It was impossible not to notice a disturbing trend that took place last week, as respectable news outlets rushed to publish almost identical reports defending their only source of information on Gaza casualties: The Hamas-run Health Ministry.
Reuters, AP, The New York Times, The Guardian, Time Magazine and The Washington Post included all or most of the following elements in their pieces: The release by the Hamas-run Ministry of a list of victims, flawed reasoning, attributions to the same problematic sources, and ridiculous attempts to claim that the Ministry was actually run by the PA, Hamas’ rival. This orchestrated pattern seemed like it carried the heavy footprints of an agenda-driven effort that journalists were all too happy to parrot.
Victims List and Logical Fallacy
All of the outlets mentioned above based their apologetic reports on the release of a list of Palestinian victims that the Hamas-run Health Ministry sent out after US President Joe Biden had questioned its reliability. The list — which was not published — reportedly included the names and identity numbers of 6,747 Palestinians who according to the Ministry had been killed in Israeli bombardments of the enclave.
But almost all outlets failed to notice or mention that the document included 471 victims from the blast at al-Ahli hospital, which according to analyses of several intelligence services was the fault of a misfired Palestinian missile and not an Israeli strike. And that number, which is still disputed, was modified from an earlier estimation of 500 fatalities falsely provided by the ministry in the immediate aftermath of the blast.
Related Reading: Gaza Hospital Explosion: The Evidence
But this is just one symptom of a deeper problem. When analyzing the reasoning behind these reports, a logical fallacy emerges. Here’s how AP makes its case:
Throughout four wars and numerous bloody skirmishes between Israel and Hamas, U.N. agencies have cited the Health Ministry’s death tolls in regular reports. The International Committee of the Red Cross and Palestinian Red Crescent also use the numbers…International news agencies, including AP, as well as humanitarian workers and rights groups, have used the ministry’s numbers when independent verification is impossible.
How does the fact that other bodies rely on a sole source make it reliable? They simply don’t have any other choice.
So the argument fails. But it fails also because some of the bodies quoted as part of this equation — like the UN’s OCHA and Human Rights Watch — are problematic in their own right.
Agenda-driven Attributions
The main talking head in all of the reports is none other than Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine Director at Human Rights Watch.
Yet no report mentions that Shakir is far from being impartial when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; Shakir was forced to leave Israel in November 2019 after his work visa was not renewed due to his support of the controversial Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
Both Reuters and AP also quote OCHA (the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) as a body whose reliance on the data provided by the Hamas-run Health Ministry is a testament to its accuracy.
But OCHA, as detailed by NGO Monitor, is a body that oversees funding for anti-Israeli NGOs, including some that engage in blatantly antisemitic activities and have ties to the PFLP, a proscribed terrorist organization.
AP also mentions Gaza’s Health Ministry spokesperson Ashraf al-Qidra, who is described as a logistical genius:
Gaza’s most widely quoted source on casualties is Health Ministry spokesperson Ashraf al-Qidra. From an office at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, al-Qidra receives a constant flow of data from every hospital in the strip.
While this may be true, al-Qidra is working for Hamas. As former Reuters bureau chief Luke Baker recently wrote on X/Twitter, “any health official stepping out of line and not giving the death tolls that Hamas wants reported to journalists risks serious consequences.”
A former @Reuters Jerusalem bureau chief spells out the clear problems with the media coverage of Gazan casualty figures:
The numbers are supplied by Hamas and Hamas can’t be trusted. https://t.co/OByHF6QsNx
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) October 25, 2023
Moreover, an Israeli think tank estimated in 2014 that al-Qidra was a former Hamas activist who has been affiliated with the terrorist movement since the 1990s.
It is no wonder, then, that several media outlets added a ridiculous argument to their case, defying reason and reality altogether: The Gaza-Health Ministry is actually not run by Hamas.
Denying Hamas’ Responsibility
Three media outlets — Reuters, AP and The New York Times — have made a special effort to distort reality by falsely claiming that the Gaza Health Ministry is supervised by the Palestinian Authority, Hamas’ rival which holds sway in the West Bank.
Here is Reuters’ version:
While Hamas controls Gaza and exercises tight control over information coming out of the enclave, formal responsibility for the health ministry still rests with the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank.
And AP’s:
The Palestinian Authority, which controlled Gaza before Hamas overran the area in 2007, retains power over health and education services in Gaza, though it’s based in the occupied West Bank. The ministry is a mix of recent Hamas hires and older civil servants affiliated with the secular nationalist Fatah party, officials say.
And The New York Times:
The Ministry of Health, which is part of the Hamas government in Gaza but employs civil servants who predate Hamas’s control of the territory, did not say why it had decided to publish the names of the dead.
Did these outlets forget the violent Hamas takeover of Gaza in 2007? Do they not know that a Gazan civil servant who doesn’t abide by Hamas’ dictates risks his or her life? Why are they parroting agenda-driven talking points without adding a shred of factual context? Their absurd description makes Gaza look like a pluralistic society in which the two rival Palestinian factions have reconciled.
Unfortunately, all these outlets know that Hamas is skewing the data. Their contradictory reports even say so:
- They admit that the Hamas-run Health Ministry doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants
- They admit that it inflated the numbers of victims in al-Ahli hospital blast
- They admit it’s almost impossible to reach a definite number of casualties amid the debris and rubble
So why are they dedicating entire pieces to defending this source of twisted information? Why can’t they just include a skeptical line in every relevant piece saying the tally by the Hamas-run Ministry cannot be independently verified? Why do they try to “counterbalance” any such caveat with a false doubt cast on Israel’s tally of its own victims, which is publicly available?
Why do they fail to accept that a terror group which can slaughter, rape and kidnap to achieve its goals can also, quite easily, just lie?
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