(Worthy Insights) – A new report by the Henry Jackson Society (HJS) reveals what has been obvious all along: The death toll provided by the Hamas-run Ministry of Health (MoH) in Gaza does not add up. Despite the Palestinian casualty figures being disputed by Israel, this hasn’t stopped most mainstream media from treating them with barely deserved credibility. The HJS report analyzed a collection of 1,378 articles published by leading English-language newspapers and media outlets, specifically The New York Times, Washington Post, The Guardian, CNN, BBC, Reuters, Associated Press, and the Australian ABC.
The findings are staggering:
- 84% of the publications analyzed failed to make the critical distinction in total numbers between combatant deaths and civilian deaths.
- In 19% of the publications analyzed, the numbers of fatalities provided by Hamas-run institutions were used without citing any source, thereby suggesting those figures were undisputed.
- A mere 5% of outlets cited the casualty statistics provided by Israel; 98% cited figures by the Hamas-run MoH. The Israeli figures were questioned in half of the articles that cited them, whereas the Hamas figures were often taken at face value.
- Men were recorded in fatality lists as female when the same individual was reported as a male in the Palestinian Population Registry. Similarly, the ages of several fatalities have been found to be inaccurate – men in their twenties or thirties are reported as children and babies, skewing the reported number of women and children killed.
- There is a disproportionate number of young men of fighting age listed among the casualties. There is no differentiation between civilians and Hamas combatants.
- The figures reported by the Hamas-run MoH include those who died of natural causes.[ Source (Read More…) ]
