Unmasking the Fake Numbers: A Look at Gaza Health Ministry’s Data Falsification
The number of casualties among the civilian population in the Gaza sector has been the focus of international attention since the beginning of the war.
The main source of data is the Hamas-controlled Gaza Ministry of Health, which currently claims over 30,000 deaths, most of which, according to them, are children and women. The Biden administration recently legitimized the figure of Hamas. In response to a question at the House Armed Services Committee hearing last week, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin stated that “more than 25,000” Palestinian women and children were killed since October 7. The Pentagon quickly clarified that the Secretary of State was “citing an estimate from the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health.”
The evidence is in their own poorly fabricated figures
President Biden himself previously cited this figure, stating that “too many of the more than 27,000 Palestinians killed in this conflict were innocent civilians and children, including thousands of children.” The White House also clarified that the president “refers to publicly available data on the total number of casualties.
The problem with this data is that the numbers are unrealistic. This is obvious to anyone who understands how natural numbers work. The majority of the victims are not women and children, but most likely Hamas militants. If the Hamas figures are somehow falsified or manipulated, there may be evidence to support this. Although there is not a lot of available data, there is enough: from October 26 to November 10, 2023, the Gaza Ministry of Health published daily loss data, which includes both the total and specific number of women and children.
According to the professor, most likely, the Hamas ministry arbitrarily set the daily amount of losses. They then identified about 70% of the total number of victims among women and children and randomly distributed this number on a daily basis. They then added men to reach a preset number. This explains all the observed data.
It is currently impossible to enter the Gaza sector and verify the number of civilian casualties. However, for any statistician, the data provided by the Palestinian side regarding the fatalities exposes itself. Professor of statistics and data science at the University of Pennsylvania, Abraham Wyner, explained in the American magazine “Tablet” why these numbers are, at best, highly inaccurate and more likely a blatant falsification.
Have a look at the full study.
