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Grotesque Gaza Libel Reprinted by New York Times, Washington Post, MSNBC, and More
As predictable as it is frustrating, the letter penned by Rasha Khatib, Martin McKee, and Salim Yusuf and published in a supposedly respectable medical journal, The Lancet, has found its way into international media outlets that really should know better.
We recently noted that a piece published in the “correspondence” section of the journal — so, not a peer-reviewed study or anything remotely rigorous — contained numerous grossly misleading and outright false statements.
Among the more outrageous claims in this letter was the assertion that it is not “implausible” that the overall number of deaths in Gaza could be higher than 186,000 — a figure the authors concocted by comparing Gaza to other conflicts with no substantial basis.
Meanwhile, even Hamas estimates casualties at four times lower.
Besides presenting wildly inaccurate numbers pulled out of thin air, the letter also featured several incorrect citations, questionable sources, and one footnote even linked to the wrong UN study. Not exactly thorough research.
Seen the wild claim “186,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza”?
Here’s the scoop: they multiplied current, inaccurate death tolls by 4 to get this number. Even worse, the media ran with it, spreading false info far and wide. pic.twitter.com/dPfRM9mVlN
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) July 9, 2024
It is, of course, embarrassing for a well-respected journal like The Lancet to publish such inaccuracies. However, it’s important to note that this piece is not a peer-reviewed study, paper, or article. Any attempt to present it as such is flat-out dishonest.
However, a number of anti-Israel media outlets, such as Al Jazeera, The National, and The New Arab, pounced on the Lancet letter, obscuring its nature to present it as a study, suggesting that either The Lancet itself or its “experts” are behind the 186,000 casualty figure.
And, as sure as night follows day, several supposedly trustworthy news outlets followed the Arab media’s lead, reprinting this grotesque libel without the slightest bit of scrutiny.
The Washington Post, for example, reported that “The Lancet, a respected British medical journal, calculated that the real death toll, including those missing in Gaza’s ruins and ‘indirect’ deaths from malnutrition, disease and other conditions brought on by the conflict, could be around 186,000 people — that is, roughly 8 percent of Gaza’s population.”
While noting the piece was not peer-reviewed, MSNBC still described it as an “analysis” of the death toll, and covered its findings in detail. However, MSNBC reporter Clarissa-Jan Lim did not perform even the basic due diligence of verifying the sources cited in the letter.
Several other news outlets also reported the journal’s “findings.” The UK’s Mirror stated that the “reputable medical journal” claimed deaths could exceed 186,000. The Independent, The Irish Times, and New York Magazine similarly reported that a “recent calculation by The Lancet puts the civilian death toll in Gaza at around 186,000 people, roughly 8 percent of the territory’s population.”
The Metro alluded to the “ever-present fear of death” among Gaza’s civilians, and suggested that the “true death toll could be more than 186,000 people, according to correspondence recently published in the journal The Lancet.”
The @Independent and @Beltrew are spreading misinformation. The “186,000 deaths” in Gaza claim is from an opinion piece in @TheLancet, based on speculative sources and faulty data: https://t.co/JFAlBSU7LM pic.twitter.com/lV9G6cVEre
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) July 11, 2024
The New York Times’ Opinion Editor, Meher Ahmad, was one of the few journalists to correctly describe the piece as a “letter.” However, she still attempted to contextualize the authors’ “staggering” number, describing the contents of the missive as “more a call for open documentation of casualties than anything else.”
And here we thought a medical journal should be dealing in facts, not using exaggerated and fake statistics as a “call” for better documentation of casualties.
The only correction made to the piece so far is an update to an erroneous footnote. The Lancet seems utterly unashamed to be associated with an allegation that is both demonstrably false and dangerously misleading.
Worse still is witnessing a media that is far too uncritical, happy to print the most incendiary of claims if they come in the guise of a researched analysis from a medical journal.
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.
The post Grotesque Gaza Libel Reprinted by New York Times, Washington Post, MSNBC, and More first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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UCLA student government condemns campus Hillel for hosting former hostage
A campus event featuring freed Israeli hostage Omer Shem Tov drew the condemnation of UCLA’s student government on Tuesday. In an open letter, the UCLA Students Associated Council said that bringing Tov to speak to students “served to legitimize and normalize” atrocities in Gaza and Lebanon.
Shem Tov, 23, was kidnapped from the Nova music festival in Southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and held hostage in Gaza until his release in a prisoner exchange in February 2025. UCLA hosted him on April 14 for a Yom HaShoah event.
“While we affirm the humanity of all people impacted by violence, we reject the selective platforming of narratives that obscure the broader reality of ongoing state violence,” the student government letter wrote in the letter, which was addressed to the UCLA administration and UCLA Hillel among others. “Israel is currently continuing to carry out what has been widely identified by human rights advocates as a genocide in Gaza, while also expanding its illegal military campaign into Lebanon.
“In this context, elevating a single narrative, absent of critical political and humanitarian framing, serves to legitimize and normalize these ongoing atrocities.”
Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, UCLA Hillel’s director emeritus, called the statement “completely ridiculous.”
“You can’t present the narrative of your experience without it being called ‘one sided,’” Seidler-Feller said. “There has to be a counter-story to persecution. Is there a counter-story to killing people?”
UCLA Hillel executive director Daniel Gold dismissed the criticism in Tuesday’s letter as antisemitic.
“Hillel at UCLA and Students Supporting Israel UCLA would like to apologize…for absolutely nothing,” he wrote in a statement. “Members of UCLA student government have once again shown they are anti-dialogue, anti-learning, anti-truth, anti-student and antisemitic.”
The USAC did not respond to a request for comment.
As college campuses across the country became a hotspot for pro-Palestinian activism following the Oct. 7 attack, UCLA, with an activist history and a large Jewish population, stood out as a major flashpoint. Its student encampment was the site of a riot in April 2024 and eventually cleared by police in riot gear.
The USAC has sided with pro-Palestinian protesters throughout. In a Feb. 2025 letter titled “We Are All SJP,” the USAC, which is democratically elected by the roughly 30,000-member UCLA student body, condemned Chancellor Julio Frenk’s suspension of Students for Justice in Palestine. The letter referred to Israel only as “the Zionist state” or put the country’s name inside quotation marks.
The University of California has since been sued by the Department of Justice, which said that UCLA created a hostile work environment against Jewish and Israeli faculty in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
The post UCLA student government condemns campus Hillel for hosting former hostage appeared first on The Forward.
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Trump extends ceasefire with Iran, even after Iran balks at new round of negotiations
(JTA) — President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that he would unilaterally extend the U.S.-Israeli ceasefire with Iran, even though Iran had not agreed to his conditions or even to return to the negotiating table.
Trump announced the decision on Truth Social just hours before the two-week-old deal was set to expire. Citing Iran’s “fractured” leadership, Trump wrote that he had been asked by Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to “hold our Attack on the Country of Iran until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal.”
Vice President JD Vance’s planned trip to Islamabad, where talks were set to take place, was postponed indefinitely after Iran failed to confirm its participation in negotiations.
Trump added that the United States would maintain its naval blockade of Iranian ports in the Strait of Hormuz, despite Iran’s repeated calls for the restrictions to be lifted.
The announcement marked a sharp departure from the president’s statements earlier in the day, telling CNBC that, if a deal was not made before the deadline, “I expect to be bombing.”
In a statement Tuesday, Sharif thanked Trump for his “gracious acceptance” of Pakistan’s request to extend the ceasefire, adding that the country would “continue its earnest efforts for a negotiated settlement of the conflict.”
The announcement adds to uncertain about the war’s future, including for Israelis who lived through six weeks of Iranian bombing, and renews questions about Trump’s commitment to achieving his war goals, which have varied and included blunting Iran’s nuclear ambitions, achieving regime change, and destroying Iran’s stockpile of ballistic missiles. He said earlier this week that he was asking Iran to limit its nuclear program for 20 years, five years longer than was required by the deal struck by Barack Obama in 2015. Trump exited that deal in 2018.
Last week, Trump announced a different ceasefire, between Israel and Lebanon, on Truth Social, contradicting Israel’s claim that the Iran ceasefire would not apply to its fighting with Hezbollah, an Iran-backed proxy in Lebanon.
Trump’s announcement of the ceasefire extension came during the night in Israel, after Israelis began their celebration of Independence Day. It drew criticism from one of his staunchest pro-Israel supporters, the Zionist Organization of America, whose national president Morton Klein said in a statement that “interminable delay is the standard Islamic Iranian regime negotiating tactic” and that acceding to it represented a victory for Iran. The statement did not mention Trump.
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Alan Dershowitz quits Democratic Party, calling it ‘most anti-Israel party in U.S. history’
(JTA) — Alan Dershowitz, the prominent pro-Israel attorney whose clients have included Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, announced on Monday that he was leaving the Democratic party and registering as a Republican.
Describing himself as a “lifelong Democrat,” Dershowitz wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that he had decided to “bite the bullet and register as a Republican,” citing Democratic support for an arms embargo on Israel last week and the Michigan Senate candidate Abdul el-Sayed’s anti-Israel rhetoric.
“There is no denying that the hard left, anti-Israel wing of the Democratic Party has moved from the fringe to the mainstream,” Dershowitz wrote, adding that “Republicans have their own antisemitic fringe, but for now it remains a fringe.”
The announcement formalized a political evolution for Dershowitz, who defended Trump during his first impeachment and has increasingly broken with Democrats over Israel in recent years.
In 2021, Dershowitz nominated Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, and Avi Berkowitz, Trump’s top Middle Eastern envoy during his first administration, for the Nobel Peace Prize over their hand in shaping the Abraham Accords.
Dershowitz — who has recently faced scrutiny over his ties to Epstein, and previously denied allegations of sexual misconduct made by one of Epstein’s accusers — panned the Democratic Party as the “most anti-Israel party in U.S. history” in the op-ed.
“I believe that the Democratic Party’s hostility to Israel represents a deeper and more dangerous shift away from the center and toward a radical approach that is bad for America and the free world,” Dershowitz wrote, adding that he intended to “work hard to prevent the Democrats from gaining control of the House and Senate.”
Dershowitz’s comments are in line with Trump’s statements about Jews and the Democratic Party. He has repeatedly expressed amazement at how any Jews could vote for the Democrats considering his own record when it comes to Israel.
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