A number of people have responded dismissively to the Israeli military’s confirmation that the casualty figures provided by the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health are accurate.
Some have done so on the grounds that data about the Gaza Genocide does not require validation by those who perpetrated the genocide and are directly responsible for these casualties.
Others have argued that the Israeli confirmation was made for strategic reasons. According to this interpretation, Israel’s purpose was to lock in the current numbers produced by the Ministry of Health, and thereby discredit the significantly higher casualty figures that can be directly attributed to Israel’s genocidal military campaign.
Specifically, the Ministry of Health data do not include the many thousands of dead buried under the rubble because these have not been properly verified in accordance with the Ministry’s strict professional standards, maintained under the most challenging circumstances imaginable.
The data also exclude victims of the Gaza Genocide that were not killed as a direct result of Israeli military operations. This category includes those who died as a result of starvation, exposure, disease, the obstruction of medical supplies, and the like, and their numbers are expected to increase, perhaps dramatically, during the coming year if conditions remain unchanged.
In my view these arguments miss the point about the significance of the Israeli military’s statement, for the following reasons:
1. Israel is now officially on record confirming that the Gaza Ministry of Health’s data is not only reliable but more credible than its own - more accurately, credible unlike its own. In doing so Israel has verified that its own, consistent campaign to discredit the Ministry and its data was nothing but an exercise in propaganda. Under the circumstances, the only plausible explanation for Israel’s propaganda campaign is genocide denial.
2. If one insists, as many have, on taking Israel’s claims that the Gaza Ministry of Health is a Hamas operation at face value, Israel is publicly confirming that data produced by Hamas is not only credible and reliable, but more so than its own.
3. The significance of the Israeli military’s admission lies not in its acceptance of the Ministry of Health’s figures, but in its confirmation of the Ministry’s credibility, reliability, and professionalism. Simply put, we can with a contemptuous wave of the hand confidently dismiss any and every future attempt by Israel to discredit Ministry data as these are adjusted, as well as new campaigns to attack the Ministry when it produces data on indirect deaths during the ongoing Gaza Genocide. Moving forward, therefore, it is the Ministry and no other body – and certainly not Israel – that constitutes the gold standard for data on Palestinian casualties in the Gaza Strip.
4. As importantly, Israel’s statement has exposed its legion of apologists and flunkies who have taken their cue from its campaign and, at its behest, engaged in fabricated “research” and issued fraudulent reports of their own. Charlatans for Genocide must now be so thoroughly discredited that its members are never taken seriously again.
5. Perhaps most importantly, the Israeli military’s statement has also revealed the craven complicity of media organizations, the Bibi Si! first and foremost among them, in the Gaza Genocide. The Bibi Si! and others not just routinely, but as a matter of policy and in order to appease Israel and Charlatans for Genocide, consistently sought to undermine the credibility and data produced by the Ministry of Health. They do so by, for example, invariably associating the Ministry of Health with Hamas, regularly featuring scepticism and suspicion about its work and data, while at the same time and as a rule – again in order to appease Israel and its apologists – wholly ignoring the Israeli military’s record of systematic forgery and fabrication.
How one deals with media organizations that have gone out of their way to demonstrate that they are almost certainly beyond redemption, addicted to appeasing Israel, and incapable of accepting accountability, is a more difficult question.
Hello Dr Rabbani, A closer read of the reports suggests that the IoF has not really admitted any per se. If possible please check my latest report. Very curious to know your thoughts about it.