UK think tank: Gaza death toll inflated to defame Israel for targeting civilians

The Palestinian death toll for the Gaza war appears to include thousands of people who died of natural causes as well as incorrect figures — partly in an effort to inflate the toll of women and children — according to a report by a British think tank released Saturday.

International media outlets are too quick to accept the figures from terror group Hamas that are being manipulated for propaganda needs, The Henry Jackson Society said.

The Gaza health ministry, under Hamas, “has systematically inflated the death toll by failing to distinguish between civilian and combatant deaths, over-reporting fatalities among women and children and even including individuals who died before the conflict began,” the report said.

“This has led to a narrative where the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are portrayed as disproportionately targeting civilians, while the actual numbers suggest a significant proportion of the dead are combatants,” it said.

The research was carried out by the volunteer-based Fifty Global Research Group, supported by Erasmus University Rotterdam’s International Institute of Social and Legal Studies.

The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 44,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far — a toll that cannot be verified and that does not differentiate between civilians and fighters.

Israel says it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.

Some 5,000 Palestinians listed by Hamas as war dead in fact died of natural causes, including cancer patients who later appeared on a list of those still receiving medical care, the HJS found.

In addition, most of the reported fatalities were men between the ages of 15 and 45, with many of their ages lowered by a year when compared to the Palestinian Population Register, in an apparent effort to make it seem that more minors are being killed.

Research report author Andrew Fox wrote, “This misclassification contributes to the narrative that civilian populations, particularly women and children, bear the brunt of the conflict, potentially influencing sentiment and media coverage.”

The age demographic “aligns closely with the expected profile of combatants, further supported by spikes in deaths of men reported by family sources rather than hospitals,” he said.

The think tank said the toll also includes Gazans killed by terrorists’ errant rocket or while food aid is being distributed, including in the case of a 17-year-old who was reportedly shot dead by Hamas last December while waiting to get food for his family.

It said other problems have included adults recorded as children and several men listed as women, though the system was later rectified, leading to a “significant improvement in terms of corrected data.”

Two examples were given were an individual aged 22 who was listed as a four-year-old and a 31-year-old who was listed as an infant.

The study found “the methodology of data collection by the Ministry of Health is not scientifically valid, and that its reports from previous conflicts have also concealed combatant deaths.”

Skewed narrative portrays all casualties as civilian

HJS noted that Israeli and US military intelligence estimate that of the total casualties, 17,000 were Hamas fighters, but that the statistic is often missing from international media reports.

“The omission creates a skewed narrative portraying all casualties as civilian, shaping public opinion and international policy based on incomplete or manipulated data,” the HJS said.

It listed a number of outlets it faulted on the issue, including the BBC, The New York Times, and CNN.

While 98 percent of media outlets reviewed used the Hamas casualty figures, only 5% cited figures from Israeli authorities, it found.

HJS also found that less than one in every 50 articles noted that Gaza health ministry figures were unverifiable or controversial. On the other hand, Israeli statistics “had their credibility questioned in half of the few articles that incorporated them.”

Ambassador Husam Zomlot, the head of the Palestine Mission to the United Kingdom, rejected the findings, telling the UK’s Telegraph newspaper that “numerous international organizations and UN agencies, including the WHO,” have confirmed the numbers, while also warning that many more could still be buried under rubble.

A spokesman for the BBC told the Guardian: “It is challenging to report accurately on the death toll in Gaza, as Israel does not allow independent access to international journalists. BBC News is clear and transparent in sourcing the figures which are available and attributing them to the Hamas-run health authority.”

In September, researchers in Britain released a report claiming the BBC breached its own editorial guidelines 1,533 times in its early coverage of the Israel-Hamas war.

The war erupted on October 7, 2023, when Hamas led a massive cross-border attack on Israel in which terrorists killed 1,200 people and abducted 251 people as hostages to Gaza.

Israel’s military campaign is aimed at destroying Hamas and saving the hostages, of whom 97 remain in captivity.

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