Gaza authorities said in early October that more than 42,000 people had been killed in the strip since Israel’s strikes and ground operations there in response to Hamas terrorists’ attack on Israel.
However, these figures—which have fueled charges of “genocide” against Israel—rely on information from a health ministry that ultimately is run by Hamas. Israel’s defenders say the numbers could be inaccurate, or worse, fabricated, citing statistical anomalies and highlighting the difficulty in pinpointing just how many of the dead are combatants.
On April 22, the U.N. Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said the war by then had resulted in 34,151 fatalities, including 14,500 children and 9,500 women.
But less than three weeks later, on May 8, an OCHA update showed 24,686 dead, including 7,797 children and 4,959 women, with more than 10,000 reported missing.
“While the U.N.’s belated decision to rectify the casualty figures is welcome, it may come too late to undo the harm already caused. The delay has bolstered Hamas’s position and increased its chances of survival in the conflict.”
The Health Ministry’s statistics have also been used to accuse Israel of genocide even while some regard them as inaccurate or fabricated.
Those questioning the accuracy of the ministry’s statistics cite suspicious data such as the death toll increasing by nearly the identical number each day early in the war.
They question the data’s source: Gaza health authorities, controlled by Hamas, which has run the Gaza Strip since 2007.
Those health authorities don’t distinguish between fighters, considered legitimate targets in war, and civilians, whose deaths are regarded as collateral damage.
Of the remainder, bannering the deaths of women and children obscures the fact that Hamas deems anyone under 20 a “child” and routinely uses boys as young as 14 as gunmen, Prof. Norman Fenton told The Epoch Times.
A mathematician specializing in risk, probability, and statistics, Fenton is a professor emeritus at London’s Queen Mary University, a consultant, and an expert witness for the forensic use of statistics.
For one thing, he found the number of casualties increasing almost linearly each day from late October to mid-November 2023.
“This regularity is almost surely not real,” Wyner wrote. “One would expect quite a bit of variation day to day. In fact, the daily reported casualty count over this period averages 270 plus or minus about 15 percent.
“This is strikingly little variation. There should be days with twice the average or more and others with half or less.
“Perhaps what is happening is [that] the Gaza ministry is releasing fake daily numbers that vary too little because they do not have a clear understanding of the behavior of naturally occurring numbers.
“The daily totals increase too consistently to be real.”
He found other suspicious anomalies as well. Gaza breaks down figures to show women and children casualties. Variations in child casualties should track with those in women casualties, he said.
The totals should vary considerably each day because of variations in the strikes on residential buildings and tunnels, he noted.
Days when many women are killed should also have many children killed, and when few women are killed, few children should be killed as well, he said.
Statistical analysis shows nearly the opposite is true, “which makes no sense” and is more evidence “that the numbers are not real,” he said.
The ministry’s figures suggest 70 percent of the casualties are women or children.
“This total is far higher than the numbers reported in earlier conflicts with Israel,” he said.
The figures for how many were male didn’t square with the 6,000 that Hamas reported on Feb. 15 to have been its own fighters, he said.
“This is not possible unless Israel is somehow not killing noncombatant men, or else Hamas is claiming that almost all the men in Gaza are Hamas fighters,” Wyner said.
Fenton highlighted additional problems with the data. The Gaza Health Ministry, he said, blames Israel for deaths from natural causes, people killed by rockets misfired by Hamas or other terrorist groups, or those executed by Hamas for, say, trying to comply with Israeli evacuation warnings.
The women and children figures are important, he said. High collateral damage ratios—those of the deaths of civilians to those of fighters from bombings and other attacks—are used to accuse Israel of genocide.
But of the more than 42,000 deaths now claimed by Gaza, “it is almost certain that between 18,000 and 20,000 Hamas operatives are in those figures,” Fenton said.
That would yield a collateral damage ratio of 1.3 to one or lower, a stellar accomplishment by Israel in limiting civilian deaths, he said. The IDF says it routinely warns civilians to evacuate areas that are about to be hit, often suggesting where they evacuate to that will be safe.
By comparison, when the United States and its allies fought ISIS in Iraq in cities such as Fallujah and Mosul, the collateral damage ratio was 5 to one or even 10 to one, Fenton said.
The health ministry reports casualties with a rapidity that is suspicious in the fog of war, he said.
“They always know within seconds of any of these strikes and give a massive number. They scale it back later, but that’s what’s reported,” he said.
“They claim to know exactly within seconds how many are dead and who they are. But when it comes to the [Israeli] hostages, they can’t tell how many are alive or dead.”
Wyner, in his article, concurred.
“The fog of war is especially thick in Gaza, making it impossible to quickly determine civilian death totals with any accuracy,” Wyner wrote.
The figures may be even more dramatic, Fenton said. One of Israel’s leading television reporters, Ohad Hemo, is known for his sources in the Arab world, in Israel, the occupied territories, and abroad, both among leaders and on “the Arab street.”
“I think that’s probably correct, absolutely,” Fenton said.
Kobi Michael, senior research fellow for Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies and former deputy director and head of the Palestinian desk at the Ministry for Strategic Affairs, told The Epoch Times the misreporting of a hospital bombing incident shortly after the war broke out was a case in point.
“But they keep counting 500. It appears in figures provided by the Ministry of Health,” he said.
In a more recent incident, on Oct. 19, 2024, after the IDF attacked Jabaliya, “they have the skill and talent to know two minutes after the attack how many people were killed. Two minutes later, they said 80 fatalities. It was announced by the Ministry of Health,” Michael said.
“The smoke of the shells is still there, but they know exactly how many people were killed. This is the unique talent they have.”
Michael agreed with Fenton’s assessment of the collateral damage issue.
“These are some of the lowest ratios ever,” he said.
While the U.N. reports nine civilians killed for every Hamas fighter, “in reality, it’s 1.5 or 1.7 to 1, much lower than in Fallujah or Mosul. And under the most complicated conditions you can imagine,” he said.
The coalition fighting ISIS faced a smaller, less equipped, less experienced group not deeply embedded in Iraq’s civil society, he said.
“They didn’t have the underground tunnels and infrastructure that Hamas has in Gaza or Hezbollah in south Lebanon,” he said.
Hamas and Hezbollah are “deeply embedded,” he said. “They use civil society as human shields.”
Their formidable tunnel network and terror infrastructure, military experience, heavy and advanced equipment, and technological and intelligence capabilities make them a much tougher foe than ISIS, he said.
Israel has managed to eliminate Hamas almost entirely in one year and weaken the much stronger Hezbollah, and now seems set to change the entire regional balance, Michael said.
“This is a significant and substantial achievement. The day will come when Israel will be thanked for what it did to save the future of the free world,” he said.
