Gaza Ministry of Health Fakes Casualty Numbers

Question

Based on the explanation in the article, how can those numbers be accurate?

Answer 1

This article by the Tablet Magazine alleges that civilian casualties are occurring in the conflict in Gaza, but the Gaza Ministry of Health is generating false number of casualties for non - combatants, women and children. Firstly, I would like to point out that the Tablet is a Jewish run magazine, giving the writers of the publication a bias towards Israel. The main claim of the article is that data about the number of civilian casualties is increasing in a linear growth with very little variation, despite there being a war that would reflect more irregularity. I want to point out that while The Gaza Ministry of Health is controlled by Hamas there are secular factors such as the Fatah who are aligned with the medical services of the ministry. Additionally, the former party over the Health Ministry, the Palestinian Authority, still retains control over the health and education services in Gaza. This is important to identify to showcase there are no political motivations that influence the hierarchy of the Ministry's services. The Ministry's numbers are recorded "of every wounded person occupying a bed and every dead body arriving at a morgue". The information of every person injured or killed is recorded and their data is entered a computerized system to be published by the Ministry. The nature of this conflict makes it difficult to always receive a completely accurate number because of the destruction of infrastructure, lack of electricity and internet, and weak cell service. However, in the past, the U.N humanitarian office has published final death tolls that are very consistent with the Gaza Health Ministry's. For example, in the 2021 war, the ministry reported 260 Palestinians killed; the U.N reported 256. Taking all of this into account I find the Tablet's claim to be misleading. The numbers may not be completely accurate, but I do not think the discrepancies are intentional.

Sources:

What is Gaza’s Ministry of Health and how does it calculate the war’s death toll? | PBS NewsHour

How does Gaza’s Ministry of Health calculate the death toll? | AP News

Answer 2

My conclusion on this matter is that no one knows the true number. If you look at the article above they don't have evidence of an actual number to go against the 30,000 deaths claim. They say that different officials say a different number but are all in the same range. If you type in the title of the article a bunch of Israeli sites and publications would "repost" this claim and write their own article on how the numbers are faked. so you'd be swayed to think that but all of these articles are saying the same thing and nothing that stands out to give me a confirmation. I looked at NPR article about the matter and they claim that 17,000 deaths have been recorded and the other 13,000 deaths got from "media outlets." according to NPR The other 13,000 or so deaths in its overall total of 30,000 are based on accounts from "reliable media sources," though the ministry doesn't cite or say which sources those are. Al-Qudra tells NPR this reliance on public sources of information is the result of multiple communication blackouts, in which phone lines and internet service were cut in Gaza, sometimes for more than a week. This made it difficult to communicate with hospitals and upload the number of casualties to the ministry's database. During some of these blackouts, the ministry in Gaza couldn't provide daily death toll figures.

https://www.npr.org/2024/02/29/1234159514/gaza-death-toll-30000-palestinians-israel-hamas-war

At the end of the day, no one knows the true number because there are way too many variables at play. The only thing I can agree with is that there has been propaganda pushed about the 30,000 death count. Officials are saying that it is mostly women and children but one article raised the claim that that number should be mostly the soldiers who are fighting. This is a lot of hearsay 

Comments

The NPR article you cite actually says that during communication blackouts, hospitals aren't providing death toll figures, so I wonder if the toll is much higher than what has been reported? Also, Time magazine reported that there is science behind the death toll numbers and it's much probably much higher that what's being reported. Les Roberts is an Epidemiologist and Professor Emeritus at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and weighed in on this within the article; he has taken part in the field measurement of mortality in crises including: Rwanda 1994, more than 30 health Zones in the Democratic Repoublic of Congo 1999-2002, Iraq 2004, Zimbabwe 2007, the Central African Repbulic 2009, 2018, and 2022, and Sierra Leone 2000 and 2014. Time says the death toll is conservative and likely higher. https://time.com/6909636/gaza-death-toll/ https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/daily-death-rate-gaza-higher-any-other-major-21st-century-conflict-oxfam