Duh, Of Course Hamas Lied About Casualty Statistics
The UN revised their Gazan casualty statistics, claiming there are too many "unidentified" bodies
On May 8, 2024, the UN revised their Gazan casualty statistics for the war between Israel and Gaza. Many people are confused about this change, so let’s break it down.
The UN previously reported that around 35,000 civilians have been killed in Gaza since the beginning of the war. The original breakdown of this number was that around 15,000 deaths were children, and 10,000 deaths were women, which would make around 10,000 of the deaths adult men.
However, on May 8, the UN changed the demographic breakdown. Now, they are reporting a decrease from approximately 15,000 child fatalities to 8,000 and from 10,000 adult women fatalities to 5,000. Essentially, they cut both numbers in half.
The UN still claims that the total number of casualties remains the same, although they have also admitted that they cannot independently verify any numbers coming from Gaza. They argue the shift comes from a discovery that almost 10,000 reported deaths are from “unidentified bodies,” which means they don’t know whether those dead are men, women, or children.
In summary, while the UN has been repeating claims of over 30,000 dead, with 70% of the deaths being women and children, in reality, they do not know how many people have been killed. Further, they don’t know what percent of those killed are women, children, adult male civilians, or Hamas members.
So, what happened? Why have their statistics been unverified and incorrect?
The UN has been getting their data from the Gaza Ministry of Health, which Hamas runs as the official government of Gaza. They have been conveying false information to inflate their casualties, and this is not the first time they have done this.
For example, on October 17, 2023, the Gaza Ministry of Health (Hamas) claimed that an Israeli missile destroyed Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza and killed around 500 people. However, shortly after this claim, it turned out that the hospital was intact, with the missile hitting the parking lot, not the hospital building. It also was revealed that, more than likely, the blast that hit the parking lot came from within Gaza, not Israel.
We should all know at this point that Hamas are a bunch of lying, evil pieces of shit who have no regard for truth or human life. No one capable of committing the atrocities of October 7 should be deemed trustworthy in the slightest.
What surprises and concerns me, however, is how uncritically the UN, Western politicians, and the mainstream media have repeated everything Hamas says like it is a fact. When Hamas claimed that the hospital was destroyed earlier in the war, many politicians parrotted this lie.
British MP Jeremy Corbyn tweeted, “Israeli air strikes have hit Al Ahli hospital in Gaza. More than 500 people - patients, doctors & those sheltering - have been killed. What unspeakable horror. We will mourn their loss forever.”
In addition, US Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib tweeted, “Israel just bombed the Baptist Hospital killing 500 Palestinians (doctors, children, patients) just like that.”
Mainstream media outlets also unquestioningly repeated this lie.
The New York Times tweeted, “At least 500 people were killed by an Israeli airstrike at a Gaza hospital, the Palestinian Health Ministry said.”
Similarly, BBC tweeted, “Hundreds feared dead or injured in Israeli air strike on hospital in Gaza, Palestinian officials say.”
Although all of these people were proven wrong, and we were all shown that we cannot trust Hamas to tell us the truth, many have continued to quote them as if they are a reliable source of information.
In February, Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez continued to cite casualty numbers from Hamas, tweeting, “Since October 7, 27,478 Palestinians have been killed. 70% are women and children.”
Later in March, President Joe Biden stated that “more than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed” in his State of the Union Address.
Israel has proven that it goes above and beyond to prevent civilian deaths, even when it impedes its goal of defeating Hamas. There has never been a logical reason to believe that the majority of deaths were civilians instead of military targets.
Why would anyone believe anything a terrorist organization says over what they are seeing in front of their eyes?
The reality is that Hamas knows how to exploit the emotions of some irrational Westerners. As they have said, they “love death more than we love life.” They are aware that those of us who are not barbaric animals value life and are horrified by death and destruction.
However, to the monsters who are hiding their military bases under hospitals and preventing civilians from leaving war zones, a high casualty count simply means more martyrs that they can celebrate and use to further their cause. Every action they take is an attempt to emotionally manipulate us into turning against Israel and sympathizing with the terrorists.
We all must recognize that they do not share our moral code, and we cannot trust them or anyone who continues to claim that they provide accurate information. If people continue to follow their emotions blindly instead of valuing facts, they will remain useful idiots supporting Hamas’s evil.
A few thoughts
I will deal with some of the claims made in the article as I felt that they were significant issues within it.
The argument that the Gazan health ministry has been “conveying false information” is tenuous at best. Firstly, the numbers coming out the UN doesn’t mean the casualties didn’t occur but rather that they didn’t have the positive identification for those victims yet. The same Gaza health ministry you insinuate for conveying false information has previously had numbers which concurred with estimates coming from independent NGO’s as well as Israeli’s internal estimates. This is ignoring the fact that even the State Department has deemed the numbers reliable, in fact when President Biden placed doubt on the numbers earlier on in the conflict, the ministry released a detailed list of casualties with ID numbers and other biographical information as proof of their numbers.
On a sidenote your assertion that Hamas are “are a bunch of lying, evil pieces of shit who have no regard for truth or human life” is more of an emotional argument and it is particularly intriguing that you don’t subject Israel to the same critique given their lies during the conflict and before then.
Take as an example the AL-Ahli hospital which you mentioned as an example of Hamas lies, you neglected to mention that the evidence that Israel gave attributing the attack to PIJ was later debunked as not corresponding to the known facts of what happened or the fact that initially some within Israel claimed responsibility. The attack followed the same pattern as the murder of Shireen Abu Akleh a Palestinian-American journalist who Israel initially claimed had been murdered by militants but changed its story after some backlash and evidence to the contrary till it ultimately claimed that the IDF might have been responsible for her death and promised an investigation (which is still pending).
Another claim you make which in my opinion is all the more puzzling is that Israel has done all it can to prevent civilian deaths when we see how Israel has been using dumb bombs instead of precision bombs during its attacks (one member of the Knesset recently even threatened to intensify this due to Biden temporarily withholding large payload bombs to Israel) as well as two separate investigative articles published by 972 magazine which revealed the extent to which AI had been used as part of Israel’s bombing campaign and illustrated how Israel purposefully targeted militants when they were at home for maximum damage (‘where’s daddy’). The reports also showed how Israel would target an area populated with civilians knowingly despite either the lack of military targets or a widely disproportionate militant to civilian ratio. This is to say nothing of the destruction of civilian infrastructure and the fact that Israeli soldiers were on the record stating that they are “no innocents” in Gaza.
Another claim you make is the debunked “Human Shields” argument or the claim that Hamas is one that has been refuted prior to October 7th and since, in fact there has been several documented cases (including one video shot by a captured Israeli drone) of Israeli using Palestinian civilians as human shields.
Your assertion that Hamas is some sort of death cult which preys on western sensibilities is quite frankly detached from reality, they are not the first to make use of the term martyr and don’t go out of their way to kill their people to gain said martyrs. The supposed military base argument is one that Israel has yet to substantiate to this day and even the BBC had to point out some inconsistencies with Israeli claims.
On the topic of al-Shifa there has been the discovery of more than one mass grave there in the aftermath of the Israeli incursion there with evidence suggesting people were executed on the spot, Israel as also destroyed other hospitals in Gaza without providing a smidge of proof that there was any militant activity there.
To conclude, I find it quite disheartening that a substack such as yours which seeks prioritise data over dogma has ended up producing an article stuffed full of debunked claims, emotional and substantiated arguments (of the variety you would readily call out gender idealogues for) and an overlooking of an overwhelming amount of data and research which belie your claim all pint to your prioritisation over pro-Israeli dogma instead of a carefully researched commentary on the facts.
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