Submitted by twovests in vote_satan (edited )

Someone pointed this out on raddle, but I think their arithmetic was a bit wrong. Details here:


A few days ago, when announcing plans to take over Gaza, Trump said

Instead, we should go to other countries of interest with humanitarian hearts, and there are many of them that want to do this and build various domains that will ultimately be occupied by the 1.8 million Palestinians living in Gaza, ending the death and destruction and, frankly, bad luck.

(YouTube video)

But... Where did that 1.8 million number come from?

Let's do some math:

According to the PCBS, Gaza's population in 2023 was ~2.23M, and about 100K people left Gaza since the war started. Gaza 2024 population estimates are about ~2.10M, in line with the reported death numbers.

We generally assume the confirmed 62K deaths in Gaza are an undercount, since these are confirmed deaths reported in the now-destroyed hospital system. We can assume the US has a better estimate of how many people have died in Gaza...

... Which explains Trump's 1.8 million figure.

If 2.23M people were in Gaza before Israel started killing people in 2023, and ~100K left, then that's a gap of 330,000 people to the 1.8 million number Trump gave, give or take 50K.

TLDR: Trump said Gaza has 1.8 million Palestinians, implying the death toll is ~300K people.

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Comments

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neku wrote

this assumes that 1. accurate and timely population numbers stick in donald trump's head and 2. he is able to reliably retrieve those population numbers and deliver them aloud. i don't find it unrealistic that israel has murdered 300 thousand in gaza since oct 7 but using donald trump as a source for anything seems extremely dubious to me

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rain wrote

The only reason I’m inclined to believe the number is the specificity of it. Despite it being “worse” if he had said a million, or one and a half million, I’d believe a round number was made up. 1.8m is a little to specific. I think he heard that number from someone in a briefing and liked it so it stuck.

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