An article in the Independent (“Twitch lays out new hate speech policy on word ‘Zionist’ after antisemitism allegations“, Nov. 16), written by their US Social Justice Reporter Josh Marcus, included the following:
“Human rights advocates like Human Rights Watch have accused Meta of “systemic online censorship” against posts offering legitimate criticisms of Israel and its conduct during the conflict with Hamas, which has likely killed tens of thousands of people, largely Palestinian women and children.
We complained to editors, noting that the source in sentence is a Reuters article on a UN report which narrowly relates to the number of “verified” dead, which, at 8,119, only represents a fraction of the overall alleged Gaza death toll. So, the claim that those killed in Gaza consists “largely of…women and children“, when the identities of the overwhelming majority of the casualties have not been determined, is not accurate. (The UN report in question also has egregious methodological problems, as this X post demonstrates.)
Our complaint was upheld, and the sentence amended to note that the casualty claim in question only relates to “verified” dead.
The UN Human Rights Office has said that of those deaths in Gaza it had been able to verify, close to 70 per cent were among women and children.
Our colleague prompted corrections to the same error at Voice of America and Deutsche Welle. However, the Guardian, which also made that error, hasn’t responded to our request for a correction.
So where are the missing 45,000 – 8,000 = 37,000 casualties? Could it be they are nearly all adult male Hamas terrorists. Plus the UN’s definition of children includes 16-17 year olds, quite adult enough to use weapons (and dig Hamas tunnels).