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Why Gaza Fatality Data Has Become Completely Unreliable
An UNRWA aid truck at the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. Photo: Reuters/Amr Abdallah Dalsh
Heated debates over the Palestinian death toll in the Hamas-Israel war tend to focus on the fact that widely cited fatality numbers make no distinction between combatants and noncombatants. While this is true, it misses a more fundamental problem: the numbers themselves have lost any claim to validity.
In the first month of the war, the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health (MOH) in Gaza relied on its existing collection system, made up primarily of hospitals and morgues, to certify each death.
Starting in early November, however, hospitals in northern Gaza began to shut down or evacuate during the Israeli ground invasion, spurring the MOH to introduce a new, undefined methodology for counting fatalities: media reports. This methodology, which the MOH has rarely acknowledged publicly, accounts for the majority of fatalities reported over the past four months, surpassing the traditional collection system.
A comparison of the two methodologies, using MOH reports and claims published by the Hamas-controlled Government Media Office (GMO), yields wildly different and irreconcilable results, indicating that the media reports methodology is dramatically understating fatalities among adult males, the demographic most likely to be combatants. This undercuts the persistent claim that 72 percent of those killed in Gaza are women and children — a problematic claim that has worsened since it was first noted by a Washington Institute report in January.
The result is that MOH statistics do not appear to offer a reliable guide to the actual Palestinian death toll even by the “foggy” standards of normal wartime reporting. Journalists, analysts, and government officials need to be aware that the actual overall death toll may be significantly higher (or, less likely, lower) than what the MOH has reported; the demographic composition of these fatalities is certainly far different than what the MOH claims.
Building a Database
To assess this problem, the author has assembled a comprehensive collection of publicly available Gaza fatality data that includes:
Daily updates covering the period October 7 through March 21, obtained from four sources: the Hamas-run MOH in Gaza, the Hamas-run GMO, the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Health in Ramallah, and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) (which simply relays Gaza MOH/GMO claims, sometimes inaccurately).
Compiled data from 13 Health Sector Emergency Reports published by the Gaza MOH between December 11 and March 18 (these documents can be accessed via the MOH Telegram channel or the Internet Archive).
Two comprehensive MOH data releases on October 26 and January 7 (the latter covering up to November 2 for all of Gaza and up to January 5 for the south).
The following analysis is based primarily on the Health Sector Emergency Reports and occasional GMO updates.
If interested, you can download a condensed version of the author’s database. (The full database with sources, methodology, and other information will be published on a future date.)
Limitations of Media Reports
The regular methodology used by the MOH (hereafter the “central collection system”) records deaths at hospitals and morgues, along with deaths reported by the Palestinian Red Crescent Society ambulance service and other unspecified sources (for a more detailed explanation of these practices, see the author’s January study). This methodology is well-understood and has been relatively accurate in the past.
Unlike in previous conflicts, however, neither OCHA nor local and international NGOs are currently conducting real-time fatality verification in Gaza or attempting to distinguish between civilians and combatants. Moreover, only a third of Gaza’s hospitals are even partially functional, and many parts of the Strip have serious access problems, curtailing the use of this methodology to count deaths outside of Rafah and Khan Yunis governorates.
On November 10, the MOH announced that it could no longer report deaths from two northern governorates; a month later, officials acknowledged that they were relying on what they called “reliable media sources” to report deaths in those areas. In reality, they had begun using this methodology as early as November 3, according to the MOH dataset released on January 7.
To be sure, it is not uncommon to use news reports when attempting to count deaths in chaotic battlespaces with access issues and damaged institutions. Yet this practice is notoriously difficult and typically looks backward rather than attempting a real-time count. The reliability of any such effort is greatly dependent on its methodological details, but the MOH has refused to elaborate on how it collects this data, which is a major problem given that media reports have become the dominant input in the Gaza death toll, accounting for more than 14,000 reported fatalities.
Comparing the Methodologies
Despite known problems with the MOH central collection system (outlined in more detail in the January study), it is the more reliable methodology because it involves identity verification and counting of actual bodies.
Media reports, by contrast, are much more difficult to verify, regularly lack details necessary to determine the identities or disposition of those killed, and may double-count or miss many fatalities. The divergence between the two methodologies is perhaps best shown by how differently they have reported demographic details about Gaza deaths.
For instance, the MOH Health Sector Emergency Reports provide separate data on men, women, and children when their deaths are recorded through the central collection system, but only a single aggregated figure for deaths gleaned from media reports. When these reports coincide with the GMO’s periodic reports (which provide demographic breakdowns), one can compare how they treat fatalities among different demographic groups.
This comparison reveals sharp differences — most notably, a sixfold decrease in adult male fatalities recorded from media reports and a fourfold increase in child fatalities. (For reference, children make up roughly 50% of Gaza’s population, and men and women make up a quarter each.)
Some of these differences may be explained by the fact that media reports are unlikely to capture combatant deaths accurately due to access issues and fear of retribution for exposing Hamas losses. In most cases, however, the numbers are too far apart to be reconcilable, or too divorced from the realities on the ground to be credible.
For example, according to the media reports methodology, only 1,192 men had been killed in northern and central Gaza as of March 18, despite four and a half months of heavy ground fighting (see the author’s condensed database). Five days later, that number inexplicably decreased to 1,170 — a feat that would have required 22 men to somehow come back to life by March 23 in order to reconcile the central collection system data with the overall claim. In contrast, Israeli authorities estimate that 13,000 militants have been killed — a figure that may incorporate many combatant deaths not recorded by either MOH methodology.
Without clarification from the MOH, such findings suggest significant omission or manipulation aimed at understating the number of men killed and overstating the number of children killed. One possibility is that fatalities among militants — most of whom are men — are more likely to go unreported because they occur in tunnels or on battlefields, where most reporters are either unable to access bodies or unwilling to risk Hamas retribution or the dangers of combat zones. Another possibility is active manipulation — that is, using the media reports methodology as a smokescreen for altering the data in support of the claim that 72% of those killed are women and children.
Meanwhile, data from the central collection system indicates a sharp decrease in overall deaths since November and a sustained increase in the proportion of men killed.
In addition to the MOH’s growing reliance on the media reports methodology, these trends may reflect various factors on the ground, such as Israel’s shift from a primarily air-based campaign to ground fighting, the mass evacuation of civilians from the north to Rafah governorate, and the decreasing intensity of fighting in areas where the central collection system is still functioning. Such factors would be expected to reduce overall civilian casualties and therefore increase the proportion of adult men killed, since that is the demographic most likely to serve as combatants.
Caveats and Recommendations
This analysis is solely intended to compare various Hamas fatality claims against each other and raise questions about the resultant discrepancies. It makes no claims about the true death toll in Gaza or the civilian-combatant ratio, nor is it meant to distract from the very real and widespread loss of life in Gaza and the severe humanitarian crisis that its population continues to suffer.
Regarding the over-representation of men in the fatality statistics, this point is not intended to imply that all Gazan men are militants. Rather, adult men are the most likely to be militants across any group (though Hamas is known to use children in combat and support roles). Their overrepresentation has also been used to help estimate militant deaths in the past.
Caveats aside, the above findings should prompt analysts, media outlets, and government officials to bear the following points in mind when assessing Gaza fatality statistics:
The discrepancies between the methodologies for counting fatalities warrant much more intense scrutiny and should be paired with appropriate caveats if cited. Whether through passive omission, active manipulation, or both, the Gaza Health Ministry’s media reports methodology significantly understates the number of men killed and may overstate the number of children killed.
The repeated claim that 72% of the dead are women and children is very likely incorrect. Data from the central collection system indicates that 58% of those killed since the start of the war are women and children; this figure drops to 48% for those killed since November 3. For the 72% claim to be accurate, women and children would have to make up about 90% of deaths recorded from media reports. This proportion is implausible — men comprise a quarter of the population, and these fatalities have largely occurred in areas with fewer civilians and more combatants, most of whom are adult men.
Data from both methodologies suggests that the war has decreased in intensity. Fatalities have declined from an average of 348 per day in the first weeks of the war to around 85 per day in March.
The existing data is too limited to allow for definitive conclusions about the true death toll or the civilian-combatant ratio. A high proportion of reported deaths come from an unknown methodology that may be misrepresenting the data, while enormous uncertainty persists regarding how many combatant fatalities go uncounted in tunnels and other battlespaces. The exact proportions of men, women, and children killed are even more unclear. The available data does not allow for reliable estimates about the ratio of civilians to combatants killed either, whether independently or by comparison with Israeli estimates.
Gabriel Epstein is a Research Assistant at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, where this article was originally published.
The post Why Gaza Fatality Data Has Become Completely Unreliable first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israel Declares Start of Gaza Ground Operations, No Progress Seen in Talks
Palestinians inspect the damage at the site of an Israeli strike on a tent camp sheltering displaced people, in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, May 18, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Hatem Khaled
The Israeli military said on Sunday it had begun “extensive ground operations” in northern and southern Gaza, stepping up a new campaign in the enclave.
Israel made its announcement after sources on both sides said there had been no progress in a new round of indirect talks between Israel and the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Qatar.
The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the latest Doha talks included discussions on a truce and hostage deal as well as a proposal to end the war in return for the exile of Hamas militants and the demilitarization of the enclave – terms Hamas has previously rejected.
The substance of the statement was in line with previous declarations from Israel, but the timing, as negotiators meet, offered some prospect of flexibility in Israel’s position. A senior Israeli official said there had been no progress in the talks so far.
Israel’s military said it conducted a preliminary wave of strikes on more than 670 Hamas targets in Gaza over the past week to support its ground operation, dubbed “Gideon’s Chariots.”
It said it killed dozens of Hamas fighters. Palestinian health authorities say hundreds of people have been killed including many women and children.
Asked about the Doha talks, a Hamas official told Reuters: “Israel’s position remains unchanged, they want to release the prisoners (hostages) without a commitment to end the war.”
He reiterated that Hamas was proposing releasing all Israeli hostages in return for an end to the war, the pull-out of Israeli troops, an end to a blockade on aid for Gaza, and the release of Palestinian prisoners.
Israel’s declared goal in Gaza is the elimination of the military and governmental capabilities of Hamas, which attacked Israeli communities on October 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people and seizing about 250 hostages.
The Israeli military campaign has devastated the enclave, pushing nearly all residents from their homes and killing more than 53,000 people, according to Gaza health authorities.
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Pope Leo Urges Unity for Divided Church, Vows Not To Be ‘Autocrat’
Pope Leo XIV waves to the faithful from the popemobile ahead of his inaugural Mass in Saint Peter’s Square, at the Vatican, May 18, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Alessandro Garofalo
Pope Leo XIV formally began his reign on Sunday by reaching out to conservatives who felt orphaned under his predecessor, calling for unity, vowing to preserve the Catholic Church’s heritage and not rule like “an autocrat.”
After a first ride in the popemobile through an estimated crowd of up to 200,000 in St. Peter’s Square and surrounding streets, Leo was officially installed as the 267th pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church at an outdoor Mass.
Well-wishers waved US and Peruvian flags, with people from both countries claiming him as the first pope from their nations. Born in Chicago, the 69-year-old pontiff spent many years as a missionary in Peru and also has Peruvian citizenship.
Robert Prevost, a relative unknown on the world stage who only became a cardinal two years ago, was elected pope on May 8 after a short conclave of cardinals that lasted barely 24 hours.
He succeeded Francis, an Argentine, who died on April 21 after leading the Church for 12 often turbulent years during which he battled with traditionalists and championed the poor and marginalized.
In his sermon, read in fluent Italian, Leo said that as leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Roman Catholics, he would continue Francis’ legacy on social issues such as combating poverty and protecting the environment.
He vowed to face up to “the questions, concerns and challenges of today’s world” and, in a nod to conservatives, he promised to preserve “the rich heritage of the Christian faith,” repeatedly calling for unity.
Crowds chanted “Viva il Papa” (Long Live the Pope) and “Papa Leone,” his name in Italian, as he waved from the open-topped popemobile ahead of his inaugural Mass, which was attended by dozens of world leaders.
US Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic convert who clashed with Francis over the White House’s hardline immigration policies, led a US delegation alongside Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is also Catholic.
Vance briefly shook hands with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the start of the ceremony. The two men last met in February in the White House, when they clashed fiercely in front of the world’s media.
Zelensky and Leo were to have a private meeting later on Sunday, while Vance was expected to see the pope on Monday.
In a brief appeal at the end of the Mass, Leo addressed several global conflicts. He said Ukraine was being “martyred,” a phrase often used by Francis, and called for a “just and lasting peace” there.
He also mentioned the humanitarian situation in Gaza, saying people in the Palestinian enclave were being “reduced to starvation.”
Among those in the crowds on Sunday were many pilgrims from the US and Peru.
Dominic Venditti, from Seattle, said he was “extremely excited” by the new pope. “I like how emotional and kind he is,” he said. “I love his background.”
APPEAL FOR UNITY
Since becoming pope, Leo has already signaled some key priorities for his papacy, including a warning about the dangers posed by artificial intelligence and the importance of bringing peace to the world and to the Church itself.
Francis’ papacy left a divided Church, with conservatives accusing him of sowing confusion, particularly with his extemporaneous remarks on issues of sexual morality such as same-sex unions.
Saying he was taking up his mission “with fear and trembling,” Leo used the words “unity” or “united” seven times on Sunday and the word “harmony” four times.
“It is never a question of capturing others by force, by religious propaganda or by means of power. Instead, it is always and only a question of loving, as Jesus did,” he said, in apparent reference to a war of words between Catholics who define themselves as conservative or progressive.
Conservatives also accused Francis of ruling in a heavy-handed way and lamented that he belittled their concerns and did not consult widely before making decisions.
Referring to St. Peter, the 1st century Christian apostle from whom popes derive their authority, Leo said: “Peter must shepherd the flock without ever yielding to the temptation to be an autocrat, lording it over those entrusted to him. On the contrary, he is called to serve the faith of his brothers and sisters, and to walk alongside them.”
Many world leaders attended the ceremony, including the presidents of Israel, Peru and Nigeria, the prime ministers of Italy, Canada and Australia, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
European royals also took their place in the VIP seats near the main altar, including Spanish King Felipe and Queen Letizia.
Leo shook many of their hands at the end of the ceremony, and hugged his brother Louis, who had traveled from Florida.
As part of the ceremony, Leo received two symbolic items: a liturgical vestment known as a pallium, a sash of lambswool representing his role as a shepherd, and the “fisherman’s ring,” recalling St. Peter, who was a fisherman.
The ceremonial gold signet ring is specially cast for each new pope and can be used by Leo to seal documents, although this purpose has fallen out of use in modern times.
It shows St. Peter holding the keys to Heaven and will be broken after his death or resignation.
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The ‘Nakba’ Is Not Our Problem
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators during a protest against Israel to mark the 77th anniversary of the “Nakba” or catastrophe, in Berlin, Germany, May 15, 2025. REUTERS/Axel Schmidt
JNS.org – A smattering of Arabic words has entered the English language in recent years, the direct result of more than a century of conflict between the Zionist movement and Arab regimes determined to prevent the Jews from exercising self-determination in their historic homeland.
These words include fedayeen, which refers to the armed Palestinian factions; intifada, which denotes successive violent Palestinian uprisings against Israel; and naksa, which pertains to the defeat sustained by the Arab armies in their failed bid to destroy Israel during the June 1967 war.
At the top of this list, however, is nakba, the word in Arabic for “disaster” or “catastrophe.” The emergence of the Palestinian refugee question following Israel’s 1948-49 War of Independence is now widely described as “The Nakba,” and the term has become a stick wielded by anti-Zionists to beat Israel and, increasingly, Jews outside.
Last Thursday, a date which the U.N. General Assembly has named for an annual “Nakba Day,” workers at a cluster of Jewish-owned businesses in the English city of Manchester arrived at the building housing their offices to find that it had been badly vandalized overnight. The front of the building, located in a neighborhood with a significant Jewish community, was splattered with red paint. An external wall displayed the crudely painted words “Happy Nakba Day.”
The culprits were a group called Palestine Action, a pro-Hamas collective of activists whose sole mission is to intimidate the Jewish community in the United Kingdom in much the same way as Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists did back in the 1930s. Its equivalents in the United States are groups like Within Our Lifetime and Students for Justice in Palestine, who have shown themselves equally enthused when it comes to intimidating Jewish communities by conducting loud, sometimes violent, demonstrations outside synagogues and other communal facilities, all too frequently showering Jews with the kind of abuse that was once the preserve of neo-Nazis. These thugs, cosplaying with keffiyehs instead of swastika armbands, can reasonably be described as the neo-neo-Nazis.
The overarching point here is that ideological constructs like nakba play a key role in enabling the intimidation they practice. It allows them to diminish the historic victimhood of the Jews, born of centuries of stateless disempowerment, with dimwitted formulas equating the nakba with the Nazi Holocaust. It also enables them to camouflage hate speech and hate crimes as human-rights advocacy—a key reason why law enforcement, in the United States as well as in Canada, Australia and most of Europe, has been found sorely wanting when it comes to dealing with the surge of antisemitism globally.
Part of the response needs to be legislative. That means clamping down on both sides of the Atlantic on groups that glorify designated terrorist organizations by preventing them from fundraising; policing their access to social media; and restricting their demonstrations to static events in a specific location with a predetermined limit on attendees, rather than a march that anyone can join, along with an outright ban on any such events in the environs of Jewish community buildings.
These are not independent civil society organizations, as they pretend to be, but rather extensions of terrorist organizations like Hamas and—in the case of Samidoun, another group describing itself as a “solidarity” organization—the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. If we cannot ban them outright, we need to contain them much more effectively. We can start by framing the issue as a national security challenge and worry less about their “freedom of speech.”
But this is also a fight that takes us into the realm of ideas and arguments. We need to stop thinking about the nakba as a Palestinian narrative of pain deserving of empathy by exposing it for what it is—another tool in the arsenal of groups whose goal is to bring about the elimination of Israel as a Jewish state.
When it was originally introduced in the late 1940s, the word nakba had nothing to do with the plight of the Palestinian refugees or their dubious claim to be the uninterrupted, indigenous inhabitants of a land seized by dispossessing foreign colonists. Popularized by the late Syrian writer Constantine Zureik in a 1948 book titled The Meaning of Disaster, the nakba described therein was, as the Israeli scholar Shany Mor has crisply pointed out, simply “the failure of the Arabs to defeat the Jews.”
Zureik was agonized by this defeat, calling it “one of the harshest of the trials and tribulations with which the Arabs have been inflicted throughout their long history.” His story is fundamentally a story of national humiliation and wounded pride. Yet there is absolutely no reason why Jews should be remotely troubled by the neurosis it projects. Their defeat was our victory and our liberation, and we should unreservedly rejoice in that fact.
The only aspect of the nakba that we should worry about is the impact it has on us as a community, as well as on the status of Israel as a sovereign member of the international society of states. As Mizrahi Jews know well (my own family among them), the nakba assembled in Zureik’s imagination really was a “catastrophe”— for us. Resoundingly defeated on the battlefield by the superior courage and tactical nous of the nascent Israeli Defense Forces, the Arabs compensated by turning on the defenseless Jews in their midst. From Libya to Iraq, ancient and established Jewish communities were the victims of a cowardly, spiteful policy of expropriation, mob violence and expulsion.
The inheritors of that policy are the various groups that compose the Palestinian solidarity movement today. Apoplectic at the realization that they have been unable to dislodge the “Zionists”—and knowing now that the main consequence of the Oct. 7, 2023 pogrom in Israel has been the destruction of Gaza—they, too, have turned on the Jews in their midst.
They have done so with one major advantage that the original neo-Nazis never had: sympathy and endorsement from academics, celebrities, politicians and even the United Nations. Indeed, the world body hosted a two-day seminar on “Ending the Nakba” at its New York headquarters at the same time that pro-Hamas fanatics were causing havoc just a few blocks downtown. Even so, we should take heart at the knowledge that nakba is not so much a symbol of resistance as it is defeat. Just as the rejectionists and eliminationists have lost previous wars through a combination of political stupidity, diplomatic ineptitude and military flimsiness, so, too, can they lose this one.
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