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Hamas' Gaza health ministry under microscope as questions continue over number of deaths
After nearly eight months of war, Gaza’s health system is in tatters, with the World Health Organization (WHO) reporting on May 3 that nearly 70% of its hospitals are no longer functioning, while the United Nations and the International Rescue Committee saying even only 15 hospitals, out of some 36, are only partially operating, and 65% of the primary health care centers are out of action completely.
Yet, despite the widespread destruction and chaos, Hamas-employed health and information officials continue to provide daily updates on the rising death toll and countless injuries. Additionally, aid agencies, media outlets and many world leaders, including President Biden, readily quote those figures without question.
Last week, a heated debate erupted after the U.N. officially admitted that the data coming out of Gaza, from both the Hamas-run Ministry of Health and the Government Media Office, could not be verified. While it said the overall death count was likely the same, the international agency reduced by nearly half the number of women and children killed so far in the devastating war.
The move prompted questions, particularly in Israel where Hamas’ data has long been challenged, on the reliability of this sensitive information now coming out of Gaza and why it continues to be cited.
"It sounds credible when you say the Gaza Ministry of Health reported, but the truth is that most of the ministry employees are Hamas public servants, and they are not even working at the moment, they are on the run," Khaled Abu Toameh, a Palestinian affairs analyst based in Jerusalem, told Fox News Digial.
"No one really knows what is happening there," he said, adding, "The Hamas government has not been functioning since the second or third week of the war…. They all went underground."
Since Israeli troops entered Gaza on Oct. 27, three weeks after thousands of terrorists led by Hamas attacked southern Israel, most of those affiliated with the Iranian-backed, U.S.-designated terrorist organization have since taken up arms, fighting from within civilian population centers both above ground and below ground, where the group spent some two decades and billions of dollars constructing an estimated 300 miles of subterranean passageways.
At the start of the war, medical officials employed by Hamas monitored the quickly mounting death toll via a network of computers connecting morgues and hospitals throughout the territory, a system that had previously been validated by human rights groups, the U.N. and the WHO. Previous conflicts had shown the overall death toll count, even though vetted by Hamas, which refuses to distinguish between civilians and combatants, to be fairly accurate.
"At the start of the war, the health ministry had a stream of casualty data coming in from hospitals across Gaza. That is why so many Western journalists said the ministry's data was worth citing in their articles and why the U.N. trusted it," David Adesnik, a senior fellow and director of research at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies who has been closely monitoring the situation in Gaza, told Fox News Digital.
"But, as Israeli troops moved deeper into Gaza, the ministry lost contact with hospitals. To compensate, it began using what it called ‘reliable media sources’ to determine the number of fatalities," he said, adding,"It never identified these sources and it’s a stretch to characterize any of the media in Gaza as reliable – instead of a supplement, these media reports began to provide the bulk of the media's data, accounting for more than 75% of all deaths recorded in the first three months of this year."
WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION SILENT OVER HAMAS’ USE OF GAZA HOSPITAL AS TERROR HQ
Adesnik said that over the past month, the Gaza Health Ministry began to "play down its reliance on media input" and relabeled the deaths based on media reports as "unidentified individuals."
"There are still more than 10,000 of these unidentified individuals in the ministry's official death toll of more than 35,000," he said. "But the big mystery is whether the ministry has any firm data at all on the 10,000-plus who’re unidentified."...
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Hamas has been counting its own dead terrorists as part of the 35K dead women and children. The people that use these bogus numbers are just useful idiots for Hamas. In every war civilians get killed . Israel has been dropping leaflets and knock bombs and texting and calling civilians in an effort to reduce civil deaths. Hamas wants more civilian deaths in order to turn public opinion against Israel. We must remember Hamas started this war and Israel has to finish it.
