(Sept. 7, 2026 \/ JNS)\n <\/p>\n
Casualties have been a point of contention and a tool to discredit the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza since October 2023. Civilian deaths are both regrettable and inevitable, and the number is often higher in unconventional wars, when the enemy hides in civilian areas. In this context, it is even more important to distinguish between dead militants and collateral damage, something the press has failed to do in the Gaza Strip and now in Lebanon.<\/p>\n
News reports too often casually mention numbers, leaving out that many killed were terrorists. At best, readers are left to investigate that question themselves. At worst, there is an implication that the vast majority are innocent. The \u201cStop the Genocide\u201d camp cites the casualty numbers as evidence.<\/p>\n
Several problems are associated with simply invoking casualties as evidence for a genocide or even excessive force, including that many of them deserve to be dead. The raw number of the dead obscures the fact that many of them are militants and legitimate military targets, not simply collateral damage.<\/p>\n
Three stories exemplify the problem.<\/p>\n
Reporting on the April ceasefire in Lebanon, a New York Times article stated<\/a>: \u201cRoughly 2,300 people were killed in Lebanon during the latest war, said the country\u2019s health ministry, warning that the death toll could rise as bodies are recovered from under the rubble.\u201d The article omitted that, by Hezbollah\u2019s admission<\/a> at the time, approximately 1,000 of the dead were militants.<\/p>\n Likewise, casualty numbers always appear in media and nonprofit reports about the Gaza war. A Washington Post article comes closest to a \u201cfair\u201d report. It mentions that the Hamas government claims<\/a> that \u201cmore than 67,000 Palestinians\u2014or about 3% of Gaza\u2019s population\u2014have been killed in the war, according to the territory\u2019s Health Ministry,\u201d adding:<\/p>\n The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but says the majority of casualties are women and children, an assertion supported by health systems experts, data scientists and an independent survey of mortality figures in Gaza cross-checked against the Health Ministry\u2019s numbers.\n<\/p>\n The Post has stopped using \u201cmostly women and children,\u201d which is untrue, and which CAMERA successfully requested<\/a> corrections since July.<\/p>\n