The number of civilians killed in the Gaza conflict has been inflated to portray Israel as deliberately targeting innocent people, a report claims.
Researchers accuse the Gaza ministry of health of overstating casualty data by including natural deaths, failing to differentiate between civilian and combat casualties and over-reporting the numbers of women and children killed.
The study by the Henry Jackson Society, a think tank, claims the figures have been manipulated by the Hamas-run authorities in Gaza for propaganda purposes, with international media outlets happy to repeat them uncritically.
The Gaza ministry of health has estimated that more than 44,000 people have been killed since Israel launched its military response to the Oct 7 Hamas attacks.
The Henry Jackson Society found that, based on Israeli and US military and intelligence reports, around 17,000 of these were Hamas fighters, but claims that this has been frequently overlooked in media reports.
Its report states: “The ministry of health, operating under Hamas, 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.
“This has led to a narrative where the Israel Defense Forces are portrayed as disproportionately targeting civilians, while the actual numbers suggest a significant proportion of the dead are combatants.”
Critics of Israel say that even if anomalies are excluded from the casualty figures, tens of thousands of innocent civilians have been killed in Gaza.
The report found numerous statistical anomalies and inaccuracies. Researchers say that around 5,000 natural deaths, which would have happened even without the conflict, appear to have been added to the list of casualties, including cancer patients who later appeared on lists of those still receiving hospital treatment.
Other errors – some of which were later rectified by the ministry – include adult casualties being recorded as children and several men being wrongly recorded as women, thereby artificially increasing the number of women and children recorded as killed.
Researchers, who established that the majority of those killed were men aged 15-45, said they found a pattern of victims’ ages being revised downwards by at least one year when compared to data on the Palestinian Population Register in an apparent attempt to inflate the number of children recorded as killed.
“This misclassification contributes to the narrative that civilian populations, particularly women and children, bear the brunt of the conflict, potentially influencing sentiment and media coverage,” said Andrew Fox, the report’s author.
The Henry Jackson Society said the casualty figures also failed to distinguish between Gazans killed by the IDF and those killed by misfired Hamas rockets or during the distribution of food aid.
These include 17-year-old Ahmed Shdad Halmy Brika, who was reported to have been shot dead by Hamas while trying to obtain food for his family from a humanitarian aid shipment in December last year.
The authors said that the Hamas-sanctioned casualty figures had been taken at face value by several international media outlets including the BBC, The New York Times and CNN.
According to the report, only five per cent of the media organisations surveyed cited casualty figures issued by the Israeli authorities, while 98 per cent used those provided by the Hamas-controlled health ministry.
The report, carried out by the Fifty Global Research group with the support of the International Institute of Social and Legal Studies, also accuses the United Nations of conflating civilian and military casualties in a number of its humanitarian appeals.
It states: “The omission creates a skewed narrative portraying all casualties as civilian, shaping public opinion and international policy based on incomplete or manipulated data . . with Israel accused of ‘genocide’, ‘ethnic cleansing’ and ‘crimes against humanity’.”
Priti Patel, the shadow foreign secretary, told The Telegraph: “The manipulation of events and facts on the ground throughout this conflict confirms that a terrorist organisation like Hamas will distort the truth to further their own aims. The media must be alert to this and report information and events taking place in a responsible and balanced way.
“War is a tragedy, but Israel has a right to defend itself against terrorists who are backed by the Iranian regime that also threatens our interests and efforts to bring peace and stability to the region.”
Palestinian representatives have rejected the report’s claims as a “morally and professionally repugnant” way of defending Israel’s actions in Gaza.
Ambassador Dr Husam Zomlot, the head of the Palestine Mission to the United Kingdom, said: “Numerous international organisations and UN agencies – including the WHO – have not only confirmed these numbers, they’ve made the point that they are severely underestimated.
“Because we don’t how many people are still buried under the rubble or have been killed indirectly as a result of Israel’s targeting of the health sector undermining all healthcare provision, the imposed famine and the wholesale destruction of infrastructure that has left 1.9 million people homeless.”
A BBC spokesman said: “It is challenging to report accurately on the death toll in Gaza as Israel does not allow independent access to international journalists. BBC News is clear and transparent in sourcing the figures which are available and attributing them to the Hamas-run health authority.
“Beyond this, we use a range of sources to understand the impact of the war in Israel and Gaza on civilians including the IDF, the health ministry in Gaza and the UN.”
Inaccurate numbers, yet the media continues to use them
ByAndrew Fox
In the fog of war, truth is often the first casualty. Nowhere is this more evident than in the reporting of deaths in the ongoing conflict in Gaza. Today a new report, published by the Henry Jackson Society, exposes startling inaccuracies in the fatality data provided by the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health – data that forms the backbone of much international media reporting. This report demands a serious re-evaluation of how fatality figures are reported in this conflict.
The findings are damning. According to the report, the fatality figures released by Gaza’s Ministry of Health are riddled with statistical anomalies and methodological flaws. Men have been repeatedly misclassified as women, adults have been recorded as children, and deaths unrelated to Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) action – such as natural deaths or fatalities from misfired rockets – have been included. These errors systematically inflate the civilian death toll and obscure the distinction between combatants and non-combatants.
The consequences of this misreporting are profound. By portraying a disproportionately high number of women and children among the casualties, the data perpetuates a narrative that civilians are being targeted. Yet, the report’s demographic analysis reveals a very different picture: depending on the reporting mechanism, the majority of those killed are fighting-age men, strongly suggesting a significant number of fatalities are combatants. This distortion is not just a statistical issue – it shapes international perceptions of the conflict, influencing public opinion and policymaking.
The media’s role in amplifying these questionable statistics cannot be ignored. Of the 1,378 articles reviewed in the report, a staggering 98 per cent cited fatality figures from Hamas-controlled sources without critical scrutiny. Meanwhile, Israeli sources, which often include data on combatant fatalities, were cited in just 5 per cent of the reports. This imbalance creates a one-sided narrative, portraying Israel as disproportionately targeting civilians while sidelining evidence of militant losses.
The report highlights that this is not the first time such issues have arisen. During previous conflicts, similar inaccuracies were documented. For example, after the 2008-2009 Operation Cast Lead, Hamas initially claimed that 95 per cent of fatalities were civilians – a figure later revised under scrutiny to acknowledge that nearly half were combatants. Despite these precedents, international media outlets have continued to rely on unverified figures from the same sources.
The methodologies employed by the Hamas-run Ministry of Health raise serious questions. Fatalities are recorded through a mix of hospital reports, family submissions using an open-source online form, and “media sources”, with little transparency or verification. Our report highlights egregious examples, such as individuals listed as war casualties who later appeared on cancer treatment registers – proof they were still alive well after their supposed deaths.
Why does this matter? Media outlets are not merely passive conduits of information; they play a critical role in shaping global perceptions. By failing to critically examine these figures, they risk misleading their audiences and policymakers. The report notes that outlets such as the BBC, CNN, and The New York Times frequently presented Gaza Ministry of Health statistics without question, even as these figures diverged wildly between Hamas’s own reporting methodologies.
International bodies, too, bear responsibility. The United Nations has frequently cited Hamas’s fatality figures without caveats, lending them an unwarranted veneer of credibility. This uncritical acceptance allows misinformation to spread unchecked, undermining efforts to understand the true human cost of the conflict.
Accurate reporting in war zones is inherently challenging, but the stakes are too high for complacency.
War is a tragedy, and every civilian death is a profound loss. For families, friends and communities. But accurate reporting is essential for holding parties accountable and for allowing informed international responses. The findings of this report underscore the need for rigorous scrutiny of fatality data from Gaza and beyond.
The world deserves the truth, and for balance and context in war reporting It is the responsibility of media outlets and international organisations to ensure that the narrative they present is not only compelling but also credible. Only then can we hope to understand, and ultimately resolve, the complex realities of conflict.
Andrew Fox is a former paratrooper and research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society
