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Gaza Death Toll Figures Inflated to Bolster Genocide Claims, Study Finds
People demonstrate in the city of Santander, Spain, under the motto ‘Let’s stop the genocide in Gaza,’ on Jan. 20, 2024. Photo: Joaquin Gomez Sastre/NurPhoto via Reuters Connect
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.
The post Gaza Death Toll Figures Inflated to Bolster Genocide Claims, Study Finds first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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US Immigration Judge Rules Palestinian Columbia Student Khalil Can Be Deported
Mahmoud Khalil speaks to members of media about the Revolt for Rafah encampment at Columbia University during the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Gaza, in New York City, US, June 1, 2024. Photo: Jeenah Moon via Reuters Connect
A US immigration judge ruled on Friday that Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil can be deported, allowing President Donald Trump’s administration to proceed with its effort to remove the Columbia University student from the United States a month after his arrest in New York City.
The ruling by Judge Jamee Comans of the LaSalle Immigration Court in Louisiana was not a final determination of Khalil’s fate. But it represented a significant victory for the Republican president in his efforts to deport foreign pro-Palestinian students who are in the United States legally and, like Khalil, have not been charged with any crime.
Citing the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act, Trump-appointed US Secretary of State Marco Rubio determined last month that Khalil could harm American foreign policy interests and should be deported for his “otherwise lawful” speech and activism.
Comans said that she did not have the authority to overrule a secretary of state. The judge denied a motion by Khalil’s lawyers to subpoena Rubio and question him about the “reasonable grounds” he had for his determination under the 1952 law.
The judge’s decision came after a combative 90-minute hearing held in a court located inside a jail complex for immigrants surrounded by double-fenced razor wire run by private government contractors in rural Louisiana.
Khalil, a prominent figure in the anti-Israel student protest movement that has roiled Columbia’s New York City campus, was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, holds Algerian citizenship and became a US lawful permanent resident last year. Khalil’s wife is a US citizen.
For now, Khalil remains in the Louisiana jail where federal authorities transferred him after his March 8 arrest at his Columbia University apartment building some 1,200 miles (1,930 km) away. Comans gave Khalil’s lawyers until April 23 to apply for relief before she considers whether to issue a deportation order. An immigration judge can rule that a migrant cannot be deported because of possible persecution in a home country, among other limited grounds.
In a separate case in New Jersey, US District Judge Michael Farbiarz has blocked deportation while he considers Khalil’s claim that his arrest was made in violation of the US Constitution’s First Amendment protections for freedom of speech.
KHALIL ADDRESSES THE JUDGE
As Comans adjourned, Khalil leaned forward, asking to address the court. Comans hesitated, then agreed.
Khalil quoted her remarks at his hearing on Tuesday that nothing was more important to the court than “due process rights and fundamental fairness.”
“Clearly what we witnessed today, neither of these principles were present today or in this whole process,” Khalil said. “This is exactly why the Trump administration has sent me to this court, a thousand miles away from my family.”
The judge said her ruling turned on an undated, two-page letter signed by Rubio and submitted to the court and to Khalil’s counsel.
Khalil’s lawyers, appearing via a video link, complained they were given less than 48 hours to review Rubio’s letter and evidence submitted by the Trump administration to Comans this week. Marc Van Der Hout, Khalil’s lead immigration attorney, repeatedly asked for the hearing to be delayed. Comans reprimanded him for what the judge said was straying from the hearing’s purpose, twice saying he had “an agenda.”
Comans said that the 1952 immigration law gave the secretary of state “unilateral judgment” to make his determination about Khalil.
Khalil should be removed, Rubio wrote, for his role in “antisemitic protests and disruptive activities, which fosters a hostile environment for Jewish students in the United States.”
Rubio’s letter did not accuse Khalil of breaking any laws, but said the State Department can revoke the legal status of immigrants who could harm US foreign policy interests even when their beliefs, associations or statements are “otherwise lawful.”
After Comans ended the hearing, several of Khalil’s supporters wept as they left the courtroom. Khalil stood and smiled at them, making a heart shape with his hands.
Khalil has said criticism of the US government’s support of Israel is being wrongly conflated with antisemitism. His lawyers told the court they were submitting into evidence Khalil’s interviews last year with CNN and other news outlets in which he denounces antisemitism and other prejudice.
His lawyers have said the Trump administration was targeting him for protected speech including the right to criticize American foreign policy.
“Mahmoud was subject to a charade of due process, a flagrant violation of his right to a fair hearing and a weaponization of immigration law to suppress dissent,” Van Der Hout said in a statement after the hearing.
The American immigration court system is run and its judges are appointed by the US Justice Department, separate from the government’s judicial branch.
The post US Immigration Judge Rules Palestinian Columbia Student Khalil Can Be Deported first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Hamas Releases Video of Israeli-American Hostage Held in Gaza
FILE PHOTO: Yael, Adi and Mika Alexander, the family of Edan Alexander, the American-Israeli and Israel Defense Forces soldier taken hostage during the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas, pose for a photograph during an interview with Reuters at the Alexander’s home in Tenafly, New Jersey, U.S., December 14, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Stephani Spindel/File Photo
Hamas on Saturday released a video purportedly of Israeli-American hostage Edan Alexander, who has been held in Gaza since he was captured by Palestinian terrorists on October 7, 2023.
In the undated video, the man who introduces himself as Edan Alexander states he has been held in Gaza for 551 days. The man questions why he is still being held and pleads for his release.
Alexander is a soldier serving in the Israeli military.
The edited video was released as Jews began to mark Passover, a weeklong holiday that celebrates freedom. Alexander’s family released a statement acknowledging the video that said the holiday would not be one of freedom as long as Edan and the 58 other hostages in Gaza remained in captivity.
Hamas has released several videos over the course of the war of hostages begging to be released. Israeli officials have dismissed past videos as propaganda that is designed to put pressure on the government. The war is in its eighteenth month.
Hamas released 38 hostages under a ceasefire that began on January 19. In March, Israel’s military resumed its ground and aerial campaign on Gaza, abandoning the ceasefire after Hamas rejected proposals to extend the truce without ending the war.
Israeli officials say that campaign will continue until the remaining 59 hostages are freed and Gaza is demilitarized. Hamas insists it will free hostages only as part of a deal to end the war and has rejected demands to lay down its arms.
The US, Qatar and Egypt are mediating between Hamas and Israel.
The post Hamas Releases Video of Israeli-American Hostage Held in Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Some Progress in Hostage Talks But Major Issues Remain, Source tells i24NEWS
Demonstrators hold signs and pictures of hostages, as relatives and supporters of Israeli hostages kidnapped during the Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas protest demanding the release of all hostages in Tel Aviv, Israel, Feb. 13, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Itai Ron
i24 News – A source familiar with the ongoing negotiations for a hostage deal confirmed to i24NEWS on Friday that some progress has been made in talks, currently taking place with Egypt, including the exchange of draft proposals. However, it remains unclear whether Hamas will ultimately accept the emerging framework. According to the source, discussions are presently focused on reaching a cohesive outline with Cairo.
A delegation of senior Hamas officials is expected to arrive in Cairo tomorrow. While there is still no finalized draft, even Arab sources acknowledge revisions to Egypt’s original proposal, reportedly including a degree of flexibility in the number of hostages Hamas is willing to release.
The source noted that Hamas’ latest proposal to release five living hostages is unacceptable to Israel, which continues to adhere to the “Witkoff framework.” At the core of this framework is the release of a significant number of hostages, alongside a prolonged ceasefire period—Israel insists on 40 days, while Hamas is demanding more. The plan avoids intermittent pauses or distractions, aiming instead for uninterrupted discussions on post-war arrangements.
As previously reported, Israel is also demanding comprehensive medical and nutritional reports on all living hostages as an early condition of the deal.
“For now,” the source told i24NEWS, “Hamas is still putting up obstacles. We are not at the point of a done deal.” Israeli officials emphasize that sustained military and logistical pressure on Hamas is yielding results, pointing to Hamas’ shift from offering one hostage to five in its most recent agreement.
Negotiators also assert that Israel’s demands are fully backed by the United States. Ultimately, Israeli officials are adamant: no negotiations on the “day after” will take place until the hostage issue is resolved—a message directed not only at Hamas, but also at mediators.
The post Some Progress in Hostage Talks But Major Issues Remain, Source tells i24NEWS first appeared on Algemeiner.com.