Seymour Hersh:

In days of telephone and email exchanges with public health and statistical experts in America I found a general belief that the civilian death toll in Gaza, both from the bombings and their aftermath, had to be significantly higher than reported, but none of the scientists and statisticians—appropriately—was willing to say so in print because of a lack of access to accurate data. I also asked one well-informed American official what he thought the actual civilian death count in Gaza might be and he answered, without pause: “We just don’t know.”

One public health expert acknowledged: “No clear and definite body count is possible, given the continuing Israeli bombing.” He added, caustically, “How many bombs does it take to kill a human being?”

Gaza was an ideal target for an air attack, he said. “No functioning fire department. No fire trucks. No water. No place to escape. No hospitals. No electricity. People living in tents and bodies stacked up all over . . . being eaten by stray dogs.

“What the fuck is wrong with the international medical community?” he asked. “Who are we kidding? Without a ceasefire, a million people are going to starve. This is not a debating point. How can you count something when the system is biting its own tail.” He was referring to the fact that the health system in Gaza—its hospitals and service agencies—”is being targeted and shattered” by Israeli aircraft and those responsible for the counting of the dead and injured “are themselves dead.”

Martin Amis. Photograph: Martin Lawrence/Daily Mail/Shutterstock

One of the real truths of the 21st century, and earlier, is that history is speeding up. We’re all on a sort of rollercoaster now. There are existential threats that weren’t fully acknowledged not so long ago. We are sort of hurtling forward. It’s more of a task to ask people to slow down.

—Martin Amis

From the testimony of former hostages interviewed by the Russian media, it seems virtually certain that the terrorists did have ample time to destroy many of the hostages before they themselves had been overcome by the gas or shot by the attacking special forces. Why did they not do so? As we have seen, most of the explosives in the building were „fakes“ or very weak bombs presenting a danger principally to the women terrorists wearing them. Even without detonating the bombs, however, the terrorists carried real automatic weapons and could easily have raked the hostages with automatic-weapon fire. They clearly chose, however, to let the hostages live. Even an Interior Ministry general who had been identified by the terrorists and had been separated from the other hostages was not killed (though his daughter died from the effects of the gas). Theater producer Vasilev has recalled: „When the shooting began, they [the terrorists] told us to lean forward in the theater seats and cover our heads behind the seats.“

—John B. Dunlop, The 2002 Dubrovka and 2004 Beslan Hostage Crises, (Stuttgart: ibidem, 2006), 148.