The way much of the media handled last week\u2019s \u2018news\u2019 about Gaza\u2019s death toll is nothing short of shameful.<\/p>\n
On 29 January, left-wing Israeli newspaper Haaretz<\/a> reported, based on an anonymous source, that the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) had \u2018accepted\u2019 the Gaza Health Ministry\u2019s (GHM) estimate of 70,000 Palestinian deaths since October 2023. Immediately, major outlets ran headlines declaring an Israeli \u2018u-turn\u2019 \u2013 after all, officials had long dismissed such figures as Hamas propaganda. Journalists and commentators, who had spent two years lambasting those sceptical of the GHM figures, rushed to claim vindication. Among them was Mehdi Hasan, who crowed on social media<\/a> that after every Gaza war, Israel \u2018accepts the Palestinian death toll\u2019. Hasan implied that those of us who dared ask questions about it were engaging in gaslighting<\/a>.<\/p>\n However, as is often the case, there appears to be a significant gap between media narrative and reality. To begin with, the IDF has outright denied Haaretz\u2019s report. LTC Nadav Shoshani of the IDF Spokesperson\u2019s Department stated the reported 70,000 figure \u2018does not reflect official IDF data<\/a>\u2019. In other words, the widely promoted \u2018admission\u2019 was based on an anonymous background briefing \u2013 not an official, verified statement. The IDF emphasised that any formal report would be issued through the proper channels. Unsurprisingly, this caveat has been conveniently ignored in much of the news coverage.<\/p>\n Even so, the framing of this story has been highly misleading. The debate over the death toll was never about whether tens of thousands have died in Gaza. Everyone agrees the war has been devastating. The real dispute, both then and now, concerns the composition of that death toll, the credibility of its sources, and how many of the dead were Hamas combatants or victims of Hamas\u2019s own actions, rather than civilians killed by the IDF. In addressing these questions, the media\u2019s performance has been appalling.<\/p>\n From the outset of the war, the Hamas-run GHM became the main source of casualty figures in Western reports. By early 2024, the GHM was claiming that about 70 per cent of the dead were \u2018women and children\u2019<\/a> \u2013 a statistic cited endlessly by sympathetic journalists and activists. This claim was always nonsense, and is easily disproven just by looking more closely at Hamas\u2019s own data<\/a>. Most of the casualties were, in fact, male, with a disproportionate number of those being of fighting age. But you wouldn\u2019t know that from reading the BBC.<\/p>\n Those of us who dared to scrutinise the Gaza death toll were not denying that civilians were being killed. We were simply emphasising that the figures came from a party directly involved in the conflict. A study of international coverage<\/a> between February and May 2024 found that a staggering 84 per cent of major media reports failed to distinguish between combatant and civilian deaths when citing Gaza\u2019s death toll. Ninety-eight per cent<\/a> of reports cited Hamas\u2019s numbers, while only five per cent referenced Israeli estimates. Tellingly, one in five articles didn\u2019t even attribute the death toll to a source, presenting Hamas\u2019s tally as if it were an uncontested fact. Meanwhile, on the rare occasions that Israeli figures were mentioned, they were often treated with outright scepticism. This blatant double standard undoubtedly laid the foundations for today\u2019s rampant disinformation.<\/p>\n Enjoying spiked?<\/p>\n Why not make an instant, one-off donation?<\/p>\n We are funded by you. Thank you!<\/p>\n \n \u00a35 Choose an amount<\/p>\n \n Donate now\n <\/p>\n \n Please wait… <\/p>\n Over a year ago, the Henry Jackson Society<\/a> published my team\u2019s analysis on the GHM\u2019s fatality lists. The findings were damning. We discovered that Hamas\u2019s lists were riddled with errors and non-combat deaths. Individuals\u2019 ages and genders were frequently misreported (men were listed as women, adults as children) in ways that artificially inflated the count of female and child victims. The lists included people who had died before the war \u2013 including those killed by Hamas\u2019s own actions (such as by misfired militant rockets). All of these were lumped together as if Israel was directly responsible. Unsurprisingly, the published toll made no mention of any Hamas combatants whatsoever. Every single fatality was implicitly presented as a civilian who died as a result of Israeli strikes \u2013 a near-impossible scenario in a conflict of this nature.<\/p>\n We also observed evidence that the Gazan death toll encompassed natural deaths, which would have occurred regardless of the war. Gaza, like any society, experiences deaths from illness and old age every day. These do not stop during wartime. But the GHM\u2019s methodology appeared to include all manner of deaths in the conflict tally. It even used a public Google Form for individuals to self-report deceased relatives. Given that compensation is offered to families of the deceased, this was clearly a system prone to duplicate entries or misuse. Our qualitative analysis found that these lists were unreliable, and the media should never have treated them as definitive.<\/p>\n Initially, the Palestinian representative in London angrily dismissed our warnings. But a few months later, Hamas discreetly took action that proved our point. In March 2025, the Gaza Health Ministry released an updated casualty report that had quietly removed around 3,400 names<\/a> that appeared on previous lists. At least a thousand supposed child victims were among those deleted. The likely explanation is that these were duplicate entries, errors, or otherwise invalid records that Hamas erased once they were identified. Our paper was validated: the lists contained thousands of errors.<\/p>\n Our research identified a consistent pattern in conflicts in Gaza: Hamas hides its combatant casualties during the fighting, only acknowledging them much later (if at all). This war has been no exception. Hamas officials have largely remained silent on how many of their militants have perished. Meanwhile, the IDF has consistently reported its estimates of enemy fighters killed. By late 2025, the IDF stated it had killed at least 22,000 Hamas and allied combatants<\/a> in Gaza. It reported that the fatalities were roughly one-third combatant, two-thirds civilian<\/a>. This ratio, though tragic, has been consistently maintained in Israeli military briefings. It is a far cry from the \u2018nearly all civilians\u2019 picture painted by Hamas.<\/p>\n Can we say for sure that the IDF\u2019s own militant body count is reliable? Of course, Israel is itself an actor in the conflict. But there is historical precedent to suggest its figures are more reliable. After the 2014 Gaza war, independent analyses of casualty lists, along with statements made by Hamas officials, revealed that hundreds of the dead were combatants. Though during the 2014 conflict, Hamas had insisted that almost all fatalities were civilian, the numbers ended up roughly aligning with Israeli estimates.<\/p>\n The same dynamic is unfolding now. While Hamas\u2019s public statements still account for zero militant deaths, behind closed doors, Palestinian sources have acknowledged thousands of militant losses via their Telegram channels<\/a>. Our report found that Hamas privately pegged around 6,000 of the dead as their fighters. While this number is far lower than Israel\u2019s estimate, it offers stark proof that the GHM\u2019s narrative is a fabrication.<\/p>\n
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