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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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Rachel Goldberg-Polin Talks in ’60 Minutes’ Interview, New Memoir About Grief After Son Murdered by Hamas
Rachel Goldberg, mother of killed US-Israeli hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin whose body was recovered with five other hostages in Gaza, speaks during his funeral in Jerusalem on September 2, 2024. Photo: GIL COHEN-MAGEN/Pool via REUTERS
In a new memoir and “60 Minutes” interview this week, American-Israeli Rachel Goldberg-Polin, a mother of three, opened up about grief and the process of moving forward in life after her only son, Hersh, was murdered while in Hamas captivity in the Gaza Strip.
“To know that your child is being tortured, tormented, starved, abused. He’s maimed. And that’s an excruciating form of suffering,” she told “60 Minutes” correspondent Anderson Cooper in a segment that aired on Monday, which was also Israel’s Memorial Day (Yom HaZikaron). “And then what’s so fascinating to me is that when they came to tell us that Hersh had been executed, then I realized that those 330 days had been the good part, because he was alive. And now I’m in this place and this is the rest of my life. How do I walk through this place without a piece of me here?”
“I’m trying to re-understand what it means to be in this world,” she added. “There are millions of us right now who have buried children. There’s nothing unique about me. But it creates light for me to try to give words to the pain.”
Hersh was one of 251 people kidnapped by Hamas-led terrorists on Oct. 7, 2023. The 23-year-old was attending the Nova music festival in southern Israel, near the Gaza border, with a friend when he was abducted. Terrorists murdered 1,200 people during the onslaught, including 378 festivalgoers, and wounded thousands more. Hersh hid inside a bomb shelter with others and had his left arm blown off by a grenade before he was taken hostage.
Goldberg-Polin and her husband campaigned tirelessly and met with world leaders around the globe to try to secure the release of the hostages, but on the 328th day of his captivity, Hersh was executed by Hamas terrorists. Israeli soldiers found his body in a tunnel in Rafah on Aug. 31, 2024. Hersh, who was shot six times at close range, and five other hostages had been executed.
Goldberg-Polin further details her grief and talks about the kind of person Hersh was, even as a child, in her memoir “When We See You Again,” released on Tuesday. The book is a “searing portrait of a mother’s grief and strength in the wake of unthinkable tragedy,” according to a description of the memoir published by Penguin Random House.
“There are days when I break completely,” Goldberg-Polin writes in her book. “I have cried for an entire day straight. I didn’t think it was physically possible, but the weeping never let up. That is a very long time to cry. I kept hoping I would run out of tears. And then there are days when there is a whisper of sun. Not out there in the sky. In me. In us.”
She also describes grief, saying: “People want hope, resilience, recovery, strength, survival, healing. They want thriving and rising from the ashes, like the phoenix from the days of yore. But the pain is chronic, ever present, constant, gnawing, circular, not linear.”
Goldberg-Polin told Cooper on “60 Minutes” that she now thinks “grief is actually just this precious badge of love that you wear because someone has died and your love is continuing to grow.”
Former Hamas hostage Or Levy was released in February 2025 along with two others and talked to “60 Minutes” about spending three days with Hersh in a tunnel. He told Cooper that during their time together, Hersh kept repeating the mantra, “He who has a why can bear any how.” The line is from “Man’s Search for Meaning,” a 1946 concentration camp memoir by Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl, who adapted a similar saying by Fredrich Nietzsche.
“It became our mantra … The only reason why I survived was him,” Levy told Cooper on “60 Minutes.” Soon after his release, Levy got the mantra tattooed on his arm.
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Iran Seizes Ships in Strait of Hormuz After Trump Extends Ceasefire
Ships and boats in the Strait of Hormuz, Musandam, Oman, April 22, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Stringer
Iran seized two ships in the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, tightening its grip on the strategic waterway after US President Donald Trump called off attacks with no sign of peace talks restarting.
Trump maintained the US Navy blockade of Iran‘s trade by sea, and Iran‘s parliament speaker and top negotiator Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said a full ceasefire only made sense if it was lifted. Reopening the strait was impossible with such a “flagrant breach of the ceasefire,” Qalibaf said in a post on X.
“You did not achieve your goals through military aggression, and you will not achieve them by bullying either. The only way is recognizing the Iranian people’s rights,” he said in his first response to Trump’s ceasefire extension.
Iran‘s semi-official Tasnim news agency earlier said the Revolutionary Guards had seized two vessels for maritime violations and escorted them to Iranian shores. It was the first time Iran has seized ships since the war began at the end of February.
The Revolutionary Guards also warned that any disruption to order and safety in the strait would be considered a “red line,” Tasnim said.
NO NEW DEADLINE FOR CEASEFIRE
Trump said on social media late on Tuesday that the US had agreed to a request by Pakistani mediators “to hold our Attack on the Country of Iran until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal … and discussions are concluded, one way or the other.”
A source briefed on the matter confirmed on Wednesday that Trump had not set a timeline for the extension of the ceasefire.
In a show of defiance, Iran showcased some of its ballistic weapons at a parade in Tehran on Tuesday evening, with images on state TV showing large crowds waving Iranian flags and a banner in the background with a fist choking off the strait.
Captions read: “Indefinitely under Iran‘s Control” and “Trump could not do a damn thing,” referring to the waterway, the closure of which has caused a global energy crisis.
PAKISTAN STILL WORKING TO FOSTER TALKS DESPITE ‘SETBACK’
Pakistan, which has acted as a mediator, was still trying to bring the sides together for negotiations after both failed to show up for talks on Tuesday before the two-week-old ceasefire had been due to expire.
“We were all prepared for the talks, the stage was set,” a Pakistani official briefed on the preparations told Reuters. “If you ask me honestly, it was a setback we were not expecting, because the Iranians never refused, they were up to come and join, and they still are.”
Throughout the war, Iran has effectively shut the strait to ships other than its own by attacking vessels that attempt to transit without its permission. Around a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas normally passes through the waterway.
The Revolutionary Guards accused the seized ships, the Panama-flagged MSC Francesca and Liberia-flagged Epaminondas, of operating without required permits and tampering with their navigation systems.
The Greek-operated Epaminondas reported being fired upon about 20 nautical miles northwest of Oman. It said it had sustained damage to its bridge after being hit by gunfire and that no one was hurt in the incident.
Greece and the company have not confirmed the seizure of the vessel. MSC, the world’s biggest container shipping group, did not respond to a Reuters request for immediate comment.
A third, Liberia-flagged container ship was fired upon in the same area but was not damaged and had resumed sailing, according to maritime security sources.
DIFFERENCES REMAIN ON KEY ISSUES
With his announcement on Tuesday, Trump again pulled back at the last moment from warnings to bomb Iran‘s power plants and bridges, a threat condemned by the United Nations and others as potentially constituting war crimes. Iran had said it would strike its Arab neighbors if its civilian infrastructure was hit.
Oil prices reversed course to head higher after the shipping incidents on Wednesday, with Brent crude futures up almost 4% at $102.2 a barrel.
A first session of peace talks 11 days ago produced no agreement.
Washington wants Iran to give up highly enriched uranium and forgo further enrichment to prevent it getting a weapon. Iran, which says its nuclear program is peaceful, wants an end to the war, the lifting of sanctions, reparations for damage and recognition of its control over the strait.
An Israeli strike killed two people in southern Lebanon on Wednesday, Lebanon’s state news agency reported, and Hezbollah said it launched an attack drone at Israeli forces in the south, further straining a ceasefire between the Iran-backed terrorist group and Israel.
The Lebanon ceasefire had been a precondition for Iran agreeing to talks.
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Attacks in South Lebanon Strain Ceasefire on Eve of Washington Talks
Smoke rises after an Israeli strike, amid escalating hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, as the US-Israeli conflict with Iran continues, in southern Lebanon, March 24, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Stringer
An Israeli strike killed two people in southern Lebanon on Wednesday, Lebanon‘s state news agency reported, and Hezbollah said it launched an attack drone at Israeli forces in the south, further straining a ceasefire between the Iran-backed terrorist group and Israel.
On the eve of talks in Washington between Lebanese and Israeli ambassadors, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun said Beirut would seek an extension of the 10-day, US-mediated ceasefire, which is set to expire on Sunday.
Hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel reignited on March 2, when the Lebanese Islamist group opened fire in support of Iran.
The US-brokered ceasefire in Lebanon emerged separately from Washington’s efforts to resolve its conflict with Tehran, though Iran had called for Lebanon to be included in any broader truce. The United States has denied any link between the tracks.
Lebanon‘s state-run National News Agency said the Israeli strike hit a car in al-Tiri, a village in south Lebanon, killing two people inside. The Israeli military didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Hezbollah said it attacked an Israeli artillery position in southern Lebanon with a drone, in response to what it said was an Israeli violation of the ceasefire. The Israeli military said it had intercepted “a hostile aircraft” launched by Hezbollah toward Israeli soldiers in south Lebanon.
More than 2,400 people have been killed in Lebanon since Israel launched an offensive in response to Hezbollah’s March 2 attack, according to Lebanese authorities. Israel says the vast majority of those killed have been Hezbollah terrorists, who often embed themselves in civilian areas.
Israeli forces have seized a belt of territory at the border where troops remain, saying they aim to create a buffer zone to shield northern Israel from attacks by Hezbollah, which fired hundreds of rockets at Israel during the conflict.
BEIRUT TO SEEK END TO ISRAELI DEMOLITIONS
Aoun said Beirut’s envoy to Thursday’s talks, Lebanese Ambassador to Washington Nada Moawad, would seek a ceasefire extension and a halt to demolitions being carried out by Israel in villages in the south, according to a statement.
A Lebanese official said Beirut wants a ceasefire extension as a prerequisite for talks to expand beyond the ambassadorial level to the next phase, in which Lebanon would push for an Israeli withdrawal, the return of Lebanese detained in Israel, and a delineation of the land border.
Hezbollah, which says the Lebanon ceasefire was the fruit of Iranian pressure, has condemned Beirut for seeking talks with Israel, reflecting wider splits with the government that has sought Hezbollah’s peaceful disarmament for a year.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, in a speech, said Israel had taken a “historic decision to negotiate directly with Lebanon after more than 40 years” whilst also calling it a “failed state.”
“I call on the Government of Lebanon: Let’s work together against the terror state that Hezbollah built in your territory. This cooperation is needed by you even more than by us,” he said.
The Israeli military said it had killed two terrorists who had crossed its “Forward Defense Line” in south Lebanon on Tuesday and approached Israeli soldiers, saying they had violated the ceasefire.
DRUZE LEADER URGES CLEAR AGENDA, INCLUDING WITHDRAWAL
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is set to attend Thursday’s meeting. Israel will be represented by its ambassador to Washington, Yechiel Leiter.
Aoun has cited goals including halting Israeli attacks on Lebanon and securing the withdrawal of Israeli troops. In a speech on Friday, he said a ceasefire should be transformed into “permanent agreements that preserve the rights of our people, the unity of our land, and the sovereignty of our nation.”
Announcing the ceasefire on April 16, US President Donald Trump said he had instructed Rubio, Vice President JD Vance, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine to work with the two countries to achieve lasting peace.
Lebanon and Israel have remained in an official state of war since the establishment of Israel in 1948.
Lebanon‘s most senior Shi’ite state official, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, is against face-to-face negotiations with Israel, saying Beirut could have negotiated indirectly.
Lebanon‘s leading Druze politician, Walid Jumblatt, said on Tuesday that the most Lebanon could offer is an update to a 1949 armistice agreement with Israel.
In comments to reporters after a meeting with Berri, Jumblatt said there should be a clear agenda for talks that includes a withdrawal of Israeli troops still in southern Lebanon.