Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs (JCFA)

• News accounts, commentators, and UN officials claim that 15,000 Gazans were killed as of November 27, 2023. Their source is the Hamas-run Ministry of Health in Gaza. It claims the casualties include 6,150 children (41%) and 4,000 women (26%).
• After similar Gaza battles in 2014, the casualties posted listed 16% children and 15% women. Men (combatants and civilians) totaled some 65%, according to the New York Times,¹ also quoting Hamas’ Ministry of Health.
• How is Hamas able to keep the percentage of male combatants so low? Because they have buried them a hundred at a time in a trench in the Gaza sands with bulldozers and no fanfare, unlike funerals of people allegedly killed at hospital sites, which are staged shows.
• The New York Times noted in its 2014 charts that some ages in the population were “most likely to be militants.” Why such a vast discrepancy with the 2023 reports? After October 7, 2023, Hamas stopped giving details about the casualties’ age and sex. The unchallenged numbers issued by Hamas’ ministry and repeated by the press are fanciful propaganda statistics.
• In Israel’s desperate defense of civilian communities inside Israel on October 7 and 8, it is estimated that 1,500 fighters — half of the 3,000 invaders – were killed. Subsequently, thousands of fighters were killed inside Hamas’ Gaza in Israeli attacks on Hamas facilities, tunnels, and frontlines – 4,000, according to Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
• The death of any civilian during a war is tragic, but in the case of Israel’s attacks on Hamas, such deaths are inevitable since Hamas facilities and leaders hide behind civilians and under schools and hospitals. Hamas fighters block civilians from evacuating. And then, Hamas’ Ministry of Health inflates the casualty figures.

I have no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed. I’m sure innocents have been killed, and it’s the price of waging a war. … I have no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using.

— President Joe Biden, remarks at the White House, October 25, 2023

Like a bad penny that always turns up, the inflated numbers of dead Gazans always appear in news accounts and pundits’ codswallop. On November 27, 2023, the press reported that 15,000 were killed, of whom 6,150 (41%) were children and 4,000 women (26%).² The source for the figures is the “Ministry of Health” in Hamas-run Gaza.

Nathan Thrall, a New York Times writer, quotes the United Nations that “more than 74% of the Palestinians killed in Gaza are children, women, and the elderly.”³

And what is the source of these statistics in the press? The Gaza Ministry of Health is a government ministry, or in other words, the Hamas government’s ministry and keeper of the secrets. Every news report from Gaza quotes the Ministry of Health as its authoritative source; too few add that it is a Hamas establishment through and through.

Dr. Munir al-Borsh, Director General of the Palestinian Health Ministry, was recently profiled by the investigative journalist David Collier, who characterized Borsh as “literally part of government and therefore a paid Hamas mouthpiece.”⁴

Men, Women, Children

The Hamas ministry does not reveal how many of the men are civilians and how many combatants. Nor are reporters aware of the vast discrepancy between women and children casualties in 2023 and those who died in previous Gaza engagements when the Hamas Health Ministry did publish such numbers and statistics. By 2023, Hamas realized how their presentation of real numbers hurt their case. When Hamas quietly buries its battlefield dead in mass graves in the desert, the percentage of civilians killed is larger.

To recap, Hamas claimed in 2023, as of this writing, that 15,000 Gazans were killed: 6,150 (41%) were children, and 4,000 were women (26%). The press, editorial writers, and government officials worldwide have reported and repeated these figures as gospel.

Hamas claimed that the remaining 5,000 (33 %) dead were men – both combatants and civilians.

Note the percentages the Hamas Ministry of Health released in a chart in the New York Times in 2014.⁵

Out of 1,900 casualties, only 16% were children, 15% were women, and men constituted 66 percent (55 + 11 unidentified men), with male civilians and “militants” lumped together.

The New York Times noted that some ages in the population were “most likely to be militants.” Those ages are between 15 and 39 (although the Times erroneously omitted ages 15 – 19 men as likely combatants).

• Female and Male Children 0 – 14 years old: 16%

• Females 15 – 59: 11%

• “Elderly” women 60 – 80+ 4%

• Men 15 – 59: 55% + 11% “unknown”

• “Elderly” men No figure given

The New York Times listed the “Palestinian Ministry of Health” as the source for its chart.

Why such a vast change? First, after October 7, 2023, Hamas stopped giving details about the casualties’ age and sex. The unchallenged numbers issued by Hamas’ ministry and repeated by the press are fanciful propaganda statistics.

Where did the first count of Hamas casualties in 2023 take place? In Israel’s desperate defense of civilian communities inside Israel on October 7 and 8, it is estimated that 1,500 fighters – half of the 3,000 invaders – were killed. The dead Hamas terrorists just at Kibbutz Be’eri numbered in the dozens. (Be’eri counted more than 100 of its members dead, and dozens were kidnapped to Gaza.)

In the 2014 Gaza war, the New York Times’ Jodi Rudoren revealed the secret for pumping up the numbers of Gaza civilian dead:

Ashraf Al-Kidra, the Health Ministry’s keeper of statistics, sits in an office at Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital and receives casualty reports from hospitals and emergency services. Al-Kidra uses a very broad definition of civilians, saying the term applies to anyone who has not been claimed by one of the armed groups as a member.⁶ [Armed Palestinian fighters don’t always wear uniforms and can appear as civilians.]

Rudoren’s analysis and chart show that “the population most likely to be militants, men ages 20 to 29, is also the most overrepresented in the death toll: They are 9 percent of Gaza’s 1.7 million residents, but 34 percent of those killed whose ages were provided.

Unfortunately, Rudoren’s population breakdown errs significantly in one aspect: Hamas’ fighters are not mainly in the 20-19 age range. Large numbers are also in the 15-19 age range, opening Hamas to charges of child soldiers.

In the 2023 battles, Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant stated that 4,000 Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters died in the fighting as of November 16.⁷ That number shakes the Hamas ministry’s current statistics to the core.

Israel repeatedly warned Gazan residents of north Gaza to evacuate their homes. Leaflets were dropped in their neighborhoods, and even private phone calls were made by IDF Arabic-speaking soldiers. An estimated one million Gazans took the warnings seriously and avoided Hamas attempts to keep them in the north as human shields. Lower casualty rates of women and children should have reflected their leaving the north.

During the Hamas-IDF pauses of fighting at the end of November, however, many Gazans moved back to the north despite Israeli warnings. Photographs and videos of the travelers showed that most were men of military age. Are they reinforcements for Hamas’ northern Gaza army?

Doing What Comes Naturally

More than 750 Gazans died in the 50 days after October 7, but not at the hands of Israel. They died of natural causes. According to the CIA’s statistics,⁸ an estimated 15-16 Gazans die every day from natural causes, or 750 over 50 days. Does anyone doubt that Hamas added their numbers to the casualties of the war and blamed Israel?

Show Us the Bodies

According to Hamas’ Ministry of Health, two Israeli bombings in Gaza caused mass casualties: the purported destruction of the Al-Alhi hospital on October 17, 2023, and the bombing of the Hamas headquarters under the Jabalya refugee camp on October 31, 2023. The world’s leading newspapers and agencies received press releases from the ministry, and they immediately ran reports of 400 – 500 killed at each site. The phantom casualties were then added to the Hamas Ministry of Health’s numbers of dead.

So much was hinky with the reports. Few bombs can cause so many casualties, and Israel has been cautious with its targeting. Then reports began to surface that the al-Alha hospital was not hit, just its parking lot, and the explosion failed to produce an expected bomb crater. Reports emerged that the weapon was an errant rocket fired by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Foreign intelligence services and wiretaps confirmed the PIJ’s responsibility. Even the anti-Israel Human Rights Watch absolved Israel after weeks of research.⁹

The Palestinian Health Ministry reported on October 31, 2023, that more than 400 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli airstrike on the Jabalya refugee camp in Gaza. Videos from the scene, however, show little rescue activity at the site.¹⁰

Follow the trail of photographs from the scenes of the bombings at al-Ahli and the Jabalya tunnel to the cemeteries. The pictures there show about 40-50 dead (not 400-500) and, noting the mass/bulk of the large majority of the bodies, almost all appear to be men.

The death of any civilian during a war is tragic, but in the case of Israel’s attacks on Hamas, such deaths are inevitable since Hamas facilities and leaders hide behind civilians and under schools and hospitals. Hamas fighters block civilians from evacuating. And then, Hamas quietly buries its combatants in the sand, and Hamas’ Ministry of Health inflates the civilian casualty figures.

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Notes