Palestinians carry aid supplies which they received from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in the central Gaza Strip, May 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed/File Photo

Twenty five nations signed a declaration this week, condemning Israel’s war of self defense in Gaza — while staying utterly silent on the Syrian government’s massacre of its ethnic minorities and about a dozen other global tragedies.

I’ve made this point before, but it’s worth saying again: This may be the first “genocide” in history in which the population grew larger.

The Palestinian population in Gaza grew significantly since October 7, 2023, according to data from the CIA World Factbook.

This population growth includes the time period of Israel’s defensive war against the Hamas terror organization, which terror apologists (falsely) call a “genocide.”

Published by America’s Central Intelligence Agency, the CIA World Factbook shows a population in Gaza over the past three years of: 2022: 1,997,328; 2023: 2,098,389; and 2024: 2,141,643. This indicates a growth rate in Gaza over the past year of 2.06%, which is more than double the US growth rate during the same period, at only 0.98%.

How is it possible that Gaza’s population grew so much over that year?

Quite simply because Israel has been so incredibly cautious in its defensive military campaign against Hamas, and has provided such an overwhelming amount of humanitarian aid, that the number of people who died in Gaza was actually less than the number of new babies born

These numbers stand in stark contrast to misleading claims of “mass starvation” and “genocide,” all of which are not only untrue, but make no logical sense given the uncontested reality on the ground

Q&A:

Here are some arguments that (believe it or not) I have actually received on this topic, along with the accompanying answers, based in actual reality.

Argument: These figures are just Israeli propaganda.

Reality: The data on Gaza’s massive population growth comes from the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States of America.

Argument: The CIA figures are just projections and therefore not accurate.

Reality: This assertion is based on an unsupported claim from an agenda driven article on the Polifact website. (Instead of evidence, Polifact quoted a conjecture by an employee of the US Census Bureau, who does not work for the CIA or have actual knowledge of CIA methodology.) Furthermore, the Polifact article addressed early CIA figures from December 2024, whereas our article is based on the updated CIA figures from May 7, 2025.

Argument: The vast majority of casualties in Gaza are women and children.

Reality: No. Hamas used to claim that most casualties were women and children, and a number of international bodies continue to repeat that claim without independent investigation, even though it is now supported by neither Israeli intelligence nor even by Hamas’ own, revised figures.

As a rule, Hamas never distinguishes between civilians and combatants. Hamas’s “Gaza Ministry of Health” frequently makes dramatic press announcements and then later revises its figures retroactively, often removing thousands of names, or changing the relevant demographic information. One manual count of Hamas’ figures indicates that most of Gaza’s casualties were actually men of military age.

Argument: More than 50,000 people died in Gaza, making it one of the most deadly conflicts in history.

Reality: The Hamas terror organization, which is notoriously unreliable, claims a figure around that scale. Even if accurate, that number is far less than other conflicts in the region, such as Syria (over 650,000), Yemen (over 230,0000), and Afghanistan (over 270,000). In fact, the number of casualties in Gaza is so low that it is less than Gaza’s birth rate during the same period. Indeed, the civilian to combatant casualty ratio in Gaza is the among the lowest in human history for a conflict of this type, nine times less than the UN published global average, and experts note that Israel has set an entirely new standard for the level of care that is possible in urban warfare.

Argument: The death toll in Gaza is similar to the Holocaust on a per capita basis.

Answer: No. Throughout the six years between 1939 and 1945 the Jewish population of Europe decreased by over 60% and now, nearly a century later, the world Jewish population still has not fully recovered. (The global Jewish population on the eve of the Holocaust in 1939 stood at 16.9 million, versus today, at only 15.8 million.) By contrast, the Palestinian population in Gaza is growing.

Argument: The attacks of October 7 were the equivalent to the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, and an example of “resistance” which is permitted under international law.

Answer: No. Though we have written this numerous times in the past, it bears repeating: October 7, 2023, saw the largest murder of Jews since the Holocaust, as the Hamas terror organization, along with Palestinian civilians and UN staff, invaded Israel, killed over 1,200 people in approximately six hours, and took 251 hostage, all while committing mass torture, beheadings, and mass rape.

The pace of murder in that six hour period is hard to comprehend: had Hamas continued to kill at that rate (as it had intended), then by today, the death toll in Israel would would have reached over 3.1 million — an even faster pace of killing than that achieved by the Nazis during the Holocaust.

An estimated 50 Israeli hostages remain in captivity in Gaza, with approximately 20 of them believed to still be alive, enduring starvation and torture.

Nothing in international law permits such acts by any person or organization, under any circumstances, for any reason. The only thing comparable to the Holocaust in Gaza is the attempt by Hamas and other terror organizations to annihilate the Jewish people from the Earth, along with their astonishing capacity to simultaneously lie about it to the world.

Daniel Pomerantz is the CEO of RealityCheck, an organization dedicated to deepening public conversation through robust research studies and public speaking.

The personal belongings of festival-goers are seen at the site of an attack on the Nova Festival by Hamas terrorists from Gaza, near Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip, in southern Israel, Oct. 12, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

When I left my position as a producer at CNN and HBO nearly two decades ago, I wondered if I had made the greatest professional mistake of my life. After a career interviewing celebrities on red carpets and producing content that defined pop culture, I chose to align my career with my deepening spiritual journey. HBO offered everything to keep me – a four-day workweek to accommodate my shabbos observance, the fancy title of Executive Producer (at the age of 25!), and the professional capital I had spent 15 years building. Walking away meant abandoning a resume that included working with entertainment’s biggest names.

I asked myself: Had I wasted 15 years of my life developing skills that would never serve me, either professionally or for a higher purpose?

October 7, 2023, answered that question with devastating clarity.

In the aftermath of that horrific day, I discovered that my entire career had been preparation for this moment in history. I have had a few defining moments since Oct. 7, the AISH “Global Day” and “Global Hour” livestreams, multiple missions down South in the days just following the outbreak of the war, and two feature-length documentaries. At AISH, we continue to document one of the most pivotal chapters in modern Jewish history through our latest film, After October: Stories of Loss, Survival, and Unbreakable Faith.

This isn’t just another documentary. For me, it represents the completion of a circle, the moment when skills honed in one world found their true purpose in another. What began five years ago as a more behind-the-scenes role for me at AISH has culminated in what I consider the most meaningful position of my professional life.

Our approach with After October differs fundamentally from other post-October 7 documentaries. While many productions rightfully document the horrors and can leave viewers in a state of depression and despair, we made a conscious choice to follow a different path. Rabbi Steven Burg, CEO of AISH, reminds us that “there’s nothing stronger than the broken heart of a Jew.” A broken heart still beats, if we’ve survived, we have to thrive, and it’s our responsibility at AISH not just to educate but to empower.

We’ve been entrusted with raw, never-before-seen, exclusive footage from personal family archives that tells a fuller story than what appears in news headlines. The feature-length format allows us to explore depths impossible in shorter media. But most importantly, we’ve committed to showcasing stories that, while acknowledging unbearable pain, ultimately demonstrate resilience, faith, and an unbreakable spirit that has characterized Jewish survival throughout history.

What have I learned from these stories? Perhaps the most profound lesson concerns how we navigate joy and sorrow simultaneously. Many struggle with this emotional complexity — how to celebrate life’s milestones when empty chairs surround holiday tables, when hostages remain captive, when soldiers still fight and fall? The families most deeply affected by October 7 offer us profound guidance.

They give us permission to hold both realities at once, to acknowledge devastating loss while embracing life’s continuing joys as testament to their loved ones’ legacies. This is not compartmentalization but integration, a uniquely Jewish approach to trauma that has sustained us through millennia of persecution.

From the Bible through pogroms, inquisitions, and the Holocaust, our people have documented survival. These historical records provide the blueprint for how we move forward. As we create this modern documentation through film, we contribute to that eternal conversation between generations, showing those who come after us how faith sustained us during our darkest hours.

This project transcends professional achievement. When I interview these families, I’m not employing techniques refined on red carpets with celebrities. I’m meeting them on a soul level, with an open heart and a huge box of tissues. I view this as sacred work, ensuring these stories become part of our collective memory and spiritual inheritance.

I once worried my early career was wasted. Now I understand it was preparation. Every interview skill, every production technique, every storytelling device I mastered in those years now serves a purpose I could never have imagined. The path wasn’t wasted, it was waiting for this moment.

The greatest privilege of my life is using skills developed in one world to serve the eternal truths of another. In doing so, I’ve discovered that nothing is wasted when it ultimately serves a purpose. Nothing is lost when it finds its true home.

This film stands as my answer to a question I asked myself years ago: What was it all for? Now I know. It was for this, to help tell the stories that matter most, to document not just what breaks us but what makes us unbreakable.

After October isn’t just a film; it’s a testimony to the Jewish capacity to transform grief into purpose. It shows that while circumstances may break our hearts, our spirit remains whole. It demonstrates that even in our most vulnerable moments, we can still be witnesses to something greater than ourselves.

We created this documentary not just to document history but to sustain hope. These stories remind us that we have overcome tragedies before, and we will again. These stories show our persistence in the face of adversity. They show that in the face of tragedy, we come together to build instead of break down. They show our enemies that we have maintained not only our faith in God, but in the good of humanity, and each other, and that is the most important message of all.

Jamie Geller is the Chief Communications Officer and Global Spokesperson for Aish, following a distinguished career as an award-winning producer and marketing executive with HBO, CNN, and Food Network. She is also an 8-time bestselling author. Jamie has produced several documentaries with AISH with After October being the most recent.

The New York Times building in New York City. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

For anyone who has been following the mainstream media’s coverage of the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas since October 7, 2023, it is clear that most news outlets have an anti-Israel bias running through their content.

This bias is evident in the stories that the outlets choose to publish, the context (or lack thereof) provided to their audience, and the sources that these media organizations rely on for their stories.

This bias has become so apparent that several academic sources have published studies of this one-sided news coverage, quantifying the extent to which an anti-Israel lens colors the average media consumer’s understanding of what is currently happening in Gaza.

In this piece, we will take a look at two recent studies that have analyzed the issue of anti-Israel bias in the media: One study surveyed several of the top English-language media outlets in the world, and the other focused specifically on the case of The New York Times, one of the most influential newspapers in the world.

Relying on Hamas, Questioning Israel: How the Media Report on Gazan Casualties

A study by Fifty Global Research Group took a look at all articles that mentioned Gazan casualties that were published between February and May 2024 by eight of the top global English-language news sources: CNN, the BBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Reuters, the Associated Press, The Guardian, and ABC Australia.

Here are some of the major findings of this analysis of the media’s coverage of the Israel-Hamas war:

• The vast majority of news stories did not make clear that the casualty figures provided by the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health include members of Hamas and other terrorist groups. Only 15% of articles mentioned the fact that the Ministry does not differentiate between civilians and Hamas, while a mere 3% provided the estimated figure of terrorist casualties.
• There is a huge difference in how various news outlets reported the above-mentioned facts. While The Washington Post and the Associated Press mentioned in roughly 40% of their articles that Hamas does not separate the numbers of civilians and combatants, the BBC, Reuters, and CNN only mentioned this fact in less than 5% of their articles.
• 100% of all articles featured Hamas-provided figures on casualties, while only 4% of these articles provided Israel-provided casualty figures.
• Roughly 80% of the articles that featured Hamas’ casualty figures informed their readers that the numbers were from Hamas and/or the Gaza Ministry of Health, while 19% of these articles did not mention the source of these figures, giving the impression that they are undisputed common knowledge.
• In 50% of articles that provided Israeli casualty figures, they were treated with skepticism and presented as “unverifiable.” The same doubt about Hamas-provided figures only exists in less than 2% of these articles.

As various analysts have noted, this blind reliance on Hamas statistics helps contribute to the validation of an internationally recognized terror group as a reliable source and has helped promote a false narrative in which Israel is recklessly or intentionally killing innocent civilians in Gaza, not terrorists.

The New York Times: A Special Case of Anti-Israel Bias

While the above study focused on several leading media organizations, an analysis by Professor Eytan Gilboa (Bar Ilan University) and Lilac Sigan focused on bias in The New York Times’ coverage for the first seven months of the war.

Of the 3,848 articles published on the Israel-Hamas war, Gilboa and Sigan looked at the 1,398 pieces that were included in the Times’ daily subscriber newsletter email as a sample size.

Here are some of the major findings of their study of anti-Israel bias at one of the most influential and esteemed newspapers in the world:

• 46% of articles solely expressed empathy for the Palestinians. At the same time, only 10% of articles expressed empathy for Israelis.
• Throughout the seven-month period, the coverage was 4.4 times more sympathetic towards the Palestinians than it was towards the Israelis. Even during October 2023, mere weeks after the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, the sympathy expressed towards Palestinians was double that expressed towards Israelis.
• Out of 50 articles about the hostages, only 28 (56%) blamed Hamas for their suffering, while 11 (22%) were critical of Israel itself.
• At the same time, out of 647 articles that were empathetic towards the Palestinians, only 2 blamed Hamas for their suffering.
• There were roughly 3 times as many op-eds that were critical of Israel (72) as there were those that were critical of Hamas (23).

It is clear that for The New York Times, Israel is seen as the primary aggressor in the conflict, with Hamas relegated to an almost secondary role in the conflict and its continuation. The same could be said for how The New York Times views the suffering of both Israelis and Palestinians, focusing heavily on the Palestinian experience while largely ignoring the Israeli one.

These observations have also been made by Edieal Pinker (Yale School of Management) in his analysis of The New York Times’ coverage.

Pinker concluded that:

I found numerous imbalances in the NY Times coverage. Namely, reporting on both Israeli military and civilian casualties incurred, post October 7, is sparse. Reporting on Israeli suffering through personal accounts of non-October 7 victims is very limited while reporting of Palestinian personal accounts of suffering is very frequent. Reporting of Hamas militant casualties is sparse and reporting of Palestinian acts of violence post October 7 is very sparse. Mentions of Hamas, Hezbollah, or Iran are much less frequent than mentions of Israel.

The potential net effect of these imbalances is multi-faceted. The imbalances create great sympathy for the Palestinian people while at the same time diminishing Hamas’ responsibility for their situation and the continuation of the war. Outside of the direct Israeli victims of October 7, there is little relative sympathy for Israelis, little recognition of the costs of the war to Israel, and great responsibility is placed upon Israel for the suffering of the Palestinians and the situation in the region. There is a certain irony in this pattern of coverage. The lion’s share of responsibility for the situation and its resolution is placed on Israel. Yet, at the same time the reporting does not give the reader a full understanding of how the war is being experienced by Israelis.

With such blatant anti-Israel bias in the war coverage of some of the world’s most influential and prestigious news organizations, is it any wonder that there is a rise in anti-Israel sentiment around the globe?

The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.