On December 12, 2025, The Washington Post published a factually inaccurate advertisement by UNRWA, the United Nations agency responsible for Palestinian refugees. Most notably, it asserts that 83 percent of those killed in Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza were civilians. But this figure is based on a deeply flawed method of calculation.
The Post’s advertising policy states that it does not accept content that is “fraudulent, deceptive, or misleading,” and that it “requires substantiation of factual claims.” UNRWA’s civilian-casualty assertion conflicts with these standards.
The inaccuracy of UNRWA’s claim becomes clear when the underlying data is examined.
“Feelings over facts” LOL. The “83% civilian” calculation is inane, it only counts as combatants killed those the IDF literally ID’d by FIRST & LAST NAME. No army is required to individually name the combatants they killed. You’re a journalist right?https://t.co/KVTalZLmGc
— Aizenberg (@Aizenberg55) January 4, 2026
At the time the ad’s claim was made, a publicly cited database had identified approximately 8,900 names of individuals killed in Gaza as members of terrorist organizations. Citing this database, activists argued that all fatalities beyond those 8,900 must therefore be civilian. At the time there were roughly 53,000 total fatalities reported by Hamas. Terrorist deaths using the figures and assumptions, would therefore account for only 17% of the total.
The basic assumption supporting this conclusion, that anyone not positively identified as a combatant must therefore be a civilian is deeply and obviously flawed. In active combat zones, positive identification of fighters is inherently difficult amidst the chaotic fog of war. Casualty attribution is an ongoing process, not a static snapshot.
The database used to support the 83% claim was necessarily incomplete. It did not account for unidentified combatants, nor did it include recent recruits whose affiliations had not yet been established. Projecting a partial, interim dataset onto the full universe of casualties produces a misleading result.
Expecting a modern military to immediately, or even eventually, identify every combatant it eliminates during wartime is unrealistic. Using the absence of identification as proof of civilian status fundamentally distorts the reality of armed conflict.
Despite these problems, the Post has not responded to CAMERA’s requests to label the UNRWA advertisement as false or misleading.
According the UN’s own data, the “U.N.-recognized famine” is a hoaxhttps://t.co/AtnOn60dda
— Mark Zlochin – מארק זלוצ’ין༝ (@MarkZlochin) October 16, 2025
This silence stands in contrast to the Post’s own reporting practices. In October, 2025 the newspaper published a forensic investigation criticizing Google for failing to remove a YouTube advertisement paid for by the Israeli government, which asserted that there was no famine in Gaza. Post reporters deemed the Israeli ad misleading and faulted Google for allowing it to remain online.
In that case, the Post challenged the Israeli advertisement on the basis of contested claims about famine conditions in Gaza. Yet when similar concerns are raised about a UNRWA ad published in its own pages, the newspaper appears unwilling to apply the same level of scrutiny.
When it comes to deceptive content, the Post seems to enforce one standard for the subjects of its reporting and another for its own advertising operations.