Many legacy media outlets have been publishing inaccurate casualty figures for Palestinians in the conflict in Gaza, and they have only themselves to blame.
On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas and other Iranian proxies invaded Israel, massacring more than 1200 people and taking hundreds of people hostage. In response, Israel launched a military operation in Gaza with the express aim of destroying the U.S.-designated terrorist group. For more than a year, many in the press have been regurgitating Hamas propaganda.
News agencies frequently cite the “Gaza Health Ministry” or “Gaza health officials” in their reports. However, as the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis has frequently noted, that ministry is controlled by Hamas. The terrorist group has a vested interest in inflating casualty statistics. By exaggerating casualty statistics, Hamas hopes to increase international pressure against Israel, thereby limiting the Jewish state’s ability to carry out its military objectives. Hamas has a long history of engaging in this sort of information warfare.
For example, on Oct. 17, 2023 — mere days after the war began — the “Health Ministry” said an Israeli strike on Al Ahli Hospital killed 500 people. This was a lie. Yet leading outlets such as CNN, the New York Times, and others uncritically parroted the claim. It was soon revealed that an errant rocket fired by Islamic Jihad was responsible — and the rocket hit the parking lot, not the hospital itself, with an estimated death toll of only 10 to 50 people.
Now, there is more reason to doubt the Ministry’s claims.
A recent study by the Henry Jackson Society, a U.K.-based think tank, found data from the Hamas-controlled Ministry “contains natural deaths, deaths from before this conflict began and deaths of those killed by Hamas itself; it contains no mention of Hamas combatant fatalities; and it overstates the number of women and children killed.”
The HJS report found other noteworthy discrepancies, “including a 22-year-old registered as a four-year-old, a 31-year-old registered as a one-year-old and several men with male first names registered as female” thereby “artificially increasing the numbers of women and children reported killed.”
Moreover, HJS found that nearly 5,000 natural deaths, including cancer patients, as well as “hundreds of fatalities from attacks which turned out to be misfired rocket launches by Gaza factions,” were also listed by the Ministry as casualties killed by Israel. The study also found that a disproportionate number of the alleged fatalities were fighting aged males, suggesting that “many fatalities classified as civilians may be combatants … contradicting claims that civilians are being disproportionately targeted.”
The report’s author, Andrew Fox, concluded that the Hamas-run Ministry has “systemically inflated the death toll” and that the media’s “uncritical acceptance and dissemination” of the casualty stats created a “misleading picture of the conflict.” Fox cited numerous examples of press outlets relying on the Hamas-supplied figures while minimizing or even outright ignoring Israeli statements about casualties. Put simply, many major U.S. news organizations chose to trust a terrorist group over Israel.
There is a tremendous double standard at play here. It is unthinkable that the media would take claims by al Qaeda or the Islamic State at face value. However, for some reason, there is an exception with Hamas and other terrorist groups whose preeminent target is Israel.
Too many reporters have allowed themselves to serve Hamas’s aims, and in doing so, they’ve discredited their profession.
(Note: A slightly different version of this article appeared as an op-ed in the Washington Examiner on Jan. 8, 2025)