How the Gaza Ministry of Health Fakes Casualty Numbers

[Mosby]

The number of civilian casualties in Gaza has been at the center of international attention since the start of the war. The main source for the data has been the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, which now claims more than 30,000 dead, the majority of which it says are children and women. Recently, the Biden administration lent legitimacy to Hamas’ figure. When asked at a House Armed Services Committee hearing last week how many Palestinian women and children have been killed since Oct. 7, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said the number was “over 25,000.” The Pentagon quickly clarified that the secretary “was citing an estimate from the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry.” President Biden himself had earlier cited this figure, asserting that “too many, too many of the over 27,000 Palestinians killed in this conflict have been innocent civilians and children, including thousands of children.” The White House also explained that the president “was referring to publicly available data about the total number of casualties.”

Here’s the problem with this data: The numbers are not real. That much is obvious to anyone who understands how naturally occurring numbers work. The casualties are not overwhelmingly women and children, and the majority may be Hamas fighters.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/how-gaza-health-ministry-fakes-casualty-numbers

The anaysis points to three aspects of the data that strongly suggest the numbers are being fabricated. First, the increases have been virtually linear, which doesn't seem plausible given the dynamics of a war. The author of the piece was able to create a linear function that mirrors the increases exactly. That shouldn't be possible with real world events.

Second the relationship between women's deaths and children's deaths should be highly correlated, but their not, the R² is .017 which is not statistically significant.

Lastly, the numbers of women vs. men deaths are negatively correlated, which is exactly the reverse of what is expected.

Along with other anomalies, it's pretty obvious that the death numbers are fabricated.