Members of the United Nations Security Council meet on the day of a vote on a Gaza resolution that demands an immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramadan leading to a permanent ceasefire, and the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages, at UN headquarters in New York City, US, March 25, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Andrew Kelly

After CAMERA’s insistence on factual accuracy prompted Agence France Presse (AFP) to abandon its longstanding falsehood that according to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health, most of the Gaza Strip fatalities in the Israel-Hamas war are civilians, the AFP has turned to an ostensibly independent source: the United Nations.

Thus, a recent AFP story, like many before it, reported the following (“Israel’s Gantz says military focus needs to shift to Lebanon“):

Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza has so far killed at least 40,972 people, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

The UN human rights office says most of the dead are women and children.

The United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs  (OCHA) provides a weekly report called “Reported impact snapshot | Gaza Strip,” which cites several data points including fatality figures, with breakdowns detailing men, women, children and elderly.

As of this writing, the most current report is from Sept. 4. 

But here’s the rub: By its own acknowledgment, OCHA does not research and collect its own numbers for the casualty totals or for the demographic breakdown.

The UN body simply regurgitates data supplied by Hamas’ Ministry of Health. See the graphic from OCHA’s Sept. 4 report with sourcing to “MoH Gaza,” meaning the Hamas-run Ministry of Health.

Indeed, a disclaimer at the top of the report explicitly states:

Disclaimer: Figures that are yet-to-be verified by the UN are attributed to their source. Casualty numbers have been provided by the Ministry of Health (MoH) and the Israeli authorities. The fatality breakdowns currently cited are those that the MoH in Gaza has fully identified as of 1 August out of the higher number of casualties they report. The latest casuality [sic] updates are also available on the Health Cluster’s Unified Dashboard.

Thus, AFP’s farcical attribution of the information to the United Nations falsely distances the figures from Hamas and disguises them as originating from an independent, third-party source, ostensibly bestowing on them greater credibility.

One of AFP’s leading competitors, the Associated Press, has acknowledged the credibility problems with Hamas’ casualty numbers, reporting:

AP’s examination of the reports found flaws in the Palestinian record keeping. As Gaza’s hospital system collapsed in December and January, the ministry began relying on hard-to-verify “media reports” to register new deaths. Its March report included 531 individuals who were counted twice, and many deaths were self-reported by families, instead of health officials.

As for AFP’s claim that “most of the dead are women and children,” even according to the “UN” numbers — which readers now understand are actually from Hamas’ Ministry of Health — women (5,956) and children (10,627) constitute 51.3 percent of the total identified 32,280 fatalities, meaning those recorded by hospitals.

“Most” could mean 51.3 percent; but it could also mean 65 percent or 93 percent. Presumably, “most” readers would not understand from AFP’s reporting that even according to Hamas’ suspect and widely-disputed numbers, women and children (a category which easily includes no shortage of combatants of the age 17, 16 or even younger) only just exceeds 5o percent of the identified fatalities.

Relatedly, in May, OCHA halved the number of identified women and children it said were killed, reflecting a discrepancy in Hamas’ murky figures published by its Government Media Office versus the smaller number identified by its Ministry of Health.

As The Times of Israel detailed last May (“UN cuts by more than half the number of women, children ‘identified’ as killed in Gaza“):

In a dramatic development, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has sharply revised downward the number of “identified” female and child fatalities in the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

The data now differentiates between the total number of deaths reported by Hamas (over 34,000) and the number of “identified” fatalities (over 24,000).

The new figures reported by OCHA reduce by more than half the number of women and children that it previously said had been killed during the war, though other “unregistered” deaths may be pending.

“Unregistered” deaths refers not to unidentified bodies held by hospitals, but mostly to more vague figures reported by Hamas as coming from “reliable media sources.”

All numbers continue to be based on reporting from the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry, and not on independent data.

Precisely herein lies AFP’s latest fib about Gaza’s fatalities: falsely passing off Hamas data as independent United Nations data.

Tamar Sternthal is the director of CAMERA’s Israel Office. A version of this article previously appeared on the CAMERA website.