Gaza's health ministry is run, funded by Hamas - Why is it seen as a reliable source? - comment

Recently, two important events rushed by our ears, but unlike the attempted Trump assassination, did not leave a scratch. This is not an uncommon phenomenon in the media atmosphere of the modern era - the noise level is constantly high, and within it many important details are lost. Often, even the main point is lost.

The first was an article published in the medical journal "The Lancet" on July 5. Its title was: "Counting the dead in Gaza - difficult but essential". The article not only unequivocally supported the data of the "Gaza Health Ministry" without mentioning that Hamas is its controlling body, but proceeded to determined that the figure of 38,000 deaths is probably much lower than reality. It claimed that with indirect damage it is not implausible that the scope of death will reach 186,000 people. 

It might be coincidental that two of the three authors of the article have Muslim names, and perhaps it is also coincidental that they based their determinations on UN data, as if there had never been an inherent severe anti-Israeli bias in the UN due to an automatic Arab majority. The purpose of the article seems quite clear: The imaginary number set by the researchers reflects almost 2% of the population in Gaza, and in order to claim "genocide", higher numbers are needed than those presented so far. They simply tried to deliver the goods.

As expected, this imaginary number flew on social media, and the fact that one of the authors clarified that it was merely hypothetical and not validated data, did not interest anyone. This is what happens when an issue is not addressed when it's small. It grows and grows and sometimes becomes a monster. Just like Hamas.

Hamas's statistics 

The second event we missed was an article published by John Spencer, head of urban warfare at the Modern Warfare Institute at West Point, the U.S. National Military Academy. Spencer argues that the number provided by the Gaza Health Ministry is simply incorrect, and the refusal to distinguish between armed and civilian casualties is not the only reason.

Since October 7, Spencer has published numerous articles showing that the IDF made extraordinary efforts not to harm civilians in Gaza, and its achievements topped every army in the world. But Spencer's article was less viral than the one published in The Lancet. And what about the State of Israel? It seems that beyond local whining for likes on social media, it did not invest resources to systematically refute Hamas's inflated death toll figures, which were repeatedly quoted during the war in an attempt to turn them into a "fact".

The foundations were laid long ago 

The "genocide" campaign started before the IDF invasion of Gaza, and before a single Air Force bomb was dropped. In fact, it started even before the October 7 massacre. If we had a functioning national public diplomacy system, the Israeli government would have caught on to this long ago: The word "genocide", one of the harshest words in the universe that was incidentally experienced by the Jewish people, is now exploited as a weapon against them.

In the "New York Times", for example, this word appeared 66 times in articles related to Israel and the conflict during 2022, when the Unity Government was in office. Since October 7, the word has already appeared in these contexts 772 times. It has been normalized as something that can nonchalantly be said about Israel, despite being a modern blood libel with no basis in reality. Among other things - this is what drove students in the West to go along with the condemnation of Israel, immediately after Israelis were brutally massacred, raped and kidnapped by Jihadists, on a scale not seen since the Holocaust.

Since the foundations of the "genocide" campaign were laid even before the massacre, as soon as the IDF operation began, numerous media outlets set out on a holy mission to find "factual" justification for it. Hamas supplied them with everything they needed: data from the "Ministry of Health" (the same ministry that lied about 500 deaths in the explosion at Al-Ahli Hospital at the beginning of the war); photos and videos, whether fake or real, on Telegram and through Al Jazeera; and systematic amplification of all these on social media by Iranian bots. And the UN and human rights organizations that support it? They gladly went along.

Before continuing, we must put things into proportion: The death toll in Gaza during this war was high. However, there are enough indications that the extent of civilian casualties was inflated and relentlessly echoed. It did quite a service for Hamas, which not only hid behind civilians to protect itself, but also drove the Gaza Health Ministry to produce the numbers that could pour content into the blood libel.

None of us expects anything else from a terrorist organization or a totalitarian Islamist regime. But the disturbing question is why Israel fails to challenge this number, on which the international "genocide" campaign is based. This was its secret weapon.

Diplomacy in tested by results 

One can excuse the absolute absence of investment in public diplomacy before October 7 with an old conception that shattered, just as one can excuse the decision to turn the IDF into a small and smart army. Both these concepts were wrong. But while the IDF recovered, reset and started to show achievements, public diplomacy tried to raise its head, but quickly wilted and died.

Netanyahu himself once said that public diplomacy is measured only by the test of results - do they tie your hands when you have to fight, or not? After the boycotts, condemnations, demonstrations, expulsion from the weapons exhibition in France and the lawsuits in The Hague, it seems that the answer to the question of results is quite clear. During the first months of the war, the government still tried to deal with the international tsunami organized by Hamas and Iran, but today it doesn't even pretend to try. Take for example the head of the national public diplomacy department who resigned in early May. The government has not yet found time to find a replacement. Apparently, it's too busy.

Government members are heavily adorned with titles that have nothing behind them. Many are supposed to be in charge of public diplomacy: the alternating foreign ministers Israel Katz and Eli Cohen, neither of whom appears to be a diplomacy wiz; a minister of public diplomaacy who resigned immediately at the start of the war; an immature, unaccomplished minister of diaspora affairs; and a public diplomacy department under the Prime Minister's Office that no one knows if it's still functioning.

This is not accidental. The entire perception of government members regarding public diplomacy is distorted. Instead of understanding that their role is to create sympathy for Israel from the outside, they use the word "hasbara" vis a vis Israelis in a pathetic attempt to create sympathy for themselves. The trolling efforts of Israel Katz and Amichai Chikli, for example, don't exactly raise Israel's prestige anywhere. Worse - the irresponsible statements of government extremists about atomic bombs and a new Nakba severely damage diplomacy, which is supposed to reflect the moral fighting of a sober and just state.

Bottom line, Israel's image has always been problematic regardless of the government's identity, but this specific government not only doesn't deal with the challenges, its conduct is the most damaging factor to Israel’s image. Public diplomacy, as mentioned, is measured in results, not in “likes” from Israelis.

A good example of the government's approach to the issue is its response to the Lancet article that presented the imaginary number of casualties in Gaza. Was there a visible response at all? The Minister of Health was asked about it this week and said in Hebrew that the article is a shame and disgrace. But what the ministers think about the outrageous article is irrelevant, as is what they say about it in Hebrew to local audiences. Expressing an opinion is an act reserved for citizens, not ministers. The latter should be measured by actions.

The natural mortality rate in Gaza 

One thing is truly unforgivable: The systematic defamation campaign that the axis of evil built to undermine Israel's righteousness is based on one crucial figure - the number of deaths. From Hamas's perspective, this number is supposed to be shocking enough to make people forget the horrors of the October 7 massacre, and the number was exaggerated even before it was arbitrarily multiplied by five by Israel-hating academics.

Along the war, several professional articles were published showing that the death toll data provided by Gaza is statistically illogical. In April, the Gaza Health Ministry suddenly announced that it had “incomplete data” on many of the dead. In May, the UN also retracted its numbers of deaths among women and children, cutting them in half. Beyond a few populist statements, Israel did not leverage these events that had the potential to change the picture, if they had been handled professionally.

The article published this week by John Spencer, for example, should become the fundamentals of public diplomacy in the mouth of Israeli every minister, ambassador and spokesperson. It explains a simple thing: The parroted number that has already passed 38,000 deaths, is not correct. First, the number of dead terrorists, which according to IDF estimates ranges between 10,000 and 15,000, should be subtracted from it. That is: The real number stands at 23-28 thousand civilians.

Second, has anyone checked what the natural mortality rate in Gaza is, and whether the Gaza Health Ministry includes in its data all the deaths that have nothing to do with the war? According to the World Bank, the mortality rate in the Arab world is 6 people out of a thousand per year, meaning 12,000 people a year in Gaza, or 9,000 people during 9 months of war. That is: The real number probably stands at 14-19 thousand civilians.

Third, according to the statement of the Gaza Health Ministry itself, which also led to a change in the numbers quoted by the UN, there is incomplete data on 11-12 thousand of the dead. Why? Because the data was collected from "media sources" that reported estimates after IDF attacks (in the style of reporting after the explosion at Al-Ahli hospital), and not from doctors or hospital data. That is: at least some of them may be made up.

In short, it shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone if the number of civilian casualties in Gaza did not even reach 10,000, some of which are victims of Hamas and Jihad's failed rockets. However, it is important to remember that even 10,000 civilian deaths is a lot. We have had close to 2,000 civilians and soldiers killed since October 7, out of a population that is four times larger than that of Gaza - this should allow us to understand the pain and the dimensions of the disaster. 

Still, you can't build a genocide campaign on less than 10,000 deaths, while on 38,000 that are multiplied by five to satisfy vindictive "scientists" - you actually can. The whole plot of the libel is built on this number.

Zero in public diplomacy 

The Gaza Health Ministry is controlled by Hamas. The officials who work there were appointed by Hamas, receive their salaries from Hamas, and know what their fate will be if they inform on it. But for some reason, foreign media outlets quote this ministry without batting an eye and present it as a reliable source, while repeatedly doubting the reliability of Israel and the IDF. This is not a result of "antisemitism", or of "everyone is against us anyway", or of "who needs public opinion in the U.S., let's wait for Trump". This is a result of unprofessional negligence.

Throughout the war, John Spencer published articles showing how careful Israel was about civilian lives in Gaza, and the Israeli government has done nothing to leverage them. Perhaps they want to refrain from upsetting the extremist partners in the coalition, who may be pleased with high casualty figures and aspire to resettle Gaza. Perhaps they have zero skills in public diplomacy, and perhaps they simply don’t care. But the public diplomacy failure is no less significant than the military failure. Only unlike it, it's not a failure that happened one day because of a wrong conception and then ended, but a failure that continues to exist until today.

A war is not won only with an army. The government often tries to shift blame towards the IDF, but the IDF is actually functioning. The government, on the other hand, has failed in drying up UNRWA, failed public diplomacy, and failed foreign relations.

The inevitable conclusion is that if the government is unable to deal with the severe problems Israel is facing, but can only express its displeasure about them, it needs to recognize its inability to help and make way for someone who will know how to deal with these problems.

A spokesperson for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs said: "Immediately upon publication of the article in The Lancet, an official and detailed letter of complaint was sent by the Israeli Embassy in London, signed by Israel's Ambassador to London, Tzipi Hotovely, addressing the numerical distortion and baseless claims in the article. Additionally, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs consistently emphasizes on every platform that the data published by Hamas health authorities in Gaza is false and should not be relied upon by the international community. Evidence of one of the successes of this activity was recently recorded when UN institutions, through the OCHA agency, significantly corrected their data on casualties in Gaza, reducing by half the figures regarding children and women affected in the Gaza Strip."

A spokesperson for the Prime Minister’s office said: "The National Public Diplomacy Directorate in the Prime Minister's Office operates consistently and continuously - through various and diverse means - to echo on every platform and media outlet the simple factual truth: Israel is doing its utmost to avoid harming civilians and non-combatants. This is in contrast to Hamas, which harms civilians, uses civilians and civilian buildings as human shields, exploits humanitarian institutions for terrorist activities and shelter, and commits daily war crimes."

How many civilian deaths in Gaza?

Gaza Health Ministry and UN: 38,295

IDF estimate for dead terrorists: 10,000-15,000

Natural mortality in Gaza per year: 12,000

Deaths without data: 11,000-12,000

Is it possible that the number of civilians killed stands at less than 10,000?