Hamas Inflated Gaza Death Figures; Included Natural Deaths, Cancer Patients

Men were listed as women to inflate the number of deaths for women. Analysis of death data from the Gaza Ministry of Health (MoH) reveals repeated cases of men being misclassified as women. Examples include an individual with a male first name (e.g. Muhammad) being recorded as female. This misclassification contributes to the narrative that civilians, particularly women and children, bear the brunt of the conflict and can influence international sentiment and media coverage.

An adult is registered as a child. Significant discrepancies have been identified when adult fatalities are reclassified as pediatric. For example, a 22-year-old individual was listed as a 4-year-old, and a 31-year-old individual was listed as an infant. Such distortions inflate the number of child victims, which has a huge emotional impact and is heavily highlighted in global reporting. These false reports suggest a deliberate attempt to frame the conflict as disproportionately affecting children and undermining the credibility of death toll data.

Disproportionate deaths of combat-age men. Data analysis shows that most of the dead were men between the ages of 15 and 45, contradicting claims that civilians are being unfairly targeted. The statistics for this age group are broadly consistent with the expected combatant profile, and are further supported by the sharp increase in male deaths reported by family sources rather than hospitals. This evidence suggests that many of the dead classified as civilians may have been combatants, although this distinction is omitted in official reports.

Include natural deaths in reporting. Mortality data do not account for 5,000 typical annual natural deaths in Gaza. This omission has raised concerns that war-related deaths include not only natural causes but also deaths from domestic violence and unexploded rockets. Examples of cancer patients previously registered for treatment appearing on war death lists further support this claim. Such actions inflate the number of reported civilian deaths and make it difficult to accurately assess the impact of the conflict.

Media underreports combatant deaths. An analysis of media coverage reveals that only 3% of news stories mention the deaths of fighters, with outlets such as the BBC, CNN, Reuters and the New York Times relying primarily on statistics from the Gaza Ministry of Health. It became. These numbers often lack verification and often fail to distinguish between combatants and civilians. This omission creates a distorted narrative that portrays all casualties as civilians and shapes public opinion and international policy based on incomplete or manipulated data. For example, it is estimated that more than 17,000 Hamas fighters have been killed, but these numbers are largely omitted from global reporting.

The report also states:

Only 5% of media outlets surveyed cited figures released by Israeli authorities, while 98% cited death tolls provided by the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry.

In 19% of media reports examined, figures provided by Hamas-run agencies were used without any citation, suggesting that the figures were incontrovertible.

Furthermore, less than one in 50 articles mentioned that the figures provided by the Ministry of Health were unverifiable or controversial. Surprisingly, the reliability of Israeli statistics was questioned in half of the few articles that included them.

Read the full report here.

Hamas has also repeatedly lied about mass casualties in Gaza, famously claiming that Israel had killed 500 people in an airstrike on a hospital, when in fact the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group had fired a bomb into the hospital's parking lot. He famously claimed that he was killed by a rocket that hit him by mistake. There were relatively few deaths (according to later studies, at most 50 people).