Prof. Kobi Michael
Institute for Contemporary Affairs Vol. 23, No. 11, Nov. 12, 2023
“According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health reports, there are already more than 13,000 Palestinians dead. On November 5, the Palestinian Ministry of Health reported 10,042 dead, and the next day, the number rose to 13,492. Did 3,000 people die in one day? And if that casualty number is accurate, where were those killed buried?”
The Palestinian Ministry of Health, (“PMH”) in the Gaza Strip, like every institution in Gaza, is tightly controlled and operated by Hamas. The PMH reports several times daily the number of Palestinian casualties resulting from the Hamas-Israel fighting in Gaza, currently in its fifth week. To be sure, the PMH reports on Palestinian casualties with attribution exclusively to IDF strikes. Reports of Hamas fighters’ casualties are noticeably absent from Hamas Ministry of Health reporting. In fact, PMH reports omit both Hamas combatants’ deaths and injuries.
In short, five weeks after the outbreak of the war, neither the Hamas leadership nor the Palestinian Ministry of Health reported a single casualty among Hamas forces.
The international media is complicit in the Hamas strategic numbers deception. The credibility that the media and the international community attribute to the Palestinian Ministry of Health reporting testifies to the depth of the bias and even hostility in the mainstream media’s global coverage of the War in Gaza. The problem reaches intolerable levels when it is well established that Hamas controls all government ministries and institutions including UNRWA, the vast majority of whose employees are Hamas loyalists. This includes the chairman of the UNRWA employees’ organization, Dr. Sohail Alhindi, who is a member of Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip.
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