On May 6, the United Nations' Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that 34,735 Gazans had been killed as a result of Israel's offensive. The May 6 numbers detailed that 9,500 women and 14,500 children died. Two days later, OCHA revised its accounting downward with 24,686 identified deaths, which means approximately 10,000 unidentified deaths. Why the discrepancy?
The Gaza fatality estimates are all coming from Hamas, which is the same Hamas that perpetrated the October 7 attacks in which it raped, kidnapped, tortured, murdered, and decapitated Israeli civilians. The higher estimate in the May 6 figures came from Hamas' Government Media Office (GMO). The May 8 estimate came from the Ministry of Health (MoH). The MoH counts deaths that are verified both by the hospitals and the media. If the Left-leaning Vox is correct in asserting that the MoH has been more accurate in previous conflicts with Israel, then the higher GMO count is less reliable because there are no remains to confirm the death.
Aside from other irregularities with MoH data (see more below), I am suspect of MoH data because Hamas has more at stake in this war than they did in previous conflicts with Israel. But let us assume that the MoH data are accurate for a moment. The MoH show that the UN, by relying more heavily on GMO figures, has been using data that inflates the casualty estimates by 10,000 dead, or exaggerating the figures by about 29 percent. The GOH's fatality count for women was 9,500 women and 14,500 children, whereas the MoH's count is 7,797 children and 4,959 women. Yes, war zones are messy and makes it all the more difficult to collect accurate data. Yet what we see here is that the children fatalities were exaggerated by 86 percent and women fatalities by 92 percent (more on that in a moment).
This is not the first instance we have seen numbers in the latest Israel-Hamas War that have been exaggerated or falsified. In October 2023, the MoH claimed that 500 were struck dead in the al-Alhi Arab Hospital. The media were all too eager to erroneously blame Israel for the bombing when it turned out to be a rocket from Gaza that struck the hospital.
This was not the only faux pas on the MoH's end. At the beginning of the war, there was a small period of time (10/26/2023 to 11/10/2023) when the MoH was publicly reporting daily casualty figures (look here for more data from various sources). As University of Pennsylvania statistics professor Abraham Wyner shows in his analysis of the MoH data, these daily casualty numbers are fabricated. If you look at the figure below, you see that the daily casualty figures were increasing in a linear fashion. War casualties do not function linearly. Some days have large attacks where others have less military action. Casualty figures are more variable in a war zone, which suggests foul play on MoH's part.
To adequately assess a situation, you need to analyze the best information available as dispassionately as possible, a concept that was clearly lost on decision-makers during the COVID pandemic. What we see is that the data coming from the Hamas government are shoddy at best and fabricated at worst. This is more than quibbling over figures or an academic debate. Mainstream international media has been outraged because it used Hamas' fatality statistics to supposedly prove that over 70 percent of the fatalities on the Gazan side were women and children. These numbers are being used as part of the justification to naïvely call for a permanent ceasefire, charge Israel in international court with the baseless charge of genocide, or chide Israel's response for not being "proportionate," whatever that means.
Hamas has a vested interest in convincing the world to believe that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) are a trigger-happy bunch looking to indiscriminately target women and civilians. After all, perpetuating data manipulation to exaggerate the deaths of women and children makes Israel look all the more reprehensible in the global community's eyes. This is in spite of the fact that Israel has done more than any other military in history to prevent civilian deaths, thereby keeping the civilian death ratio lower than many other wars fought in the modern era.
This war is a calamity for Gazan civilians, as is the case for civilians trying to survive in any war zone. Yet no one wants to look at how Hamas planned that its citizens suffer, whether it is using its civilians as human shields or launching missiles from civilian sites. It should have been clear from the beginning of the war that data published by anti-Semitic, homophobic, genocidal terrorists who have no regard for its citizens should require greater scrutiny than normal because quite frankly, their numbers have lost all credibility. Whether it is the COVID pandemic, climate change, or the Israel-Hamas War, we should call for as much facts, rationale, and logic as possible. It has become clear once more that there are many media outlets and politicians that are not interested in such things getting in the way of their preconceived notions and sensationalism.
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