{"id":57756,"date":"2026-02-25T07:34:36","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T15:34:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=57756"},"modified":"2026-02-25T07:34:36","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T15:34:36","slug":"israeli-analysis-affirms-gaza-health-ministrys-official-palestinian-death-count","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/25\/israeli-analysis-affirms-gaza-health-ministrys-official-palestinian-death-count\/","title":{"rendered":"Israeli Analysis Affirms Gaza Health Ministry\u2019s Official Palestinian Death Count"},"content":{"rendered":"

An Israeli analysis published<\/a> Tuesday examining the Gaza Health Ministry\u2019s list of Palestinians killed during Israel\u2019s US-backed annihilation of the Gaza Strip largely affirmed the official death count, while noting some imperfections in the 2,000-page document.<\/p>\n

Haaretz<\/em>, Israel\u2019s oldest daily newspaper, dissected the Gaza Health Ministry\u2019s (GHM) database of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza, which at the time contained nearly 70,000 names \u2013 it\u2019s now over 72,000 \u2013 in part by using artificial intelligence to analyze the massive file.<\/p>\n

\u201cA consensus has taken shape: Even if the list has weaknesses, including the fact that it does not differentiate between combatants and civilians, it reflects the scale of the disaster inflicted on Gaza and its people,\u201d article author Nir Hasson wrote. \u201cIt also forms the basis for allegations that Israel committed war crimes, crimes against humanity, and even genocide.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lee Mordechai, a historian at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who says<\/a> Israeli is committing genocide in Gaza, told Hasson, \u201cIt\u2019s clear that the list isn\u2019t 100% accurate and that it has errors, but I think they\u2019re around 1%.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gabriel Epstein, an associate at the US-based Israel Policy Forum who was formerly skeptical of the GHM list, \u201cnow believes it is largely accurate and may even slightly undercount the dead,\u201d according to Hasson.<\/p>\n

\u201cEpstein reviewed the list obtained by Haaretz<\/em>,\u201d the article states. \u201cHe found 24 duplicates and 38 entries with problems in the ID numbers. That means 99.91% of the entries were complete, with verified ID numbers. He also found that 64 deaths that had appeared on earlier lists were later removed, while 158 names removed by March of last year were added back.\u201d<\/p>\n

The GHM list notably only contains the names of people who died from combat-related violence, not from \u201chunger, disease, accidents, or the collapse of the health system.\u201d<\/p>\n

It also does not include the thousands of people who are missing<\/a> and likely dead and buried beneath the rubble of the 80% of Gaza\u2019s buildings that have been destroyed or damaged during the war.<\/p>\n

Other research, including<\/a> multiple peer-reviewed studies<\/a> in the prestigious British medical journal the Lancet<\/em>, have also concluded that the ministry was undercounting the number of people killed by Israel\u2019s war on Gaza.<\/p>\n

As for the issue of Hamas<\/a> not differentiating between combatants and civilians on the ministry\u2019s death list, an investigation<\/a> last year by Israeli journalist and filmmaker Yuval Abraham and Guardian<\/em> senior international affairs correspondent Emma Graham-Harrison analyzed classified Israel Defense Forces intelligence data showing that 5 in 6 Palestinians killed by Israeli troops through the first 19 months of the war were civilians. The probe obliterated IDF claims of a historically low civilian-to-combatant kill ratio.<\/p>\n

Last September, Former IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi \u2013 who was in command for much of the war \u2013 said<\/a> that \u201cover 10%\u201d of Gaza\u2019s approximately 2.2 million people \u201cwere killed or injured\u201d since October 2023. Halevi\u2019s acknowledgment tracked with GHM figures showing at least 228,815 people killed or wounded at the time.<\/p>\n

In January, Israeli media outlets including Haaretz<\/em>, the Jerusalem Post<\/em>, and the Times of Israel<\/em> reported<\/a> that the IDF accepted the accuracy of GHM\u2019s death count, which at the time stood at over 71,000.<\/p>\n

Israeli officials and media, along with their supportive US counterparts during both the Biden and Trump administrations, once cast doubt upon<\/a> or outright denied<\/a> GHM figures because the ministry is under Hamas\u2019 control. These aspersions came in addition to widespread Israeli and US denials of Israel\u2019s forced famine and starvation deaths and IDF war crimes in Gaza.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs the months have passed, claims of fabrication and exaggeration have largely remained confined to Israeli television panels,\u201d Hasson wrote in the new analysis. \u201cAt the end of January, an apparent dispute over the number of dead seemed to end in Israel when a senior army source confirmed that the IDF recognizes that 70,000 people died<\/a>, precisely the figure cited by Gazan authorities.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEven if the argument over the total number of dead is, for now, largely settled, disagreement in Israel continues over who the dead were,\u201d he continued. \u201cHow many were gunmen, how many were affiliated with Hamas, how many were killed under circumstances that meet the conditions of international law?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNone of this alters the stark figures in the table,\u201d Hasson added. \u201cOf the recorded deaths, 20,876, about 30%, are young girls, teenage girls, and women. Another 3,220 were aged 65 and over, including the final name on the list, Tamam al-Batsh, who was 110 when she died.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Israel officials continue to insist that GHM figures are \u201cmisleading and unreliable\u201d \u2013 or even \u201cfake\u201d \u2013 Hasson noted the general consistency between Israeli and Palestinian tallies across past Israeli attacks on Gaza. During Operation Cast Lead (2008-09), the Palestinian count was 23% higher than Israel\u2019s. For Operation Pillar of Success (2012), Israel\u2019s tally of Gazan deaths was 11% higher than the Palestinian figure. In Operation Protective Edge (2014), the Palestinian count was 8% higher. And during 2021\u2019s Operation Guardian of the Walls, Palestinian officials counted 10% more Gaza deaths than Israel.<\/p>\n

The United Nations and US administrations of both major political parties have long acknowledged the GHM\u2019s accounting of Palestinian casualties in Israeli attacks, including the assault that began in October 2023.<\/p>\n

Hasson noted that \u201cit has been increasingly harder to find Israeli officials commenting on the subject\u201d of the GHM death count in the ongoing war as evidence of its accuracy mounts.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince the war began,\u201d he said, \u201cIsrael has made no serious effort to demonstrate that the list is false or to present an alternative. It has not proven even once that a person listed as deceased is in fact alive.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An Israeli analysis published Tuesday examining the Gaza Health Ministry\u2019s list of Palestinians killed during Israel\u2019s US-backed annihilation of the Gaza Strip largely affirmed the official death count, while noting some imperfections in the 2,000-page document. Haaretz, Israel\u2019s oldest daily newspaper, dissected the Gaza Health Ministry\u2019s (GHM) database of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":372,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[806],"class_list":["post-57756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"0","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":"One Israeli expert placed discrepancies in the list at \u201caround 1%.\u201d Another said the error rate appears even lower. "},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/372"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57756"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57756\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57760,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57756\/revisions\/57760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57756"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=57756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}