After two years of denial and deception, the Israel Defense Forces acknowledged Wednesday for the first time that over 70,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since October 2023, while continuing to deny the famine Israel caused by blocking humanitarian aid from entering the obliterated strip.<\/p>\n
Israeli media including the Times of Israel<\/a><\/em>, the Jerusalem Post<\/a><\/em>, Haaretz<\/em><\/a>, and others reported that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) accepts the accuracy of the Hamas-run Gaza<\/a> Health Ministry\u2019s (GHM) death toll, which currently stands at least 71,667, with more than 171,000 others wounded and 9,500 missing<\/a> and presumed dead and buried beneath the rubble of bombed buildings.<\/p>\n \u201cHow many years did we spend screaming, with checked and re-checked figures, lists showing names<\/a> and ID numbers, being told the numbers were completely fanciful despite rigorous, transparent verification, and now the IDF quietly accepts that they were correct all along,\u201d Beirut-based journalist S\u00e9amus Malekafzali said<\/a> on X in response to the IDF admission.<\/p>\n Experts\u2014including the authors of multiple peer-reviewed studies in the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet<\/em> \u2013\u00a0assert<\/a> that the actual death toll in Gaza is much higher than reported. Last June, a study published<\/a> in Nature<\/em> reported 84,000 deaths in Gaza. Others say the toll could be even higher, with one Economist<\/em> study estimating<\/a> between 77,000-109,000 Gazans killed by Israeli forces.<\/p>\n \u201cWe should not care what the IDF accepts or not \u2013 they perpetrated the genocide,\u201d said<\/a> Jake Romm, the US representative for the Hind Rajab Foundation, which tracks suspected IDF war criminals and is named after a 5-year-old Palestinian girl massacred<\/a> along with relatives and rescue workers by Israeli occupation forces on January 29, 2024. \u201cTheir communications are in service of that project.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis is, in any event, an admission that will only be used to discredit the real, much higher death toll as the scale of the atrocity becomes known,\u201d Romm added.<\/p>\n