After being contacted by CAMERA, The Washington Post corrected two recent articles falsely claiming that most casualties in Gaza since Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, were women and children.
In the two articles, (“Mamdani says he is looking into whether he can order Netanyahu’s arrest,” July 18, and “Mamdani says New York doesn’t have authority to arrest Netanyahu, urges feds to act,” July 22) The Washington Post cited Gaza’s Health Ministry to claim that over 73,000 people had been killed and that “the majority of casualties are women and children.”
Open-source researchers found a year ago that this was no longer true – as in, even Hamas’s data didn’t support the claim anymore. A recent check of the Ministry’s website shows that the number of men killed is greater than the combined total of women and children. On July 2, 2026, the Hamas media office reported that out of 73,066 people killed during the war, 21,500 were children and 12,500 were women. The total of children and women (34,000) is less than half of all those killed.
CAMERA presented these figures to The Washington Post and after reviewing the information, the Post amended both articles to read, “The ministry does not differentiate between civilians and combatants but says women and children make up roughly half of the fatalities.”
The Post also attached an editor’s note to both stories, acknowledging that the language about women and children in the original version was incorrect.
