The war that Hamas launched with its unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7th is raging not only physically in the Gaza Strip, but also in the media, in international forums, and on social media. In the battle for public opinion and perception, Hamas has deployed a powerful weapon: lies.
A commentary by Josias Terschüren
Through its subordinate "Ministry of Health" in Gaza, Hamas publishes daily figures on alleged war victims, which are adopted. All logic and narratives accusing Israel of disproportionate violence, even the invoked genocide, are based on this information.
Hamas' wonder weapon: falsified casualty figures
These Hamas figures were untrue in many respects: Firstly, they obscure who the dead are, because the Hamas health ministry does not distinguish between killed terrorists and civilians. Israel wants to kill the former, but not the latter.
Secondly, the question arises as to how the dead died and who is responsible for their deaths. Hamas itself has demonstrably attacked civilians and killed countless people. The rockets fired by Palestinian terrorists, deliberately and indiscriminately at Israeli civilians, often miss their target and land in Gaza, where they also cause civilian casualties that are included in the statistics of the "Ministry of Health," but for which Israel is not responsible.
This happened, for example, on October 17, when a rocket struck the parking lot of the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City. Just minutes later, the Gaza "Ministry of Health" reported 500 alleged fatalities, however they could have possibly counted them in such a short time. The international media (including the Tagesschau news program) picked up the report without question. When the Israeli army proved days later that it had been a stray rocket fired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad and that there must have been far fewer victims, the damage to Hamas's image was already done. The completely fabricated figure of 500 has remained uncorrected in Hamas's daily death toll reports ever since.
Thirdly, the distribution of aid has also led to tragic deaths among civilians, who were trampled to death in stampedes. Since aid supplies have been airdropped over Gaza, civilians have repeatedly been killed by them. Civilians have also died trying to retrieve packages that had fallen into the sea.
Fourthly, there are those in Gaza who die from natural causes such as illness or old age. Death figures in Gaza are therefore complex, yet all these factors are neglected or concealed by the Hamas-led Ministry of Health.
Gaza deaths mean pressure and isolation for Israel
Ultimately, this is precisely Hamas's aim: to inflate the alleged casualty figures attributed to Israel in order to shift public opinion, media coverage, and international pressure on Israel following the October 7 massacre. This is, in fact, the strategic goal of the Hamas attack: to isolate Israel internationally and make it politically costly for the US and the West to continue supporting Israel and its security. Furthermore, this fabricated narrative against Israel unleashes antisemitism worldwide. For over 50 years, Arabs have been convinced that they are militarily inferior to the Israelis and would have no chance on the battlefield.
Reports emerged as early as March in which statisticians analyzed the figures that Hamas had been circulating for about six months. Abraham Wyner, for example, based his analysis in Tablet Magazine on the theory that Hamas was categorically classifying 70 percent of the deaths in the Gaza Strip as women and children. The trends in these figures led other scientists to conclude that the numbers were statistically impossible. Unfortunately, shortly thereafter, US President Joe Biden, in his annual State of the Union address, and US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin began citing these Hamas-manipulated figures, thereby lending them further legitimacy.
On May 10, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu finally published Israel's assessment of the casualty figures: Israel estimates that more than 14,000 Hamas terrorists were killed and approximately 16,000 civilians were unintentionally killed.
To interpret these figures correctly, it must be considered that this is urban warfare against an enemy that has been embedded for decades and hidden in a massive tunnel system beneath civilian infrastructure. This enemy fights, disguised as a civilian, among civilians and by cynically exploiting its own population as human shields.
Israeli warfare in Gaza sets new standards
John Spencer, head of the Urban Warfare Department at the US Military Academy at West Point, stated in an interview with Caroline Glick of the Jewish News Syndicate (JNS) that the Israeli army has achieved an unprecedented ratio of almost 1:1 combatants killed to civilians killed. UN statistics show a ratio of 1:9 for similar conflicts. In his estimation, no army in the world has ever been more effective at avoiding civilian casualties. What the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have achieved should be studied by other armed forces in the coming decades.
Loss of credibility: the UN as an accomplice of Hamas
It is impossible to determine how many people have actually died in the Gaza war and at whose hands. The fact that many media outlets and international institutions place more faith in Hamas's lies than in a liberal and robust democracy is a damning indictment. The UN has become Hamas's accomplice and demanded a terrible price from Israel and Jews worldwide by disseminating Hamas's figures. That OCHA, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, is now—seven months later—quietly hiding behind the phrase "in the fog of war" and simply halving its own figures regarding female and child victims overnight from May 6th to 8th is an unparalleled scandal.
It is time to turn the UN's numbers war into a numbers war for itself as well, and to make German payments to the UN dependent on clear changes to its procedures and the values it represents and defends.
This article first appeared in our newspaper "Israelaktuell," issue 137. You can order the newspaper here . We would also be happy to send you several copies to display and distribute.
