Hamas’s Casualty Numbers Games Journalists and Joe Biden lend credence to bogus counts from the Gaza Health Ministry. By David Adesnik
As Israeli troops batter Hamas and drive its surviving forces to the southern edge of the Gaza Strip, the Gaza Health Ministry has etched in the public mind a statistic that casts Israel’s war of self-defense as a bloodbath: 70% of the dead in Gaza are women and children, the Hamas-run ministry says, and more than 30,000 lives in total have been lost. Is it true?
President Biden, who pledged in October that Israel would never stand alone, has recently talked about “red lines” to prevent the Jewish state from eliminating Hamas’s final stronghold—because, as Mr. Biden put it, “they cannot have another 30,000 Palestinians dead.”
Mr. Biden isn’t alone in taking Hamas’s numbers at face value. The United Nations also relies on the Health Ministry’s data. The U.S. news media include the ministry’s latest numbers in its daily updates on the war. In October the Washington Post’s Adam Taylor vouched for Hamas, writing: “Many experts consider figures provided by the ministry reliable, given its access, sources and accuracy in past statements.”
Yet in a series of lengthy reports, the ministry admits that the figures the media treat as authoritative rely in part on reporting from . . . the media. The ministry says its casualty counts include two types of fatalities: those recorded by medical facilities and those reported by “reliable media sources.” In its March 31 report, the ministry attributes 15,070 of the dead, or 45.9%, to news reports. From which outlets? The ministry never says.
Its choices are limited, since Gaza has no independent media. It has networks like al-Aqsa that are extensions of Hamas and other armed factions. It has Al Jazeera, the Qatari state network that describes the atrocities of Oct. 7 as an “incursion” and denies that any “widespread and systematic” sexual assault took place. Western outlets report from Gaza, but they rely on the ministry for their casualty data.
Initially, the ministry’s data earned the confidence of foreign journalists because Gaza health officials had direct access to information from local medical facilities. Yet the ministry’s reports concede there has been an “interruption of communication” with many hospitals in the strip—meaning those from which Hamas withdrew amid the Israeli offensive. At present the ministry receives fresh data from only two facilities, both in southern Gaza.
While acknowledging the issues with its data, the ministry hasn’t made much effort to educate those who rely on its numbers. It distributes its statistical reports via Telegram, a social-media app, and only in Arabic. The ministry’s daily updates don’t disclose underlying issues with the data.
All the same, an enterprising correspondent with a willingness to question the dominant narrative could easily have found and translated the reports. Gabriel Epstein, an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, did this soon after the ministry published its first statistical report in December. He found that the deaths attributed to “reliable media sources” consisted almost entirely of women and children. Of the 6,629 fatalities attributed to media, 1,941 were women, 4,678 children and only 10 men.
Over time, media reports have accounted for an ever larger share of the ministry’s data. Of nearly 11,000 fatalities reported between Jan. 1 and March 31, the ministry derived 77.7% from media reports. Adult males account for only 9% of fatalities attributed to the news, even though Gaza’s sex ratio is close to even and more than half its residents are adults.
If one removes the questionable data from the ministry’s numbers, it becomes clearer that Israel has made considerable efforts to minimize the war’s effect on civilians, while Hamas continues to use hospitals as fortresses. Instead of drawing so-called red lines for a U.S. ally, as if it were a threat to American values and interests, Mr. Biden should encourage Israel to dispatch Hamas swiftly, since the terror group has brought nothing but misery to Gazans and Israelis alike.
Mr. Adesnik is director of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
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