Somehow, even after Iran-backed Hamas terrorists brutally massacred more than 1,400 innocent people inside Israel in their October 7 massacre, a lot of media outlets continue to believe Hamas-controlled government entities inside the Gaza Strip. For example, the Gaza Health Ministry — literally a Hamas-staffed and -controlled wing of the Hamas terrorist government — has repeatedly released numbers supposedly reflecting how many Gazans have been "killed," they say, by Israeli forces.
But there are several major problems with both the numbers released by the Gaza Health Ministry Hamas terrorists and the media outlets that are apparently happy to parrot terrorist propaganda without attempting to verify what Hamas government entities are saying — and thereby supporting Hamas in its quest to demonize and destroy Israel.
Here's the thing: the media outlets that report out Hamas casualty data know the numbers aren't real. The Washington Post has even admitted in its coverage that Hamas ministry documents portending to report the number of deaths in Gaza "did not differentiate between combatants and civilians."
Democrats, or at least the party's leader President Joe Biden, also know that what authorities in Hamas-run Gaza are reporting can't be trusted. Biden said late last month that he has "no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed."
Yet news outlets, the United Nations, and NGOs continue to report what Hamas says as truth — even after those entities were proven embarrassingly wrong when they uncritically parroted the Gaza Health Ministry's claim that an Israeli air strike had targeted a hospital and killed hundreds in Gaza, only for the obvious truth that a terrorist rocket misfire had caused a blast in a parking lot adjacent to the hospital, killing far fewer.
In the U.N.'s case, predictably but no less unfortunately, the supposed impartial global watchdog has, in addition to taking the word of Hamas government officials, worked with another organization — Al-Haq — to supposedly confirm civilian casualties in Gaza. But that organization is considered by Israel to be a front for the U.S. terror-designated Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
Lending credence to terrorists and their supporters is not just poor form for moral reasons, it's bad journalism — especially when the ultimate goal of authorities in Hamas' Gazan government is to demonize Israel, turn the world against them, and succeed at erasing the Jewish state from the map and killing anyone who gets in the way, primarily innocent Jews.
As Enia Krivine, the senior director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) Israel Program and National Security Network explained recently, "Hamas has a long history of inflating civilian casualty numbers to demonize Israel. The same Iran-backed terror organization that denies killing Israeli civilians on October 7 is now controlling and distorting the narrative out of Gaza," Krivine reminded. "There is no independent reporting or reliable data coming out of the enclave."
Despite the lack of verifiable numbers, that won't stop such narratives from being spun — especially as IDF forces continue to close in on Hamas leadership in the northern Gaza Strip and its propagandists look to score what are hopefully their last hits against Israel.
"Anyone who cites Hamas statistics as fact is knowingly amplifying Hamas propaganda aimed at pressuring Israel into a ceasefire before Hamas can be destroyed," explained FDD Senior Advisor Richard Goldberg. "Hamas lies — it’s just what Hamas does — and those lies will become louder and more outrageous as the group’s final hours approach."