https://x.com/Aizenberg55/status/2005656085579927794
Debunking Eight Gaza Fatality Myths Fueling the Genocide Hoax
Few aspects of the Gaza war have been more politically weaponized than fatality statistics. Numbers that would normally be treated with extreme caution during an active conflict have instead been elevated to unquestioned fact, recycled by media outlets, NGOs, and activists to support a predetermined narrative of Israeli wrongdoing, often culminating in accusations of genocide.
This article addresses eight of the most persistent myths surrounding Gaza fatality figures. Each has been repeated so frequently that it now functions as assumed background knowledge. Yet every one collapses under basic scrutiny.
Myth #1: Hamas has been accurate in the past, so its data is reliable now
From the outset of the war, UN agencies, NGOs and much of the media treated Hamas's fatality figures as reliable, even though Hamas is a U.S. and EU-designated terrorist organization that live-streamed the murder, rape and kidnapping of nearly 1,200 Israelis on 10/7. Hamas was also actively fighting a war for its survival and therefore had every incentive to manipulate casualty figures for political and legal gain. Yet its numbers were nonetheless elevated as credible, treated as more authoritative than Israelâs and laundered through the official-sounding âMinistry of Healthâ (MoH).
That credulity rests on selective memory. Hamasâs casualty reporting has a documented history of false claims followed by delayed admissions once the fighting has ended and the narrative damage has already been done.
After the 2009 Gaza war, Hamas initially claimed that only 48 fighters were killed out of approximately 1,300 total fatalities, implying a civilian death rate exceeding 95%. Months later, Hamas admitted that between 600 to 700 of the dead were Hamas fighters, closely matching Israelâs figure of 709 combatants. A similar pattern emerged during the 2018 Gaza border riots. Hamas initially described roughly 60 fatalities as civilians killed during âpeaceful protests," but after criticism by a Palestinian interviewer, a senior Hamas official acknowledged that 50 of those killed were Hamas members.
Such manipulations are not anomalies; they are recurring features of Hamasâs wartime casualty reporting. The notion that Hamas is not actively stage-managing fatality figures is not a serious analytical position. Acknowledging this record necessarily means accepting that the current 70,000-fatality claim cannot be taken at face value either.
Myth #2: Even Israel accepts Hamas fatality reporting as accurate
To further launder Hamasâs casualty figures as credible, a new claim emerged: that even Israel accepts Hamasâs data as reliable. This assertion rests almost entirely on a single article published by in January 2024 by fringe outlet Mekomit, which cited two unnamed intelligence officials who allegedly relied on Hamas data to estimate civilian deaths. This thinly sourced claim was then amplified by Vice Media and recycled as fact.
The claim is flatly contradicted by explicit Israeli government statements. In May 2024, Israelâs Foreign Ministry stated that the figures âhave been manipulated by the Hamas terrorist organization,â are ânot accurate,â and âdo not reflect the reality on the ground.â Israeli officials have repeatedly emphasized that Hamasâs casualty reporting is fabricated.
Myth #3: 70% or "most" fatalities are women and children
The 70% figure was one of the most widely circulated claims during the war's first six months, even though it was evident early on that Hamas was inflating the number of women and children killed. In May 2024, Hamas released updated fatality data that reduced the proportion of women and children from 70% to 52%. Despite this revision, much of the media simply shifted to the shorthand claim that a "majority" of those killed were women and children.
Yet the most recent data show that, according to Hamasâs own figures, approximately 52% of Gazaâs fatalities are adult men. This has not led to headlines stating that a âmajorityâ of those killed are adult men. That framing flows in only one direction. Recent analysis suggests that women and children likely account for closer to 30% of total fatalities, and thousands of teens are actually combatants.
Myth #4: 83% of Gazaâs fatalities are civilians
The â83% civiliansâ claim is the product of a deliberately rigged counting rule that has nonetheless hardened into canon. It originated in a +972 Magazine article by the same "journalist" (Yuval Abraham) who falsely claimed that the IDF accepts Hamas casualty data as accurate.
The calculation counts only the apparently 8,900 combatants identified by first and last name by the IDF and subtracts that figure from the total fatality count. Every remaining death is then labeled âcivilianâ by default. Unnamed combatants simply disappear from the record. The method ignores fighters killed in real-time combat who were never identified by name, those buried in tunnels or otherwise unrecovered, and an estimated 15,000 new Hamas recruits who were never on the IDFâs prewar rosters. Israel, by contrast, estimates approximately 25,000 combatants killed, a figure aligned with U.S. assessments.
This standard is applied in no other war. The U.S. did not identify ISIS fighters by name in Mosul or Raqqa, nor has any Western military ever been required to produce a named roster of enemy dead for combatant fatalities to âcount.â Applied retroactively, this methodology would reclassify the overwhelming majority of ISIS fighters killed by the U.S. and allies as civilians.
When challenged, proponents retreat to a strawman argument: that under international law, anyone is presumed a civilian unless proven to be a combatant. This misrepresents how the law actually operates. The presumption of civilian status is a real-time battlefield rule, not a post-hoc statistical requirement that combatants be individually named after death. International law does not require armies to recover name tags or publish rosters of enemy fighters killed in order for those deaths to be lawfully classified as combatant casualties.
At this point, the â83% civilianâ claim is not merely wrong. It is willfully malicious, easily disproven, internally incoherent, and sustained only through selective omission. Anyone who continues to cite it as credible is no longer engaged in analysis.
Myth #5: Gaza fatalities are undercounted; the total exceeds 100,000
Studies claiming massive undercounts rely on speculative modeling rather than observed evidence. They fail to address a central empirical fact: throughout the war, Gazans have been able to report deaths without a recovered body, and they have done so extensively.
For over two years, the MoH has accepted fatality reports via online forms and phone calls even in the absence of remains. Families have strong financial incentives to report deaths, including eligibility for compensation, and the MoH actively encourages such reporting. By the MoHâs own data, over 13,000 deaths have already been recorded without physical remains through family reporting. Claims that total fatalities exceed 100,000 therefore require roughly 30,000 additional deaths to have gone unreported, equivalent to about 40% of all recorded deaths, despite these incentives.
This premise becomes even less tenable after nearly three months of ceasefire during which families could safely file claims in Hamas-controlled territory and obtain compensation. Under such conditions, the idea that tens of thousands of eligible deaths remain unreported is implausible. None of the analyses asserting massive undercounts have even acknowledged this reporting and incentive structure, let alone reconciled their claims with it.
Myth #6: Thousands of unreported deaths remain âunder the rubbleâ
The assertion that large numbers of uncounted Gaza deaths remain âunder the rubbleâ is a direct corollary of the undercount narrative. It is offered as an explanation for why the fatality total is supposedly far higher than reported. Yet there is no independent evidence to support this claim. No verified estimates, recovery data, or reporting gaps substantiate large numbers of unreported deaths beneath rubble.
Gazaâs reporting system does not require the recovery of a body, and families have already reported thousands of deaths without remains. The reporting form even lists an option for body "under the rubble." If such deaths existed at scale, they would already appear in the records. Moreover, given the IDFâs sustained focus on Hamasâs tunnel network, unrecovered bodies are far more likely to be combatants killed in underground fighting than civilians buried beneath residential rubble. Recent Hamas fighters discovered by the IDF in a tunnel in Rafah had already been included in earlier Hamas fatality lists, demonstrating that so-called âunder the rubbleâ deaths are already incorporated into the claimed 70,000 figure.
Myth #7: Gaza is the most fatal of the 21st century
The claim that the Gaza war is the âmost fatalâ conflict of the 21st century fails under every coherent metric. It does not hold for total deaths, civilian deaths, the number or percentage of women and children killed, deaths as a share of the population, or deaths over a comparable time period.
In absolute terms, multiple post-2000 conflicts produced far higher death tolls, including wars in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Sudan, Ethiopia, Ukraine and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Framing the claim proportionally does not rescue it. Numerous 20th- and 21st-century wars inflicted substantially higher population losses than Gaza. Nor does narrowing the time frame help. Gaza is not the deadliest conflict per year, per month, or per day when compared with other recent wars. Emphasizing women and children likewise fails, as other conflicts produced equal or higher proportions without being treated as historically exceptional.
This article provides specific comparative data and source links supporting each conclusion. These comparisons are not made in good faith. They are selectively constructed to portray Israel as uniquely criminal and to imply genocide by statistical exaggeration rather than evidence.
Myth #8: Hamasâs Fatality Count Includes Only War Deaths
Multiple layers of corroborating evidence indicate that natural deaths are included in Hamasâs reported 70,000 fatality total. A recent IPC report included, for the first time, a chart listing thousands of natural deaths for calendar year 2025. Yet the MoH continues to insist that its figures reflect only war-related deaths while never publishing a separate accounting of natural deaths. If the 70,000 figure truly represented only war deaths, releasing a parallel list of natural deaths would clarify the record and strengthen that claim. The continued absence of such a list, which would necessarily exist if the 70,000 figure included only war deaths, even months into the ceasefire, indicates that deaths of all causes are combined in the reported total.
Using historical mortality data and analysis of the published fatality lists, natural deaths embedded in the total are estimated at 11,000, though the precise figure cannot be confirmed. Removing natural deaths from the headline fatality count materially alters key metrics used to characterize the war, which helps explain why the issue has been consistently avoided.
The fatality narrative surrounding Gaza has been amplified by institutions and media outlets that abandoned basic standards of verification. Each of the myths addressed here rests on the same foundation: selective statistics, improvised methodologies, and the elevation of claims made by a terrorist organization to the status of established fact.
These myths persist not because the evidence supports them, but because they sustain a predetermined storyline in which Israel is conducting an illegal war and Gaza is portrayed as uniquely deadly. In this framing, conclusions are treated as premises, while the evidentiary burden those premises require is never met. For readers seeking a comprehensive, data-driven examination of the underlying numbers themselves, this analysis builds on and complements my earlier work, Gaza Fatality Analysis: The Truth Behind the 70,000 Number.
Reminder that there is no number at which a war becomes a "genocide." Because it's not about number, it's about intent.
https://www.un.org/en/genocide-prevention/definition
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/rafah-evacuation-israel-biden-administration-antony-blinken-jake-sullivan-hamas-3e3c85f7
The White House changes its tune after Israel evacuates 950,000.
Remember Rafah? For months, the Biden Administration bitterly opposed an Israeli invasion of Hamasâs last stronghold in Gaza. The mantra was that Israel had âno credible planâ to evacuate the cityâs 1.3 million civilians. Yet the Israelis went ahead anyway, and two weeks later they have safely evacuated an estimated 950,000 people.
https://www.newsweek.com/israel-has-created-new-standard-urban-warfare-why-will-no-one-admit-it-opinion-1883286
In many ways, Israel has had to abandon this established playbook in order to prevent civilian harm. The IDF has telegraphed almost every move ahead of time so civilians can relocate, nearly always ceding the element of surprise. This has allowed Hamas to reposition its senior leaders (and the Israel hostages) as needed through the dense urban terrain of Gaza and the miles of underground tunnels it's built.
Hamas fighters, who unlike the IDF don't wear uniforms, have also taken the opportunity to blend into civilian populations as they evacuate. The net effect is that Hamas succeeds in its strategy of creating Palestinian suffering and images of destruction to build international pressure on Israel to stop its operations, therefore ensuring Hamas' survival.
Israel gave warning, in some cases for weeks, for civilians to evacuate the major urban areas of northern Gaza before it launched its ground campaign in the fall. The IDF reported dropping over 7 million flyers, but it also deployed technologies never used anywhere in the world, as I witness firsthand on a recent trip to Gaza and southern Israel.
Israel has made over 70,000 direct phones calls, sent over 13 million text messages and left over 15 million pre-recorded voicemails to notify civilians that they should leave combat areas, where they should go, and what route they should take. They deployed drones with speakers and dropped giant speakers by parachute that began broadcasting for civilians to leave combat areas once they hit the ground. They announced and conducted daily pauses of all operations to allow any civilians left in combat areas to evacuate.
These measures were effective. Israel was able to evacuate upwards of 85 percent of the urban areas in northern Gaza before the heaviest fighting began. This is actually consistent with my research on urban warfare history that shows that no matter the effort, about 10 percent of populations stay.
As the war raged on, Israel began giving out its military maps to civilians so they could conduct localized evacuations. This, too, has never been done in war. During my recent visit to Khan Yunis, Gaza, and the IDF civilian harm mitigation unit in southern Israel, I observed as the army began using these maps to communicate each day where the IDF would be operating so civilians in other areas would stay out of harm's way.
