(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) The United Nations admitted that it had drastically overreported the number of civilian casualties in Gaza based on the information proffered by Hamas propagandists.
The UN has now cut its original estimated number of casualties for Palestinian women and children in half, the Jerusalem Post reported
The UN has just HALVED its estimate of women and children killed in Gaza.
And this still counts 16 & 17 year old terrorists as children.
It is time @BBCNews @skynews @cnn @nytimes and all the other brainless media apologise for spreading empty Hamas propaganda for 7 months.
— David Collier (@mishtal) May 12, 2024
The acknowledgement comes after left-wing activists have used the bogus information as the pretense to mobilize massive protests on college campuses and elsewhere throughout the U.S. and other westernized nations accusing Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians.
The United Nations, according to the report, had initially taken and published the numbers reported by the Gaza Ministry of Health.
On May 6, the predictions of the deaths of women and children reached their high water mark, with over 9,500 women and over 14,500 children—a total of approximately 25,000—reported to have been killed out 34,735 total.
Two days later, the total number of estimated deaths had ticked up slightly, to 34,844—but it qualified the figure by noting that only 24,686 had been identified.
And among those, only 12,756 were women and children under 18 (some of whom may have been Hamas fighters). Thus, the actual UN total was nearly just a little over half what it had clamed two days prior.
The figures also listed 1,924 elderly casualties.
Nonetheless, the 40% remaining were males in their prime, presumed to be Israeli enemy combattants, a significant uptick from the earlier estimate.
Several days after the alteration, the UN denied having changed the death toll data when Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for Secretary–General António Guterres, told reporters that the “number remains unchanged.”
Haq explained the altered statistics regarding women and children came as a response to a more thorough report out of Gaza after officials were able to more accurately identify bodies.
“What’s changed is the ministry of health in Gaza has updated the breakdown of fatalities, for whom full details have been documented,” Haq noted.
Still, the UN released its updated numbers only after months of argument from Israeli officials, suggesting that the numbers provided by Gaza remain unreliable.
Facing scrutiny for the statistical errors or manipulations, Haq further suggested that the data was wrong because the “fog of war” made it difficult to gather accurate data:
And here’s UN’s answer to false death toll figures from Gaza: “Fog of war”.
Why not just admit that relying on the most brutal terror organization for reliable figures was a major mistake from the beginning? I don’t recall the West relying on ISIS providing a brutal civilian… https://t.co/toP5S8N8oh pic.twitter.com/BnvAzRoEiM
— Jotam Confino (@mrconfino) May 13, 2024
“We get numbers from different sources on the ground, and then we try to cross check them,” Haq continued. “As we cross check them, we update the numbers, and we’ll continue to do that as that progresses.”
The ministry has been criticized in the past for pushing misinformation, such as a false report that an Israeli rocket had hit a hospital in the early days of the military campaign. It was later revealed to be a misfired rocket from a militant group inside Gaza.
Astute critics also pointed out that some of the media reports coming out of Gaza appeared to rely on the same crisis actors reprising their roles as victims to gain sympathy in multiple propaganda videos.
The crisis actor has appeared in various propaganda videos for the terror group. pic.twitter.com/6kZ7BYsEJ6
— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) October 25, 2023
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