In a February 19, 2009 reprint of an article that originally appeared on the anti-Israel site, PalestineThinkTank.com, Hallinan accuses Israel of war crimes.  The title says it all:  “Israel Treated Gaza Like its Own Private Death Laboratory.”  As usual, his sources are very narrowly selected for an anti-Israel bias to support a pre-determined outcome.   For example, he quotes Dr. Mad Gilbert as an authoritative witness to alleged Israeli war crimes.  However, Gilbert is a well known pro-Palestinian activist, who, according to Wikipedia, endorsed al Qaeda’s 9/11 attack upon America.  Hallinan accepts Hamas supplied casualty figures as facts, when they are widely disputed by both Israel, and doctors who were on the scene.  For example, in order to arrive at their figures, Hamas listed all teenage combatants as “children” and all women as civilians, even if they were photographed holding weapons. 

According to CNN (3/26/09), Israel Defense Forces spokesman's office claimed their figures contained the names of 1,166 Palestinians killed in the conflict, called "Operation Cast Lead."

The Israeli military said 709 of them were "identified as Hamas terror operatives, among them several from various other terror organizations."

The remaining, the statement claims, were comprised of 162 names who "have not yet been attributed to any organization."

"Furthermore, it has come to our understanding that 295 uninvolved Palestinians were killed during the operation, 89 of them under the age of 16, and 49 of them were women."

Elsewhere, Ha’aretz reports (3/25/09) that the fatality list presented by the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza has numerous inaccuracies and contradictions. For example, Tawfiq Ja'abari, the commander of the Hamas police, and Mohammed Shakshak, a personal assistant to the head of Hamas' military wing, Ahmed Ja'abari, are both described as dead children on the Palestinian list.

Hallinan simply accepts Hamas’ accounting at face value.  More yet, he goes even beyond Hamas and states flatly, without even bothering to cite a source for his certitude, that the “the overwhelming number of [casualties were] civilians,” when all objective evidence indicates otherwise.  Hallinan refuses to examine the vast evidence that Hamas’ used its civilian population as a large human shield, by for example, bunkering its leadership in the basement of hospitals.

So who is correct, Hallinan and Hamas, or the IDF?  We cannot say for sure, except we do know that the IDF has the better track record for honesty.