Mick Hartley

A few weeks back I featured a Tablet article from Abraham Wyner, a professor of statistics and data science, arguing that the Gaza Ministry of Health was faking the casualty figures. Now here's an article in Fathom from Tom Simpson, Lewi Stone, and Gregory Rose – Statistically Impossible: A Critical Analysis of Hamas’s Women and Children Casualty Figures. This despite the figures being regularly cited by media world-wide – including of course the BBC:

The Gazan Ministry of Health (MoH) has repeatedly claimed that 70 per cent of Gazan deaths are women and children. We first found the claim in the MoH’s 11 December 2023 report. In 2024, the MoH has repeated this claim in all seven of its reports that we have been able to obtain so far this year (see Figure 2). The 70 per cent figure has also been widely cited in the media, with a recent BBC factcheck even using it to criticise IDF statistics on eliminated Hamas combatants. But how trustworthy is the 70 per cent statistic? It should be kept in mind that the Gazan MoH operates under the auspices of the Hamas government, giving it a vested interest in delegitimising Israel and demonising the IDF.

It turns out this ‘70 per cent’ figure is contradicted by the statistics that the MoH itself provides in its own reports. It is a disinformation tool founded on statistical manipulation rather than realities on the ground. The BBC ‘factcheckers’ and other western media could easily have determined this for themselves, using publicly available information….

But it didn't suit the anti-Israel narrative.

The chief Hamas strategy is to see more dead Palestinians. As I've said before, it's a strange war where the "attackers" do their best to minimise civilian casualties, while the "defenders" want to see as many dead as possible.