Israeli Military Now Validates Gaza Death Toll It Once Dismissed as Hamas Propaganda
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The Israeli military has conceded the accuracy of the death toll estimates provided by the Health Ministry in the Gaza Strip, a figure it routinely dismissed as Hamas propaganda for over two years. This shift comes as the military begins analyzing the data to determine the breakdown between combatants and civilians killed during its ongoing campaign in the besieged territory.
For years, the Gaza Health Ministry has been the primary source of casualty figures, meticulously documenting the mounting death toll amidst intense conflict and restricted access for independent observers. Despite being part of a Hamas-controlled government, its tallies have been consistently corroborated by human rights advocates, a prestigious medical journal, and the United Nations. The ministry also regularly publishes the names and identifying details of those killed, adding a layer of transparency to its reporting.
However, doubts deliberately sown about the loss of Palestinian life served to shield Israel from accountability.
Despite the reliance on these figures by human rights organizations, the White House, members of Congress, pro-Israel commentators, and mainstream media outlets consistently cast doubt on the running death toll reported by the Palestinian Health Ministry. This skepticism laid the groundwork for a persistent denial of the scale of the tragedy, further shielding Israel from scrutiny.
“The Biden administration, Congress, and the U.S. media played along with Israel’s lies and deception about the horrific death toll in Gaza — over 80 percent civilians; over half, women and children — so that they could gaslight Americans into continued support for Israel,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of the human rights group DAWN. She argued that these denials, alongside other debunked Israeli claims, were instrumental in “ensuring Israel can continue its crimes and the U.S. can continue to arm it.”
The human cost of this disinformation campaign is deeply personal. Hani Almadhoun, co-founder of the Gaza Soup Kitchen, whose brother Mahmoud was killed by an Israeli drone in November 2024, described the pain of having his family’s loss “disputed” by officials and media. “To every government spokesperson, every news anchor, and every celebrity who repeated that denial — I hope you never know what it feels like to lose your family and then be told your loss is ‘disputed,’” he told The Intercept.
With journalists and NGO workers largely barred from entering Gaza by Israel, the Palestinian Health Ministry’s count has remained the sole reliable source of information regarding the death toll throughout the conflict. The latest figures estimate at least 71,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel, a number that continues to rise as strikes persist in the territory, often in violation of the so-called ceasefire.
Here is an accounting of the individuals and institutions that actively denied Palestinian death tolls in Gaza throughout Israel’s military operations.
Biden Administration
Approximately two weeks after the October 7, 2023 attacks, then-President Joe Biden expressed a lack of confidence in the death tolls reported by the Gaza Health Ministry. “I have no confidence in the number that Palestinians are using,” he stated. At the time, the ministry estimated 6,000 Palestinians, including 2,700 children, had been killed by the Israeli military. John Kirby, then-National Security Council spokesperson, reinforced this skepticism, asserting that nothing from the ministry, which he labeled “a front for Hamas,” could be taken “at face value.” While the administration later adjusted its position toward greater confidence in the ministry’s figures, the initial comments significantly damaged the credibility of the Palestinian death tolls.
Congress
In June 2024, a bipartisan group of lawmakers – including Reps. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.), Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), and Carol Miller (R-W.Va.) – passed an amendment to a State Department spending bill that prohibited the department from citing data from the Gaza Health Ministry in its reports. Later that year, a defense spending bill similarly barred the Pentagon from publicly referencing the Gaza Health Ministry estimates as “authoritative.” “Will Congress now overturn its own ban on citing the [Gaza Health Ministry] data,” Whitson questioned, “now that even the Israeli government has conceded it’s accurate?”
Rep. Ritchie Torres
Prior to the Senate vote on the defense spending bill, Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.), a vocal supporter of Israel, circulated a report from the Henry Jackson Society, a neoconservative U.K.-based think tank, alleging that the Gaza Health Ministry inflated its death toll. “Validating the public health arm of Hamas is like validating the public health arms of Al Qaeda and ISIS or the public health arms of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan,” Torres declared. “It is morally and intellectually corrupt.”
Steny Hoyer
Echoing Torres’s sentiment, Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) accused the Gaza Health Ministry of inflating casualty numbers. “They inflate casualty numbers and make false accusations to smear Israel’s reputation,” Hoyer said in October 2023. “We must treat their claims with the same skepticism we would those made by al Qaeda or ISIS.” Notably, since the Israeli military acknowledged the accuracy of the Health Ministry’s data, neither Torres nor Hoyer have made similar comparisons.
Anti-Defamation League
The Anti-Defamation League actively sought to discredit the Gaza Health Ministry’s death toll, releasing a list of news outlets that did not mention Hamas when reporting on the ministry’s estimates. The group urged outlets to “properly caveat data and information cited from the Gaza Health Ministry with clear mention that it is controlled by Hamas and that it has shared false and misleading information in the past.”
AIPAC
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee dismissed the Palestinian death tolls as a “myth” that “cannot be trusted” due to the ministry’s alleged control by Hamas.
Elliott Abrams
Elliott Abrams, a longtime Washington neoconservative at the Council on Foreign Relations, labeled the Gaza Health Ministry data “not credible” and “Hamas propaganda.” He cited a United Nations death toll revision – a revision stemming from a change in the U.N.’s methodology to rely solely on the Gaza Health Ministry for data – as justification.
Washington Institute for Near East Policy
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, an organization with ties to AIPAC and its donors, also used the U.N. revision as evidence of alleged misinformation, claiming the figures “have lost any claim to validity.”
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
The Foundation for Defense of Democracies suggested the Gaza Health Ministry was attempting to conceal flaws in its data after acknowledging it was still working to identify approximately 11,000 of the over 30,000 Palestinians killed at the time. The foundation characterized this as a “deliberate effort to downplay the number of terrorists” killed by Israel.
Alan Dershowitz
Former Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz dismissed the civilian death toll in Gaza as “among the lowest in the history of comparable warfare,” and characterized the health ministry death tolls as “way, way exaggerated — the number of actually purely innocent civilians that have been killed are a tiny fraction.”
Eylon Levy
Former Israeli government spokesperson Eylon Levy recently refuted early reports regarding the Israeli government’s acceptance of the health ministry estimates, calling such reporting “dead in the water.” “This myth exists for one reason: to launder Hamas data to support its war effort,” Levy stated. He has not issued any statements on social media since the report confirming the Israeli military’s validation of the Health Ministry’s data.
Abraham Wyner
Abraham Wyner, a statistician at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, denounced the health ministry death toll as “fake” and “not real” in an article for the right-leaning pro-Israel site Tablet, citing the steady increase in daily reported deaths as evidence. “This regularity is almost surely not real,” he said. “One would expect quite a bit of variation day to day.” In a statement to The Intercept, Wyner conceded the ministry’s totals “were never wildly wrong,” but maintained that Palestinian officials had produced “false” numbers, specifically regarding the proportion of women and children. “You must make a clear distinction between [what] was produced early (when the information war was fought) and today (when it has been lost),” Wyner wrote. Wyner was the only individual cited in this story to offer a direct comment.
The belated validation by the Israeli military underscores the profound consequences of deliberately undermining trust in vital sources of information during times of conflict, and the critical need for accountability in the face of widespread loss of life.
