UKLFI Charitable Trust hosted a webinar on Hamas Statistics – True or False? With Professor Lewi Stone, Professor Greg Rose, and chaired by Natasha Hausdorff. It took place on 5 May 2024.
Grim statistics of Palestinian casualties in the current war in the Gaza Strip have been repeatedly reported in the media. They are having a major impact on public opinion, political discourse and legal proceedings, such as South Africa’s claim against Israel in the International Court of Justice for genocide. Reference is frequently made both to the overall total and the breakdown into men, women and children, with the implication that most of them cannot be combatants since they are women and children.
But are these figures true? A number of statistical analyses have been published indicating they are not true, including a recent article in Fathom Journal by Professors Tom Simpson, Lewi Stone and Gregory Rose. In this webinar two of the authors of that article discussed the problems with the statistics and their legal implications with UKLFI Charitable Trust’s Legal Director, Natasha Hausdorff.
TO VIEW THE WEBINAR ON YOUTUBE CLICK HERE
Details about the speakers:
Professor Lewi Stone is a Professor Emeritus at Tel Aviv University, and currently working as a professor of maths at RMIT University Melbourne. He has decades of experience working as a Mathematical Biologist and Population Modeller with strong interests in statistics and multidisciplinary research. This includes digital humanities and quantifying warfare.
Professor Gregory Rose is a Professor of Law and Chair of the Academic Senate at the University of Wollongong, Australia.
He has conducted Australian government funded projects on detention operations and counter-terrorism legal training and United Nations projects on implementation of international environmental law. He teaches international law of the sea and maritime regulation and enforcement.
He has published articles on the regulation of counter-terrorism and political violence, particularly the handling and transfer in international military operations of detainees and international legal cooperation for law enforcement in the area of national security. He has edited books on detention of insurgents and terrorists in international military operations and on following the international proceeds of environmental crime.
Natasha Hausdorff is a barrister at 6 Pump Court Chambers and a frequent speaker on International Law. She has a law degree from Oxford University, qualified as a solicitor at Skadden, and subsequently gained an LLM from Tel Aviv University, focussing on public international law and the law of armed conflict.
She clerked for Miriam Naor, President of Israel’s Supreme Court, and was a Fellow at Columbia Law School’s National Security Program. Natasha is legal director of UKLFI Charitable Trust.
In the course of the current conflict, Natasha has been interviewed frequently on television to explain the application of the law of armed conflict. Tweets of her interview by Katya Adler on the BBC News Channel went viral with over 4 million views. Other videos of her interviews can be viewed HERE