.5 million [9, 12-14], this being similar to the estimate of over 4.7 million deaths made by the team of 35 expert scholars of the Costs of War project of the Watson Institute for International & Public Affairs at prestigiousBrown University [15]. In stark contrast, Establishment-perverted Mainstream media typically under-estimate Iraq War deaths at about 300,000 [16]. Indeed on the occasion of the withdrawal of most US forces from Iraq, the taxpayer-funded Australian Broadcasting Corporation (the ABC, Australia’s equivalent of the Establishment-beholden UK BBC) estimated “tens of thousands” of Iraqi deaths [17]. One notes that there are now 5 million orphans in Iraq [18] .
How many have died in the century-long Palestinian Genocide and in the Gaza Genocide to date?
Palestine was a culturally rich part of the Semitic Fertile Crescent that gave the World the alphabet, civilization, cities, agriculture, mathematics, astronomy, plant breeding and philosophy. The Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem was the World’s second oldest mosque. Gaza had a rich history. The Nabateans exported spices and perfumes to the Roman Empire via Gaza. Gaza was important in the spread of India-derived Arab mathematics to Italy, Spain and Europe [19]. Oil was discovered in Iraq in 1906, the British invaded Iraq in 1914, the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement divided the Middle East between the UK and France, war-related famine killed 100,000 Palestinians and 2 days after the 31 October 2017 Australia victory over the Turks at Beersheba the British gave over Palestine as a Homeland for non-Semitic Ashkenazi Jewish Zionist settler colonialists, and thence started the Palestinian Genocide after 400 peaceful years under the Ottoman Turkish Caliphate. In 1948 the British-armed and British-trained Zionists seized 78% of Palestine and expelled 800,000 Palestinians (about 60% of the population). In 1967 a nuclear-armed Apartheid Israel seized all of Palestine plus bits of Egypt, Syria and Lebanon, and expelled a further 400,000 Arabs – and thus began the 57 year Occupation.
Before the 7 October 2023 Palestinian Breakout from the Gaza Concentration Camp the World’s 15 million Palestinians included 7 million Exiled Palestinians (excluded from the homeland continuously inhabited by their forebears for over 3,000 years), 5.6 million Occupied Palestinians (with no human rights under brutal foreign military rule and confined to ever-dwindling West Bank patches and the Gaza Concentration Camp), and 2.1 million Israeli Palestinians (able to vote for the government ruling them albeit as Third Class citizens under 65 race-based, Nazi-style discriminatory laws and under threat of dispossession and expulsion). Before 7 October 2023 the Gaza Concentration Camp was already subject to severe blockade for over 16 years (from June 2007), as well as several massive bombing and killing episodes, although none as horrendously lethal as the present Gaza Massacre. Before 7 October 2023 the deadly Jewish Israeli-imposed blockade was designed to permit bare survival of the Gaza population. Before 7 October 2023, the GDP per capita was about $52,000 for Occupier Apartheid Israel, $3,400 for the Occupied Palestinian Territory and a mere $l,000 for the Gaza Concentration Camp. There was a 10 year life expectancy gap between Occupied Palestinians and Israelis [21].
Before 7 October 2023 the Indigenous Palestinians represented about 51% of the Subjects of Apartheid Israel but after the killing of 335,500 Gazans by 5 September 2024 this had shrunk to 50%. Apartheid Israel is a democracy by genocide. Before the 7 October 2023 Breakout the Palestinian Genocide was associated with about 2.2 million deaths from violence (50,000) and deprivation (the remainder). However as set out below the Palestinian Genocide is now associated with about 2.5 million deaths from violence (100,000) and imposed deprivation (2.4 million) i.e. similar to Jewish deaths in the WW2 Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million) [22-24] and indeed I have referred to a Palestinian Genocide and Palestinian Holocaust [8, 9, 25, 26].
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor (6 October 2024): “Since the start of the genocide in Gaza, more than 50,000 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli army, including around 42,000 recorded by the Gaza Ministry of Health, the majority being women and children. In addition, approximately 100,000 have been injured, with thousands of bodies still lying under the rubble and in the streets, unreachable by rescue and medical teams. An estimated 10 per cent of Gaza’s population has been killed, injured, reported missing, or detained as a result of Israeli military assaults. Of the 50,292 Palestinians killed—including those still buried under the debris—33 per cent were children [16,596 children], and 21 per cent were women [10,561 women and hence 23,134 men]. Thousands more have been forcibly detained, with 3,600 still languishing in various Israeli prisons and detention centres” [27]. The Mainstream media have been typically reporting about 40,000 killed for some months but this does not include those dead in the rubble (perhaps 10,000) and a huge and growing number of Gazans killed by the Jewish Israeli siege and the deadly lack of water, food, shelter, electricity, sanitation, medicine and medical care.
Rasha Khatib, Martin McKee and Salim Yusuf reported as follows in the leading medical journal The Lancet (10 July 2024): “Collecting data is becoming increasingly difficult for the Gaza Health Ministry due to the destruction of much of the infrastructure… Applying a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death to the 37,396 deaths reported, it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186,000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza” [28]. However while over 100 Alternative and Global South media have reported this shocking estimate that takes deaths from deprivation into account, Google Searches reveal that this has gone overwhelmingly unreported by Western Mainstream [29, 30].
Professor Devi Sridhar (chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh) has likewise expertly taken deaths from deprivation into account and reported (5 September 2024): “Having some kind of accepted and reliable process for estimating the true number of deaths from afar is important. For several decades, methods have been developed to build up datasets in situations with poor or damaged health and monitoring systems…Using the method, the total deaths since the conflict began would be estimated at about 335,500 in total” [31]. However her report has been resolutely ignored by Western Mainstream media in what famed analyst Ralph Nader has described as “the Gaza Death undercount” [32-35]. Indeed Francesca Albanese (Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory) citing research by Professor Devi Sridhar): “[The IDF] could end up exterminating almost the entire population in Gaza over the next couple of years… The range of presumable direct and indirect deaths could be between 15% and 20% of the population already by the end of this year” [36].
In the face of the failure of Western Mainstream media to report these matters I have taken to sending hundreds of Letters to Australian and global Mainstream media and recording these overwhelmingly unpublished Letters on websites dedicated to exposing what Mainstream media don’t want their readers to see, know about or think about [37, 38] e.g.
“Unreported by the [Australian] ABC, on 5 September 2024 Professor Devi Sridhar (chair, global health, University of Edinburgh) reported re Gaza: “Total deaths since the conflict began would be estimated at about 335,500 in total” or 30,500 per month and 366,000 per year. Of these “first year” deaths about 55,000 were violent (from “bullets and bombs”) and 311,000 from horrific imposed deprivation. Because Global South under-5 year old infant deaths are 70% of deaths from deprivation this can be translated (based on reported violent death proportions) to deaths in the first year of the Gaza Massacre of 267,000 children, 31,000 women and 71,000 men. Some key WW2 comparisons can be made. (a) Rate of killing of children: 267,000 per year (Gaza) versus 250,000 per year (Jewish children killed by Nazis). (b) % of pre-war population killed: 15.9% (Gaza) versus 21.7% (French Jews) and 28.2% (Hungarian Jews, my people). (c) Occupied/Occupier Reprisals Death Ratio: 366,000/1,200 = 305 (Gaza) versus 10 (ordered by Hitler and effected in the 1944 Ardeatine Massacre in Rome). Mass murder of children, women and mothers is utterly unforgivable. Numbers matter. Nazi is as Nazi does. Intolerable lying by omission by the taxpayer-funded ABC.”
The consequence of this horrific Mainstream media lying by omission is that, for example, the appalling Zionist-perverted and US-beholden Australian Labor Government (backed by the even worse Coalition Opposition) is complicit in the Gaza Genocide in 20 ways [39] and tells 35 lies in support of Apartheid Israel [40]. Genocide ignored yields genocide repeated. .
References.
[1]. “Presstitute”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presstitute .
[2].”Art for Planet, Peace, Mother and Child”: http://sites.google.com/site/artforpeaceplanetmotherchild/ .
[3]. “Gideon Polya Countercurrents articles”: https://sites.google.com/site/palestinegenocideessays/gideon-polya-countercurrents-articles .
[4]. “Countercurrents articles by Gideon Polya”: https://sites.google.com/site/drgideonpolya/countercurrents-articles .
[5]. “Gideon Polya”: https://sites.google.com/site/drgideonpolya/home .
[6]. Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”, 2nd edition, Korsgaard Publishing, 2021.
[7], Gideon Polya in Soren Korsgaard, editor, “The Most Dangerous Book Ever Published: Dangerous Deception Exposed!”, Korsgaard Publishing, 2020.
[8]. Gideon Polya, “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History. Colonial rapacity, holocaust denial and the crisis in biological sustainability”, 3rd edition, Korsgaard Publishing, 2022.
[9]. Gideon Polya, “US-imposed Post-9/11 Muslim Holocaust & Muslim Genocide”, Korsgaard Publishing, 2020.
[10]. Gideon Polya, “Climate Crisis, Climate Genocide & Solutions”, Korsgaard Publishing, 2020.
[11]. Gideon Polya, “Free Palestine. End Apartheid Israel, Human Rights Denial, Gaza Massacre, Child Killing, Occupation and Palestinian Genocide”, Korsgaard Publishing, 2024.
[12]. Gideon Polya, “12th Anniversary Of Illegal Iraq Invasion – 2.7 Million Iraqi Dead From Violence Or War-imposed Deprivation”, Countercurrents, 23 March, 2015: https://www.countercurrents.org/polya230315.htm .
[13]. Gideon Polya, “Muslim Holocaust, Muslim Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/muslimholocaustmuslimgenocide/home .
[14]. Gideon Polya, “Afghan Holocaust – The Awful Truth Versus US Alliance Lies”, Countercurrents, 22 August 2021: https://countercurrents.org/2021/08/afghan-holocaust-the-awful-truth-versus-us-alliance-lies/#:~:text=So%20far%20the%202001-2021%20Afghan%20Holocaust .
[15]. Watson Institute for International & Public Affairs, “Costs of War”: https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/papers/summary .
[16]. “Iraq Body Count”: https://www.iraqbodycount.org/ .
[17]. Anne Barker, “US military marks end of its Iraq war”, ABC News, 15 December 2011: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-12-15/us-military-marks-end-of-its-war-in-iraq/3733982 .
[18]. Fadhel al-Nashmi, “IHCHR Report: 5 Million Orphaned Children in Iraq”, Asharq Al-Awsat, 12 December 2021: https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/3354921/ihchr-report-5-million-orphaned-children-iraq .
[19]. William Dalrymple, “The Golden Road”. How ancient India transformed the world”, Bloomsbury, 2024.
[20]. Stephennie Mulder, “Gaza’s oldest mosque, destroyed in an airstrike, was once a temple to Philistine and Roman gods, a Byzantine and Catholic church, and had engravings of Jewish ritual objects”, The Conversation, 18 January 2024: https://theconversation.com/gazas-oldest-mosque-destroyed-in-an-airstrike-was-once-a-temple-to-philistine-and-roman-gods-a-byzantine-and-catholic-church-and-had-engravings-of-jewish-ritual-objects-220203 .
[21]. Gideon Polya, “Australia must stop Zionist subversion and join the World in comprehensive Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Apartheid Israel and all its supporters”, Subversion of Australia, 15 April 2021: https://sites.google.com/site/subversionofaustralia/2021-04-15 .
[22]. Martin Gilbert, “Jewish History Atlas”, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1969.
[23]. Martin Gilbert “Atlas of the Holocaust”, Michael Joseph, London, 1982.
[24]. Gideon Polya, “UK Zionist Historian Sir Martin Gilbert (1936-2015) Variously Ignored Or Minimized WW2 Bengali Holocaust”, Countercurrents, 19 February 2015: https://countercurrents.org/polya190215.htm .
[25]. “Report genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/reportgenocide/ .
[26]. Gideon Polya, “Racist Mainstream Ignores “US-Imposed Post-9/11 Muslim Holocaust & Muslim Genocide”, Countercurrents, 17 July 2020: https://countercurrents.org/2020/07/racist-mainstream-ignores-us-imposed-post-9-11-muslim-holocaust-muslim-genocide/ .
[27]. Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, “New report.. De-Gaza: A Year of Israel’s Genocide and the Collapse of World Order”, 6 October 2024: https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6494/New-report..-De-Gaza:-A-Year-of-Israel%E2%80%99s-Genocide-and-the-Collapse-of-World-Order .
[28]. Rasha Khatib, Martin McKee and Salim Yusuf, “Counting the dead in Gaza: difficult but essential”, The Lancet, Volume 404, Issue 10449, p237-238, 10 July, 2024: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)01169-3/fulltext .
[29]. Gideon Polya, “Zionist-Perverted Western Mainstream Media Ignore 186,000 Palestinian Deaths In Apartheid Israeli Gaza Genocide”, Countercurrents, 15 July 2024: https://countercurrents.org/2024/07/zionist-perverted-western-mainstream-media-ignore-186000-palestinian-deaths-in-apartheid-israeli-gaza-genocide/ .
[30]. Gideon Polya, “Racist & Lying Australian & Western Mainstream Disappear 186,000 Gaza Genocide Deaths”, Countercurrents, 18 July 2024: https://countercurrents.org/2024/07/racist-lying-australian-western-mainstream-disappear-186000-gaza-genocide-deaths/ .
[31]. Devi Sridhar, “Scientists are closing in on the true, horrifying scale of death and disease in Gaza”, The Guardian, 5 September 2024: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/sep/05/scientists-death-disease-gaza-polio-vaccinations-israel .
[32]. Ralph Nader, “Exposing the Gaza Death Undercount. 40,000? It’s more like 300,000 – treachery on both sides”, Capitol Hill Citizen, August-September 2024: https://www.capitolhillcitizen.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/CHC10.August2024WEB2_01.pdf .
[33]. Ralph Nader interviewed by Amy Goodman, “A Horrifying Undercount”: Ralph Nader Says True Gaza Death Toll Could Be Many Times Higher”, Democracy Now, 10 September 2024: https://www.democracynow.org/2024/9/10/ralph_nader_gaza_death_toll .
[34]. “EXPOSING THE GAZA DEATH UNDERCOUNT, BY RALPH NADER; Congressional Record Vol. 170, No. 152: https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record/volume-170/issue-152/extensions-of-remarks-section/article/E1000-3 .
[35]. Gideon Polya, “Western Undercounting Of 335,500 Gaza Genocide Dead From Jewish Israeli-Imposed Violence & Deprivation”, Countercurrents, 15 October 2024: https://countercurrents.org/2024/10/western-undercounting-of-335500-gaza-genocide-dead-from-jewish-israeli-imposed-violence-deprivation/ .
[36]. Julia Conley, “UN Expert Fears ‘Almost the Entire Population’ of Gaza Exterminated If Israel Not Stopped”, Common Dreams, 6 September 2024: https://www.commondreams.org/news/gaza-2669142495 .
[37]. “AUSTRALIAN MAINSTREAM MEDIA LYING & CENSORSHIP” : https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammedialying/australian-mainstream-media-lying-censorshp .
[38]. “RACIST & LYING AUSTRALIAN MAINSTREAM IGNORES AWFUL TRUTHS”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammedialying/racist-lying-australian-mainstream-ignores-awful-truths .
[39]. Gideon Polya, “20 Ways Anti-Semitic Australian Labor Government Complicit In Jewish Israeli Gaza Genocide”, 5 March 2024: https://countercurrents.org/2024/03/20-ways-anti-semitic-australian-labor-government-complicit-in-jewish-israeli-gaza-genocide/ .
[40]. Gideon Polya, “Gaza Massacre: 35 Ways Zionist-perverted US, Australia & West Lie For Child-killing, Neo-Nazi Apartheid Israel”, Countercurrents, 23 November 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/11/gaza-massacre-35-ways-zionist-perverted-us-australia-west-lie-for-child-killing-neo-nazi-apartheid-israel/ .
Dr Gideon Polya taught science students at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia over 4 decades. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, notably a huge pharmacological reference text “Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds” (2003). He has also published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (2007, 2021), “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” (1998, 2008, 2022), “US-imposed Post-9-11 Muslim Holocaust & Muslim Genocide” (2020), “Climate Crisis, Climate Genocide & Solutions” (2020), “Free Palestine. End Apartheid Israel, Human Rights Denial, Gaza Massacre, Child Killing, Occupation and Palestinian Genocide” (2024), and contributed to Soren Korsgaard (editor) “The Most Dangerous Book Ever Published – Dangerous Deception Exposed!” (2020). For images of Gideon Polya’s huge paintings for the Planet, Peace, Mother and Child see: http://sites.google.com/site/artforpeaceplanetmotherchild/ .
