In a recent CAMERA webinar on British media bias against Israel since Oct. 7, we argued that it would likely be impossible to find another war anywhere in the world in which Western outlets consistently trusted the casualty statistics – and other claims – provided by a proscribed terrorist group.
Yet, as we’ve demonstrated, most news outlets cite Hamas’ health ministry claims that, since the start of the war, roughly 32,000 people, allegedly ‘mostly women and children’, have been killed by IDF forces. They cite Hamas’ figures despite the fact that: 1) Analyses by reputable statisticians have demonstrated that Hamas’ figures are impossible; 2) Hamas doesn’t distinguish between terrorists and civilians; 3) The numbers include those Palestinians killed by its own misfired rockets.
Conversely, these same outlets rarely cite Israeli statistics showing that roughly 13,000 of the casualties were terrorists, a number that’s extremely important, as it shows that, even if Hamas’s overall numbers are close to accurate, the ratio of civilian to combatant fatalities, at roughly 1.5:1, is better than what’s been achieved by the US and UK in their wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – and dramatically better than the international average in wars.
This demonstrates that the ‘genocide’ charge hurled against Israel is literally the opposite of the truth.
A recent Independent editorial (“We must find a way to give peace a chance in Gaza”, April 7) represented a variation of this problem – taking Hamas casualty stats at face value, while actually showing far more skepticism to Israeli claims.
In the third paragraph, we’re told the following:
It is, then, a moment for reflection and equally a moment to memorialise the more than 33,000 Palestinians, many of them children and babies, who have died in this conflict.
As you can see, there’s no acknowledgement that the 33,000 number is based entirely on the spurious claims of a proscribed terror group.
However, later in the editorial, when the number of those killed who were Hamas or PIJ fighters is cited, a good deal of skepticism is shown:
Israel claims to have taken out some 12,000 terrorist “combatants”, yet even if that figure is accurate, the war has surely created a multiple of that in aggrieved youths seeking to avenge what has been done to their families and to their own homeland.
We complained to the Independent about the double standards, and editors upheld our complaint, adding language in the sentence about the number of Palestinians killed.
It now reads:
It is, then, a moment for reflection and equally a moment to memorialise the more than 33,000 Palestinians, many of them children and babies who, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, have died in this conflict.
Contrary to accepted journalistic practices, however, no editor’s note was added to acknowledge the revision.
