New Report on Fatalities in Gaza Makes No Sense
From the day Israel began its genocide in Gaza, it also began assailing the agency which it had previously relied on for casualty statistics in Gaza: the Palestinian Ministry of Health (MoH).
Despite Israeli and American intelligence, along with a virtual unanimity of opinion among international humanitarian organizations testifying to the independence and reputation for conservatism and accuracy of Gaza’s MoH, the United States and most of the mainstream media in the West gave credibility to Israel’s completely fabricated campaign of suspicion about the MoH, consistently referring to it as “Hamas-run,” implying that it was untrustworthy.
It’s a disinformation campaign that takes advantage of the fog of war, and has been remarkably successful, despite the fact that, from October 8, 2023, to this very day, the MoH figures have not been credibly assailed (although several biased and unscientific attempts have withered under scrutiny) and have remained both conservative and dependable. Israeli officials have confirmed this, albeit quietly.
One effect of the campaign is that we really don’t know how many people Israel has killed in Gaza. We know that even the Israel Defense Forces, which have an extremely broad definition of “combatants” which include civil functionaries in the Gazan government, former members of Hamas, and most men of fighting age, estimates that some 83% of those it has killed in Gaza were non-combatants.
It is also a virtual certainty that the official toll from the MoH is an undercount, as many people who are missing and presumed dead, as well as many deaths that have not been reported at hospitals or other sources the Ministry draws from have not been counted. But what is the upper limit of likely deaths in Gaza? We don’t know, and that invites wild speculation.
