Gaza war's staggering toll reaches a grim milestone: 20,000 dead

In October the Gaza Health Ministry claimed 471 people were killed by an Israeli missile strike on a hospital. Widespread credible (independent) evidence proves a small Hamas rocket missfired and hit a carpark near the hospital, causing relatively minor damage (there was a large fireball, but it was mostly rocket fuel - which is far less damaging than an explosive payload intended to kill).

None of the credible evidence was able to put a number to the deaths in that accident but it’s highly improbable that 471 people were in the carpark. And it definitely wasn’t an Israeli rocket.

In other words - Gaza’s health ministry is not a reliable source. Some of the things they report are probably accurate but they have been proven to be unreliable. Don’t trust anything they say unless it’s been backed by someone more reliable (in which case, you might as well refer to the other source instead).

At best, the ministry failed verify facts (e.g. was a large missile even fired at all?) before reporting what happened. But I think that’s being too charitable. For example where did they get the 471 number from? I think they made it up. I don’t have proof but it’s the only believable explanation.

Worse though - they haven’t retracted the claim. Mistakes are understandable… but failing to admit someone in your organisation made a mistake is unacceptable.

Israel has not released any official numbers on dead Palestinians, which is why there hasn't been anything disputed. The most we got was a number of dead Hamas commanders - which some people seriously tried to twist into "Israel only killed a few dozen Hamas members" - and a leaked, but unconfirmed estimate from an unnamed Israeli government official.

They release specific casualty data including names, ages, and ID numbers

The list included at least one person who died in 2014:

https://nitter.net/Aizenberg55/status/1718622126624645352

The numbers published show ridiculous patterns, like days in which almost no man dies or when the number of dead women and children increase more than the total number of dead:

https://nitter.net/Aizenberg55/status/1731753062622982386

Then there was the whole hospital parking lot incident, when Hamas made a claim that 500 people died in an air strike on a hospital with 85 beds and that the hospital had been flattened, only to then increase the number of dead to more than 700. Even during that night, it became apparent through footage published by Palestinians themselves that in reality, a rocket fired from Gaza at a city in Israel had malfunctioned and dropped on the area. After sunrise, it turned out that the hospital was still standing. Hamas officials later claimed, when asked about the projectile, that "the missile has dissolved like salt in the water. It's vaporized. Nothing is left."

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/22/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-hospital-evidence.html

Those 500, later reduced to 470, from this blast are still part of the official death toll. One has to assume that, given the pattern we have seen so far and the frequent tendency of Hamas officials to blame Israel for their own rockets and that of affiliated groups falling onto the strip (the failure rate is between 15 and 25%), that this kind of false reporting is common and routine, making the numbers released anything but reliable.

But keep up your propaganda, bro.

Welcome to the post-information age, where obvious and transparent lies are being eaten up by well-meaning, but naive people and using the most basic critical thinking skills gets someone labeled as a propagandist. Seriously, you and so many others are eating up whatever Hamas says and it's embarrassing. They are no different than ISIS, yet you didn't do the same with any press releases made by that terror group. Why is that?