Since the attack on Israel on October 7, world news outlets have uncritically, and stupidly, been regurgitating casualty numbers released by the "government" in Gaza. That "government" is actually the Hamas terrorist group, and if anyone believes anything Hamas says about the war, I would love to sell the naïve fools a bridge over the Chicago River.
My first customer would be the United Nations. It has calmly, deliberately, and knowingly published fatality numbers directly from the terrorists. We've got to hand it to Hamas. It knows exactly how to push the West's buttons and generate sympathy for its cause.
As Reason.com's Liz Wolfe explained, there has been some confusion the last few days about the number of women and children who have died in Gaza as a result of Israel's counter-attacks on Hamas, who are hiding among the civilians hoping to get as many of them killed as possible.
There are two sources of casualty figures in Gaza; both are run by Hamas. But they figure fatalities in different ways. The Government Media Office (GMO) and the Ministry of Health (MoH) record the deaths and release them to the international community.
How reliable are they?
On May 6, the United Nations reported that 34,735 Gazans had been killed. Those numbers included 9,500 women and 14,500 children.
Then, on May 8, the exact same office released data that declared 4,959 "identified" women and 7,797 "identified" children with some 10,000 Gazans buried under rubble.
The higher number is from the media office while the lower number is from the health ministry. The Ministry of Health once reported that the al-Ahli Arab Hospital had been struck by an Israeli missile, killing 500 Gaza civilians. It was later discovered by Israel and confirmed by U.S. intelligence that the projectile was a Palestinian Jihad rocket that veered off course and struck the parking lot of the hospital. The CIA estimated that less than 100 were killed.
The sensationalism of the reporting by both the MoH and GMO makes it difficult to accept any numbers from Hamas-controlled agencies. But that hasn't stopped the Western news media from using tainted numbers of dead Gazans to gin up outrage against Israel.
If you think these data-reporting practices are not so great, you should look at the GMO's account. "Way back on Dec. 11, GMO reported the death of 8,000 children and 6,200 women out of 18,396 total fatalities," writes David Adesnik, the director of research for the nonpartisan Foundation for Defense of Democracies. "Arithmetic shows there were (18,396-8,000-6,200=) 4,196 men. But GMoH reported at the time that hospitals had registered 5,577 male fatalities." In other words: Hamas' two data-reporting entities cannot even line up their stories.
If you're noticing that it sure seems like the GMO inflated numbers of dead women and children, which was then parroted by the U.N.'s OCHA and the news media, you would be correct: Hamas-run government agencies seem to grasp that it's the killing of women and children that strikes international audiences as especially heinous. One thing that's tough, when looking at the adult males category, is not knowing what percentage of those deaths are civilians vs. militants; presumably, many people are viscerally opposed to any innocent civilians being harmed, but far fewer are opposed to the Israeli military attempting to avenge the October 7 deaths while also ensuring that those responsible are stamped out, so a similar massacre does not happen again.
"Over time, media reports have accounted for an ever larger share of the ministry's data," writes David Adesnik for The Wall Street Journal. "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."
The absolute minimum that the Western media should be doing whenever they report any fatality figures from Gaza is to use the caveat "according to numbers supplied by the Gaza Ministry of Health which is controlled by Hamas." Some outlets do it. But many do not.
We'll never get an accurate accounting of dead Gazans from Hamas. Perhaps somewhere buried in the bowels of Hamas tunnels there is an accurate accounting of civilian deaths.
But it will never see the light of day.
