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Posted: Mon Mar 25, 2024 3:11 pm
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... eath-toll/
Biden’s dismissal of the reported Palestinian death toll
The Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7 killed more than 1,400 civilians and soldiers, according to a count by the Israeli prime minister’s office. Israel’s response — a bombing campaign and now a major ground assault — had killed 8,309 as of Sunday, according to a count by the Gaza Health Ministry, which is controlled by Hamas, a militant group designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department.
In any war, statistics on deaths are fuzzy and subject to change. Almost a month after the Hamas attack, the precise number of dead from it is unclear, as 200 bodies remain unidentified. As of Tuesday, Israel’s Haaretz newspaper had published the names of 1,009 verified dead (657 civilians and the rest soldiers, police and rescue services), with names being added daily.
The daily death count released by the Gaza Health Ministry has helped stir protests around the world, as the total has quickly exceeded the number of dead suffered by Israel. The Israel Defense Forces said it launched more than 7,000 airstrikes into the Gaza Strip, a seaside area that’s only twice the size of D.C. with more than 2 million people.
At an Oct. 25 White House news conference, a reporter began a question to Biden by noting that “the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry says Israeli forces have killed over 6,000 Palestinians, including 2,700 children.”
Biden’s dismissal of the ministry’s statistics — that he had “no confidence” in them — was striking. The State Department has regularly cited ministry statistics without caveats in its annual human rights reports. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which tracks deaths in the conflict, has found the ministry’s numbers to be reliable after conducting its own investigation. “Past experience indicated that tolls were reported with high accuracy,” an OCHA official told The Fact Checker.
Medhat Abbas, the Gaza Health Ministry’s director general, said in an interview that he was so disturbed by Biden’s comment that he ordered his staff to release a 212-page document with the name of every victim identified so far — including age, sex and identity number. The list included almost 7,000 names.
With any numbers, there are caveats. Questions have also been raised about the ministry’s statistics after a still-murky incident at the al-Ahli Hospital was said to have killed nearly 500 people. So let’s explore whether Biden’s opinion of the statistics has a factual basis.
How the Hamas health ministry collects data
Abbas said the ministry primarily relies on death certificates from hospitals and morgues in compiling its daily counts of the number of dead in the conflict, which is then collected in a computerized system. In the document released after Biden’s comment, which was through Oct. 25, the deadliest day was Oct. 24, when 756 people were reported killed, followed by Oct. 23, when 704 were reported killed, and Oct. 17, when 678 were reported killed. The hospital incident took place Oct. 17.
And for each day, more children than adults were listed as killed. On virtually all days — with the notable exception of Oct. 17, the day of the hospital incident — more males than females were reported as killed.
In its death counts, the ministry makes no distinction between the deaths of civilians and combatants. Neither does it list whether a person was killed because a Palestinian rocket aimed at Israel fell short of its target and crashed into a populated area of Gaza. The ministry only lists aggregate totals.
OCHA, when it does its own post-conflict reports, seeks to determine the percentage of combatants. After a 2012 clash, for instance, OCHA determined there were 2,133 deaths in Gaza, of which 644, or 30 percent, were combatants.
In 2014, the New York Times analyzed 1,431 names listed by the ministry as being killed in a war with Israel that year. The newspaper found that the population most likely to be militants, men ages 20 to 29, was the most overrepresented in the death toll. That population represented 9 percent of Gaza’s residents but 34 percent of those killed.
Biden’s dismissal of the reported Palestinian death toll
The Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7 killed more than 1,400 civilians and soldiers, according to a count by the Israeli prime minister’s office. Israel’s response — a bombing campaign and now a major ground assault — had killed 8,309 as of Sunday, according to a count by the Gaza Health Ministry, which is controlled by Hamas, a militant group designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department.
In any war, statistics on deaths are fuzzy and subject to change. Almost a month after the Hamas attack, the precise number of dead from it is unclear, as 200 bodies remain unidentified. As of Tuesday, Israel’s Haaretz newspaper had published the names of 1,009 verified dead (657 civilians and the rest soldiers, police and rescue services), with names being added daily.
The daily death count released by the Gaza Health Ministry has helped stir protests around the world, as the total has quickly exceeded the number of dead suffered by Israel. The Israel Defense Forces said it launched more than 7,000 airstrikes into the Gaza Strip, a seaside area that’s only twice the size of D.C. with more than 2 million people.
At an Oct. 25 White House news conference, a reporter began a question to Biden by noting that “the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry says Israeli forces have killed over 6,000 Palestinians, including 2,700 children.”
Biden’s dismissal of the ministry’s statistics — that he had “no confidence” in them — was striking. The State Department has regularly cited ministry statistics without caveats in its annual human rights reports. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which tracks deaths in the conflict, has found the ministry’s numbers to be reliable after conducting its own investigation. “Past experience indicated that tolls were reported with high accuracy,” an OCHA official told The Fact Checker.
Medhat Abbas, the Gaza Health Ministry’s director general, said in an interview that he was so disturbed by Biden’s comment that he ordered his staff to release a 212-page document with the name of every victim identified so far — including age, sex and identity number. The list included almost 7,000 names.
With any numbers, there are caveats. Questions have also been raised about the ministry’s statistics after a still-murky incident at the al-Ahli Hospital was said to have killed nearly 500 people. So let’s explore whether Biden’s opinion of the statistics has a factual basis.
How the Hamas health ministry collects data
Abbas said the ministry primarily relies on death certificates from hospitals and morgues in compiling its daily counts of the number of dead in the conflict, which is then collected in a computerized system. In the document released after Biden’s comment, which was through Oct. 25, the deadliest day was Oct. 24, when 756 people were reported killed, followed by Oct. 23, when 704 were reported killed, and Oct. 17, when 678 were reported killed. The hospital incident took place Oct. 17.
And for each day, more children than adults were listed as killed. On virtually all days — with the notable exception of Oct. 17, the day of the hospital incident — more males than females were reported as killed.
In its death counts, the ministry makes no distinction between the deaths of civilians and combatants. Neither does it list whether a person was killed because a Palestinian rocket aimed at Israel fell short of its target and crashed into a populated area of Gaza. The ministry only lists aggregate totals.
OCHA, when it does its own post-conflict reports, seeks to determine the percentage of combatants. After a 2012 clash, for instance, OCHA determined there were 2,133 deaths in Gaza, of which 644, or 30 percent, were combatants.
In 2014, the New York Times analyzed 1,431 names listed by the ministry as being killed in a war with Israel that year. The newspaper found that the population most likely to be militants, men ages 20 to 29, was the most overrepresented in the death toll. That population represented 9 percent of Gaza’s residents but 34 percent of those killed.