If the Associated Press, one of the biggest news outlets in the world, was truly concerned with getting the most accurate information out there, then they failed. Miserably. And today’s admission of problems with the death totals in Gaza doesn’t change that.

Yes, the AP is admitting today that when it comes to relying on the “Gaza Health Ministry” – otherwise known as Hamas – the numbers of reported deaths are – gasp! – not accurate.

The proportion of Palestinian women and children being killed in the Israel-Hamas war appears to have declined sharply, an Associated Press analysis of Gaza Health Ministry data has found, a trend that both coincides with Israel’s changing battlefield tactics and contradicts the ministry’s own public statements.

The trend is significant because the death rate for women and children is the best available proxy for civilian casualties in one of the 21st century’s most destructive conflicts. In October, when the war began, it was above 60%. For the month of April, it was below 40%. Yet the shift went unnoticed for months by the U.N. and much of the media, and the Hamas-linked Health Ministry has made no effort to set the record straight.

Hmmm, I wonder WHY the “shift” in casualty rates went “unnoticed.” Or why Hamas is not making an effort to admit that less people have died than they have claimed. It’s a mystery, Charlie Brown!

When Israel first responded to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, which killed some 1,200 people, it launched an intense aerial bombardment on the densely populated Gaza Strip. Israel said its goal was to destroy Hamas positions, and the barrage cleared the way for tens of thousands of ground troops, backed by tanks and artillery.

The Gaza death toll rose quickly and by the end of October women and people 17 and younger accounted for 64% of the 6,745 killed who were fully identified by the Health Ministry.

Let’s remind the people in the back that Hamas is HIDING among the civilian population IN ORDER to use them as human shields. As we all know, Hamas is not interested in preserving any lives but their own – not even their fellow Palestinian. The more civilians dead, the better to blame Israel.

As the intensity of fighting has scaled back, the death toll has continued to rise, but at a slower rate – and with seemingly fewer civilians caught in the crossfire. In April, women and children made up 38% of the newly and fully identified deaths, the Health Ministry’s most recent data shows.

The Health Ministry announces a new death toll for the war nearly every day. It also has periodically released the underlying data behind this figure, including detailed lists of the dead.

The AP’s analysis looked at these lists, which were shared on social media in late October, early January, late March, and the end of April. Each list includes the names of people whose deaths were attributable to the war, along with other identifying details.

The daily death tolls, however, are provided without supporting data. In February, ministry officials said 75% of the dead were women and children – a level that was never confirmed in the detailed reports. And as recently as March, the ministry’s daily reports claimed that 72% of the dead were women and children, even as underlying data clearly showed the percentage was well below that.

The ministry said publicly on April 30 that 34,622 had died in the war. The AP analysis was based on the 22,961 individuals fully identified at the time by the Health Ministry with names, genders, ages, and Israeli-issued identification numbers.

The ministry says 9,940 of the dead – 29% of its April 30 total – were not listed in the data because they remain “unidentified.” These include bodies not claimed by families, decomposed beyond recognition or whose records were lost in Israeli raids on hospitals.

Among those fully identified, the records show a steady decline in the overall proportion of women and children who have been killed: from 64% in late October, to 62% as of early January, to 57% by the end of March, to 54% by the end of April.

Yet throughout the war, the ministry has claimed that roughly two-thirds of the dead were women and children. This figure has been repeated by international organizations and many in the foreign media, including the AP.

Again, it is to Hamas’s benefit to claim that civilians are being killed, but when the AP points out that there is a difference between “fully identified individuals” and nearly 10,000 who are supposedly “unidentified” with no one vouching for their civilian status BUT Hamas, then we have a problem. But Hamas is sticking by their story.

Dr. Moatasem Salah, director of the ministry’s emergency center, rejected Israeli assertions that his ministry has intentionally inflated or manipulated the death toll.

“This shows disrespect to the humanity for any person who exists here,” he said. “We are not numbers … These are all human souls.”

He insisted that 70% of those killed have been women and children and said the overall death toll is much higher than what has been reported because thousands of people remain missing, are believed to be buried in rubble, or their deaths were not reported by their families.

Which leads to the question – if the deaths are supposedly not reported by families, or they are assuming that additional bodies are simply buried out there somewhere, then how can the Hamas numbers be accurate AT ALL? And why would media outlets like the AP simply swallow the Hamas numbers whole, without attempting to verify or qualify ANYTHING?

I think this is when we remind everyone that the AP has had a very cozy relationship with Hamas in the past, even having offices in the same building in Gaza at one point.

This should also be when the AP admits that they relied far too much on Hamas, or on other media reports, in order to compile the numbers of dead. But the damage has been done. As Seth Mandel writes in Commentary, this is a huge media scandal because of the narrative being pushed that “Israel is committing genocide” that we are seeing from college campuses to the International Court of Justice. And yet the AP is simply shrugging their shoulders and saying “our bad.”

According to AP, the share of women and children is down to 38 percent as of April, and still declining. But keep in mind that “children” to the AP means those who are 17 years old and younger. Hamas, meanwhile, tends to count as children those who are under 20. So by the AP’s own count, the true number of children killed in the war is almost surely even lower. Additionally, Hamas doesn’t distinguish between combatants and noncombatants, which means a fair number of “upper teenagers” being counted as children here are actually combatants.

None of these totals, by the way, accounts for those killed by Hamas. So even though we get regular stories of Hamas murdering rival families and misfiring rockets and booby-trapping homes, those stories aren’t reflected in the count.

The point is: All of those numbers are significantly lower than have been reported. Western newspapers and news agencies have been mistaken by orders of magnitude.

The AP also wants its readers to know that getting accurate figures is important. Who knew! “The true toll in Gaza could have serious repercussions,” we’re told. “Two international courts in the Hague are examining accusations that Israel has committed war crimes and genocide against Palestinians — allegations it adamantly denies.”

No kidding.

This is a major media scandal. But I don’t have much faith that it’ll be treated as such. Just yesterday, the AP and others had to revise numbers in a story about an Israeli strike on a Hamas command center in a building that was once used as a school: “The hospital initially reported that nine women and 14 children were among those killed in the strike on the school. The hospital morgue later amended those records to show that the dead included three women, nine children and 21 men. It was not immediately clear what caused the discrepancy. An Associated Press reporter had counted the bodies but was unable to look beneath the shrouds.”

Hamas showed reporters shrouds and told them what was in them, and the reporters dutifully repeated what they were told. That’s the process for a story like this. And it turned out while Hamas wouldn’t name who was in the shrouds, Israel has now done so. You will not be surprised to learn that at least a quarter of them were identifiable terrorists.

And it wasn’t just the AP who ran with the entire “Israel bombed a school and killed civilians” narrative. Reuters. CNN. NBC.

If you want to see further how this narrative building and misinformation works…

Almost every outlet ran with the narrative insinuating these were mostly civilians killed, thus insinuating Israel was not being honest about targeting a Hxmas gathering place. A big part of the… https://t.co/ZKajw0kAFr pic.twitter.com/cU1u0Y6HvF

— AG (@AGHamilton29) June 7, 2024

The full tweet reads:

If you want to see further how this narrative building and misinformation works…

Almost every outlet ran with the narrative insinuating these were mostly civilians killed, thus insinuating Israel was not being honest about targeting a Hxmas gathering place. A big part of the evidence for that was the Gaza health ministry saying 9 women and 14 children were among the deceased. You can see members of Congress cited that claim. The NYT and other outlets are still using those numbers.

After an AP reporter apparently went to the morgue, the hospital revised the count to 3 women, 9 children (keep in mind 18 year old males are marked as children), and 21 men.

Funny how all the errors always go one way, isn’t it? At the end of the AP analysis, we get no promise of “doing better” in the future or anything like that. We just get an acknowledgement that Israel has pointed out the numbers discrepancy from the beginning – and then we get the AP complaining that Israel did not comment on this story when asked.

The number of Hamas militants killed in the fighting is also unclear. Hamas has closely guarded this information, though Khalil al-Hayya, a top Hamas official, told the AP in late April that the group had lost no more than 20% of its fighters. That would amount to roughly 6,000 fighters based on Israeli pre-war estimates.

The Israeli military has not challenged the overall death toll released by the Palestinian ministry. But it says the number of dead militants is much higher at roughly 15,000 – or over 40% of all the dead. It has provided no evidence to support the claim, and declined to comment for this story.

Wow, I wonder why the IDF declined to comment??? It’s almost like the AP and other Western media – with few exceptions – have made their minds up about who is at fault when civilians are killed while being used as human shields, and the fault apparently NEVER lies with Hamas.

Meanwhile, aid workers are kidnapped in Yemen, and there is no AP story about it.

#BREAKING: Houthi terrorists in Yemen kidnapped at least 18 aid workers today, including @UN staff.

Where’s the outrage? Or is this what the pro-Hamas mob means when they chant, “Yemen, Yemen, make us proud”? pic.twitter.com/MmrhR7UtvR

— Israel War Room (@IsraelWarRoom) June 7, 2024

However, there is an AP story about how Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, AND Israel are “violating the rights and protection of children in armed conflict.” Not a peep from the AP about aid workers being kidnapped, and apparently no complaints from the UN being publicly aired, either. I guess they haven’t found a way to blame Israel for it yet.

Featured image: Associated Press logo on its building in New York City via Alterego on Wikimedia Commons, cropped, CC BY-SA 3.0