The Gaza death toll has been inflated to defame Israel and and support claims of genocide, a UK-based think tank argued in a newly released report.

The study, published by the Henry Jackson Society, analyzed figures provided by Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry, which claim over 44,000 Palestinians have been killed since Oct. 7 of last year, and found that the numbers are not only unreliable but also deliberately misleading.

The health ministry “has systematically inflated the death toll by failing to distinguish between civilian and combatant deaths, over-reporting fatalities among women and children and even including individuals who died before the conflict began,” the report said.

According to Andrew Fox, the report’s lead author, nearly half of those killed in Gaza are combatants, directly contradicting claims that the vast majority of casualties are civilians.

“You can’t say it’s a genocide when half the people that have died are combatants who are still fighting,” Fox told The Algemeiner.

The report, which was based on an analysis of available casualty data put together by the Fifty Global Research Group, also pointed to inconsistencies in the demographics, such as the repeated listing of children and women to bolster claims of indiscriminate attacks or the lowering of men’s ages to inflate the number of minors killed.

In two cited cases, a 22-year-old was listed as a four-year-old and a 31-year-old was registered as an infant.

Other statistical anomalies further undermined the reliability of the data, with approximately 5,000 natural deaths, unrelated to the conflict, included in the casualty lists. Examples included cancer patients recorded as conflict casualties while still receiving hospital treatment. The report also flagged the failure to differentiate responsibility for deaths, grouping together those killed by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) strikes, misfired Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad rockets, or other causes. In one instance, Gazans killed by Hamas gunmen during food aid distribution were counted among conflict casualties without clarification.

“Hamas’s numbers have been wrong in the past on multiple occasions, and they’re wrong now. And we’ve proved it,” Fox said.

The report found that 5 percent of media outlets used Israeli-issued casualty figures, while 98 percent relied on Hamas numbers. It highlighted the BBC, The New York Times, and CNN and said that less than one in 50 articles included a disclaimer regarding the reliability of the Gaza health ministry figures.

Fox argued that the international media’s reliance on these figures has exacerbated anti-Israel sentiment and contributed to a surge in “horrible waves of antisemitism” globally.

“The numbers aren’t reliable enough to cite, and [Hamas’s] demographics are especially flawed, but the world’s media is relying on them,” he said, adding that this has stoked outrage fueled by the perception of widespread civilian deaths.

Ambassador Husam Zomlot, head of the Palestine Mission to the United Kingdom, dismissed the report’s findings, asserting to the UK’s Telegraph that the casualty figures have been corroborated by “numerous international organizations and UN agencies, including the WHO [World Health Organization].” He also cautioned that the true toll could be even higher, as many victims remain trapped beneath rubble.

In response to Zomlot’s comments, Fox dismissed the reliance on international organizations, saying that “all his appeals to authority are worthless” given the report’s findings that Hamas “deliberately conceals fighter deaths” to distort the narrative.

“You can try and make a moral attack line if you want, but I think it’s more immoral not to analyze a war properly and try and load blame onto one side rather than the other,” Fox told The Algemeiner.

In a separate report released this week by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (Camera), the BBC was accused of consistently portraying Palestinian terrorists killed in Gaza as innocent civilians. Camera’s findings documented more than 30 cases where BBC Arabic reports failed to acknowledge that many of those killed were armed members of groups like Hamas or Palestine Islamic Jihad.

Hamas, the Palestinian terror group that ruled Gaza before the war, launched the ongoing conflict with its invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. About 1,200 people were killed during the onslaught, and over 250 individuals were kidnapped, taken to the neighboring Palestinian enclave as hostages.

Israel responded with a military campaign aimed at freeing the captives and dismantling Hamas’s military and governing capabilities. Critics of Israel, including some human rights organizations and foreign governments, have falsely accused Jerusalem of using their war effort to perpetrate a genocide against Palestinians Gaza.

Amid the conflict, antisemitism has skyrocketed around the world, with anti-Jewish hate crimes and other antisemitic incidents reaching record levels in several countries — often fueled by anti-Israel animus.

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