María Wong, senior strategic partnerships adviser with the Equality Fund—a global women’s fund—penned a column in the Hill Times on December 22 entitled: “Women are essential to the peace process.”
In it, she focused on Project Seed, which is, as she describes it, “a women’s rights organization that has worked for more than 20 years in eastern Gaza,” alongside statements made by its cofounder, called Hind.
She glibly wrote that “the ongoing war has directly killed at least 186,000 people between October 2023 and July 2024—the majority of whom are women, children, and the elderly…”
This astonishing casualty figure is based on a letter published in the science journal The Lancet, which estimated that Hamas’ already unverified, inflated and statistically debunked and highly suspect Gaza Health Ministry figures should be quadrupled. Hamas’ casualty figures are themselves grossly inaccurate, failing, among other things, to include the number of combatants killed – at least 17,000+ by Israel’s estimates. Their data also includes numerous inaccuracies, including deaths with invalid or missing IDs.
Taking Hamas Unverified Casualty Statistics At Face Value And Multiplying 4 Times
To obtain their grossly inflated figure, the authors of The Lancet letter (which was not peer-reviewed) took the Hamas figures without a query and multiplied them by a ratio of 4 indirect deaths to every 1 direct death. And then Wong claimed the war has “directly killed 186,000,” a blatant falsehood even according to her own sources.
As for stating that the majority of deaths are the vulnerable, this is likewise without merit. Likely based on the Hamas claim that 70 percent of deaths are women and children, this allegation was based on an engineered data sample of 8,000, not the entire casualty count, and on data that Hamas was gathering using an open Google Form!
Much of the rest of Wong’s article is a funding appeal for support for women in Gaza. She painted a terrible picture of female suffering in Gaza and said: “Hind urges people of conscience and international feminist organizations to put pressure on decision-makers, United Nations agencies, and international governmental institutions with whatever tools we have at our disposal. “The most important thing is that people live safely,” she said.”
Wong ended: “Hind dreams of a day when Project Seed will be able to continue its work to support women safely: “When I close my eyes, I see a dream from my heart.”
Ignoring The Plight Of Israeli Women And Girls
It sounds altruistic. However, Wong and Hind’s appeal for support for women affected by the war doesn’t include an appeal for assistance for the Israeli female hostages still held by terrorists. It did not mention the young Israeli women raped, often times gang-raped, sexually abused, mutilated and murdered on October 7, 2023. They ignore the Israeli children and elderly likely starved in captivity until today. As such, their selective empathy is suspect.
Also suspect is that on reading Wong’s article, one could be excused for thinking Hamas does not exist. She blamed “the war” for the suffering she detailed, as if Israel started a spontaneous conflict.
All civilian suffering on both sides is a tragedy. But blaming the wrong party doesn’t alleviate it.
Wong wrote that “women, in particular, are facing immense pressure because women are the family caretakers” in Gaza, conveniently neglecting to detail where many Gazan men are: likely fighting with Hamas terrorists to perpetuate a war that could have been stopped at any time by releasing the hostages and surrendering, or not launching the war in the first place.
Likewise, it is bizarre that an article to raise funds for a 20-year-old project for women in Gaza did not mention the dangers that face them even in peacetime – including gender-based violence being sanctioned within their families, including the prevalence of honour killings and women being treated like chattel, among other things.
Wong mentioned that “aid parcels donated through large international NGOs are not enough to sustain families,” but declined to detail why. Despite Israel allowing considerable amounts of aid, looting by gangs, including Hamas, doesn’t allow the aid to reach the intended recipients.
Wong has ignored the facts and deleted Hamas’ evil from view. Ironically, in doing so, she gave more power to the instigators of the conflict who are their women’s enemy: Hamas, a misogynistic group who keeps Gazan women under its violent oppressive rule.
