According to the independent analysis group Honest Reporting, the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry recently updated its casualty list, quietly removing thousands of names without explanation. Notably, the revised list also dropped over a thousand children listed, sharply altering the previously reported demographic ratios that had been quickly seized upon by critics of Israeli military operations.
This stark revision — largely overlooked by major media outlets — exemplifies a broader problem: the uncritical acceptance and use of questionable statistics to judge the legality and morality of military operations, most notably in Gaza.
Despite the clear political control and questionable methodology behind Hamas casualty figures, political leaders and most international media outlets have cited Gaza Health Ministry (GHM) statistics without question or caveat.
In the ongoing discourse surrounding the war in Gaza, casualty reporting has become a centerpiece of legal and moral debate. Much of the focus has centered on figures released by the GHM, which operates under Hamas — a US- and EU-designated terrorist organization.
Yet, far too little scrutiny is applied to how these statistics are collected, verified, and disseminated. As I’ve discussed in my work on urban warfare and casualty ratios, accounting for the dead and wounded during active combat, especially in dense urban areas, is inherently difficult, often imprecise, and prone to error or manipulation.
A recent investigative report by the Henry Jackson Society titled “Questionable Counting“ documents serious flaws in GHM’s casualty data. The ministry reportedly compiles numbers using a disjointed network of hospital records, unverified clinic reports, family input, and a Google Share Drive — rarely validated across sources.
In the chaos of ongoing war, such methods are not just unreliable — they’re ripe for political exploitation. These concerns were also echoed in an earlier investigation by the Associated Press, which reported how GHM’s figures were frequently changed and riddled with inconsistencies such as duplicate names, gender mismatches, and age discrepancies.
This practice reveals a broader, troubling trend: the world has come to accept casualty figures from Hamas-controlled institutions as near-instant truth. But it is neither reasonable nor practical to believe that any organization — let alone one operating under the duress and agenda of a terrorist group — can produce accurate, disaggregated casualty data within minutes or hours of an incident. The expectation itself ignores the inherent fog of war.
For context, consider other modern urban battles. In the 2016–2017 Battle of Mosul — one of the most studied urban operations of recent times — it took months, and in many cases years, to reach consensus estimates of civilian and combatant deaths. Even with international access and post-conflict investigations, the messy reality of urban warfare made real-time casualty accounting all but impossible.
Credible media reports and US government officials, including the National Security Council, have acknowledged that the GHM’s numbers frequently conflate combatants and civilians and lack crucial context about how, where, and under what circumstances individuals died. This lack of transparency contrasts sharply with the moral and legal weight often assigned to such statistics by international organizations and advocacy groups.
In my research on the conduct of war in urban settings, I’ve emphasized how difficult it is to calculate accurate casualty ratios during or immediately after combat operations. In cities, civilians, fighters, and infrastructure exist in close proximity. Combatants use civilian structures and populations as cover.
The tactical reality of these environments complicates targeting, amplifies risk, and obscures accountability.
Critically, the laws of war do not require militaries to report casualty counts to prove compliance with the law. The proportionality principle within the laws of armed conflict requires commanders to assess the expected military advantage of a strike against the anticipated risk to civilians before executing an operation.
It does not judge legality based on post-event casualty numbers — particularly when such figures are produced by non-transparent, politically motivated actors.
The growing practice of using unverifiable or distorted casualty statistics to make moral or legal declarations about military conduct misrepresents how the laws of war are intended to function. Casualty numbers, especially when supplied by entities like Hamas, should not be the foundation of international judgment. Warfare is not a numbers game.
Legal compliance in war must be judged based on the intent of the action, the precautions taken, the proportionality analysis conducted in planning, and the efforts made to mitigate civilian harm — not on manipulated or incomplete casualty spreadsheets.
Until casualty figures are verified through independent, transparent processes, they should not be used to draw definitive conclusions about the legality or morality of military actions.
The world must move away from using raw numbers — especially those produced by biased or non-transparent sources — as shortcuts to legal and moral judgment.
That is not how the laws of war work, nor is it how war itself operates. Analysts, journalists, policymakers, and the public must demand a higher standard of rigor and context before allowing questionable data to shape international perceptions and policy.
The recent revelation by Honest Reporting, combined with findings from other investigations, confirms what many have long suspected: the casualty figures most often cited to condemn Israeli actions in Gaza are not just flawed — they are fundamentally unreliable and politically manipulated.
John Spencer is chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute and codirector of MWI’s Urban Warfare Project.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
