UN Changes Show its Casualty Numbers for Gaza Have Been Nonsensical
When will the media catch up and start reporting reality?
Today we have a new article from contributor Brian Henry. Brian has looked in more detail at the casualty figures coming out of Gaza and explains why the world should not be relying on them. Please read all about it below.
So will the media now stop pretending that Hamas tells the truth? Nope. Not even after the United Nations has tacitly admitted that their casualty figures for Gaza – figures which come from Hamas and which the media has broadcast to the world – have been completely inaccurate.
How many women and children have died as a result of Hamas’s current war against Israel? We have an exact count for Israelis. For Palestinians, we can only make an educated guess. We do know that a few days ago, the UN quietly cut the numbers it had previously been reporting of woman and child deaths by about half (see here).
The UN’s numbers came from Hamas.
Whether the media report them as coming from the UN or from WHO, from Save the Children or from Doctors Without Borders, all casualty figures coming out of Gaza originate with the Gaza Health Ministry, which is to say from Hamas. No UN agency or NGO has any capacity to independently compile casualty figures in Gaza.
In turn, the Gaza Health Ministry tells us that it compiles its figures from two sources – Gaza hospitals and “trusted media sources.” Those trusted media sources are in fact Gaza’s Government Media Office, which is Hamas’s propaganda bureau. These media sources may be trusted by Hamas, but they shouldn’t be trusted by anyone else.
At the end of 2023, three months into the war, figures from Hamas’s Media Office listed the deaths of 1,900 women and 4,700 children, but only 10 men (here). Unless all men have fled Gaza, Israel hasn’t killed any Hamas fighters, and/or Gazan men are immune to death in war, these figures were and are absurd. Clearly, they’re fictitious
Hamas reported deaths as of the end of 2023 ———-Source: Hamas Media Office
The UN is still pretending that Hamas didn’t just make up these numbers and that Hamas’s total casualty count (currently around 35,000) is correct, but a third of that count came from Hamas’s Media Office, and the UN now reports these supposed casualties as “Unidentified.”
This leaves 24,000 deaths reported by hospitals. Just because the supposed source is Gaza hospitals, we have no reason to believe the remaining toll of 24,000 deaths is any less fictitious. For example, back in November when an errant Hamas rocket hit the parking lot of the al-Ahli Hospital, Hamas claimed it was an Israeli strike on the hospital itself and the Hamas Health Ministry claimed 470 people were killed.
Intelligence agencies of Canada, the UK, France, the US, and numerous independent experts all identified an errant Hamas rocket as the true source of the strike and the numbers of supposed casualties as hugely exaggerated.
The Hamas Health Ministry attributed this (hugely exaggerated) number to the hospital. Maybe so. Hamas intimidates every Palestinian in Gaza. Hamas has governed Gaza for many years and has appointed, not only everyone in the Health Ministry, but also the hospital administrators. The lies may come from hospital staff or the Health Ministry or the Media Office – but the true source really the same. All casualty figures coming out of Gaza come from Hamas and serve Hamas’s propaganda aims.
This is why Hamas’s casualty figures make no distinction between Gazans killed by Israel and Gazans killed by errant rockets fired by Hamas. Nor do they distinguish between civilian children killed in the crossfire of the war and child soldiers killed in combat. More broadly these numbers don’t distinguish between civilians and Hamas terrorists of any age. They hide the fact that 15,000 of those killed have been Hamas terrorists. It’s all just one big number, because for propaganda, bigger is always better.
But the media has known – or should have known – since at least December when Honest Reporting first published an analysis (here) that Hamas’s breakdown of casualties between women and children on the one hand and men on the other hand is simply impossible.
You can see the latest authoritative breakdowns of Hamas’s casualty figures in these two articles, both published in March: “Statistically Impossible” by three academics: Tom Simpson, Lewi Stone, and Gregory Rose, in Fathom here, and “How the Gaza Ministry of Health Fakes Casualty Numbers” by Abraham Wyner, a professor of Statistics and Data Management, in Tablet here.
To get the full picture, you need to read to both articles, but if you’re strapped for time, listen to a brief interview with Professor Wyner on CBC here.
Surely it can’t surprise anyone that the numbers supplied by Hamas are fiction – who would ever have expected otherwise? This is a terrorist group. These people burn babies alive.
Yet the media continues to treat every media bulletin coming out of Hamas’s Media Office with unquestioning credulity. Worse, the media disguises these bulletins, referring to the Gaza Health Ministry without mentioning it’s an arm of a terrorist organization and reports claims from NGOs and the UN while failing to mention Hamas as the original source for the claims.
The media is not just transcribing just Hamas’s fabricated numbers and reporting them as news. Since the bogus story of the supposed Israel attack on the al-Ahli Hospital, Hamas has issued an unending deluge of propaganda, falsely claiming Israeli atrocities both big and small, and the media uncritically reports them all.
Often, the media will broadcast Hamas claims as simple fact. To give one tiny example out of many hundreds: On May 19 CP24 reported, “Israeli airstrike kills 20 people in central Gaza, mostly civilians.”
The sole source for this claim? Hamas. But that’s something CP24 didn’t bother to mention.
Certainly, this war is inflicting grievous suffering on the people of Gaza. Most of the population has been displaced, because Israel has urged Gazans to move out of harm’s way so that it can wage war while harming as few civilians as possible.
Certainly, also thousands of Gazan civilians have died during this war. But responsibility for all those Palestinian deaths and all the misery of this war rests with Hamas.
Hamas forced this war on Israel.
Israel has no choice but to try to end Hamas’s rule over Gaza, to destroy it as a military force, and to kill or capture all its leaders. Otherwise, Hamas will rebuild, and has promised to inflict further atrocities on Israel – to repeat the atrocities of October 7 endlessly.
Hamas’s strategy is to embed itself so deeply in civilian infrastructure that any attempt to attack it will necessarily kill civilians. Rather than be concerned about Palestinian deaths, senior Hamas leader Ghazi Hamad said they were “proud to sacrifice Martyrs,” meaning the people of Gaza and regardless of whether they want to be sacrificed (here).
From Hamas’s perspective, the more civilian deaths and misery (whether real or invented) and the more Israeli atrocity fables Hamas can get the media to broadcast, the better, because as a result the international community will apply pressure ever increasing pressure on Israel to let Hamas win. This is just what we are seeing as three European countries announce their intention to recognize an (as yet nonexistent) state of Palestine.
So far, with the aid of its many friends in the international community and its allies in the media, Hamas’s propaganda war has succeeded in slowing Israel down. But at last, Israel is proceeding into Rafah, where most of Hamas’s remaining battalions are hiding.
In response, we can expect a new spate of propaganda. But the basic reality will remain unchanged: Israel is doing more than any army in history to minimize civilian casualties.
Israel routinely gives up the element of surprise in order to preserve civilian life. To warn civilians of impending attack, the Israeli army phones and texts individual households and provides instructions and maps of where to go, and allows daily pauses in combat to allow more civilians to clear out.
When Israel had to take al-Shifa Hospital for a second time after Hamas forces re-grouped there, and turned it once again into a military base, Israel was able to do so while keeping the hospital functioning.
The Israeli army evacuated 6,200 civilians sheltering at the compound. They also moved 350 patients and medical staff to another part of the complex and provided food, water and medical supplies There were even Israeli doctors helping with the evacuation – all while other members of the IDF were simultaneously carrying out a full-scale battle with Hamas.
Such a maneuver in warfare has been previously unheard of.
Unlike many in the media, military professionals – who have the advantage of understanding war – praise Israel’s efforts. For example, read this piece giving the view of Colonel Richard Kemp, former commander of British forces in Afghanistan and head of the international terrorism team at the British Joint Intelligence Committee (here) or this piece by John Spencer, Chair of Urban Warfare Studies at West Point (here).
Both Spencer and Kemp point out that compared to other wars with similar conditions, Israel has managed to keep the civilian casualty count extraordinarily low. In Afghanistan, Kemp says, there were three civilians killed for every fighter who died, a ratio 3 to 1. In Iraq, the ratio was 5 to 1. He believes that in Gaza, Israel has managed to keep the ratio as low as 0.8 to 1.
Israel’s own guestimate is not quite as optimistic, with the ratio slightly higher than 1 civilian for every Hamas fighter killed (here). But still, that is the best civilian to fighter ratio in the history of modern warfare – a fact which has gone almost entirely unreported.
Also unreported: Hamas forced this war on Israel and so bears responsibility for every casualty on either side. Moreover, Hamas could lay down its arms, free the hostages, and end this war tomorrow. But it won’t, because Hamas is a death cult and values dead Palestinians far more than live ones.
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Andrea Samuel’s’ column in today’s Jerusalem Post is relevant to what countries outside Israel focus on. According to her, the western mainstream media long ago moved on from October 7, and is now primarily interested in the destruction in Gaza and the need to get food to displaced Gazans. In this scenario, Israel and the IDF are the aggressors, and Gaza and Gazans are the victims of that aggression. That’s an important reason why the false number of casualties has been so readily accepted. In addition, there is now virtually no mention in the MSM about ongoing rocket attacks on Israel, the displacement of Israelis from northern and southern communities, or the long-forgotten massacre of October 7 (according to one UK newscaster, “the Hamas thing”). According to Samuels, the ongoing plight is Israel and Israelis is therefore minimized or ignored in the media outside Israel.
As sad as war and death is, this article proved to be enlightening and builds pride because as you said "Israel is doing more than any army in history to minimize civilian casualties." Hamas on the other hand, is barbaric and as inverted as Alice in Wonderland, with Hamas leaders able to celebrate every death that they have it in their power to prevent. Because, as you also said, "Hamas could lay down its arms, free the hostages, and end this war tomorrow."