In mid-August 2024, the world stood witness to one of the few personal tragedies from Gaza to make global headlines. Israeli airstrikes killed two 3-day-old twins and their mother in their home, shortly after their father, Mohammed Abu al-Qumsan, left to register their births. Mere days after their birth, he was receiving their death certificates instead. The Gaza Ministry of Health reported that the twins, Aser and Aysel, were among 115 babies born and killed between October 7, 2023 and mid-August 2024.
The misinformation started almost immediately. On social media, several propaganda accounts used doctored images to try to prove that this man never had children, or was a “crisis actor,” or was not even from Gaza. His quote to the BBC (cited above), “I don’t know what happened…I am told it was a shell that hit the house,” was used as evidence that even if this man existed, and had children, it was not necessarily Israel that launched the fatal airstrike, as if there are multiple other actors with an air force operating in Gaza.
While such misinformation is standard on social media, even the BBC headline describing this horrific incident seemed to indicate that the man’s tragic story should be questioned: Father says baby twins killed by Israeli strike in Gaza as he registered births. The same article uncritically includes the standard Israeli response to such incidents: “Israel says it tries to avoid harming civilians and blames their deaths on Hamas operating in dense residential areas, including using civilian buildings as shelter.”
The number of civilians killed and the unprecedented destruction offer significant evidence that these deaths are purposeful.
For a nuclear power that has, in previous bouts of military violence, claimed “everything was accurate and measured, and we know where every bullet landed,” the number of civilians killed in Gaza, and the unprecedented destruction to every form of civilian infrastructure, offers significant evidence that these deaths are not merely unfortunate collateral damage, but are purposeful. Indeed, the indiscriminate violence against civilians plays a major role in the current genocide case before the International Court of Justice, as well as the application for arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant before the International Criminal Court.
Both of these legal efforts to hold Israel accountable started many months before the medical journal The Lancet published an article in July of 2024 that estimated that the actual death toll in Gaza—at the time just over 37,000 according to local health authorities—would likely be closer to 186,000. The Lancet’s estimate included indirect mortality such as deaths from disease, starvation, and other conditions created by war.
How have Israel and its supporters responded to these aggregate numbers as well as individual stories like Mohammed Abu al-Qumsan’s? From the beginning, the strategy was clear: question the legitimacy of Palestinians, dispute their findings, deny Israel’s responsibility both logistically and legally, and ultimately maintain that if there are a few extra civilian casualties, the Palestinians are at fault. This paradigm reveals the status quo belief about Palestinian pain and suffering, shared even by the world’s most powerful actors: Palestinians are not to be trusted, while Israel is not to be questioned.
Questioning the Palestinian Death Toll
Denying the death toll of mass atrocities is a common tactic by perpetrators and their allies and is not unique to the Palestinian context. Denial is one of the ten stages of genocide as described by leading genocide scholars, with the organization Genocide Watch finding that those against punitive action for perpetrators of mass atrocities all use similar techniques: “They question whether intent to destroy a group can be proven, ignoring thousands of murders. They overlook deliberate imposition of conditions that destroy part of a group. They claim that only courts can determine whether there has been genocide, demanding ‘proof beyond a reasonable doubt,’ when prevention only requires action based on compelling evidence.”
Indeed, death toll denial has been a significant barrier to broad understanding of many documented genocides and other sites of mass atrocities. Examples of genocides include the Holocaust, Armenian genocide (with the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs website dismissing Armenian evidence of genocide and the death toll), the Rwandan genocide, and the genocide against native people in North America. Unfortunately, impunity for atrocity denial begets further atrocities—and denial of those atrocities—as seen today in the civil war in Ethiopia and the civil war in Syria.
It did not take long after October 7 for the first public proclamations that what was happening in Gaza simply was not as bad as what was being displayed on the news and social media every day. In fact, among the first public deniers of the Palestinian death toll was US President Joe Biden, who told reporters on October 25, 2023, that he had “no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using.” The next day, US National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby added his own take on the issue, calling the Ministry of Health in Gaza merely “a front for Hamas.”
The framing took hold and soon some were starting to dismiss the overwhelming number of pictures and videos from Gaza showing maimed bodies and destroyed neighborhoods, as the death toll continued to rise. Claims that injured or suffering Palestinians in videos were “crisis actors” spread, with accusations that many videos are created in “Pallywood,” a term that has been long used to discredit media that shows Palestinian death or other horrific circumstances.
For months, the death toll being reported from Gaza was questioned.
Media outlets picked up on the stories, including a Jerusalem Post article on December 1, 2023. claiming “Al Jazeera posts blurred doll, claims it to be a dead Palestinian baby” which was retracted later and blamed on “faulty sourcing.” The Washington Institute for Near East Policy published a report in January of 2024 arguing, with no substantial evidence, that Hamas was overreporting the deaths of women and children because the group “has strong incentives to portray the current Gaza operation as especially indiscriminate…in order to bring the Israeli offensive to a halt before the group loses control.”
For months, the death toll being reported from Gaza was questioned, with the argument being that since the Ministry of Health in Gaza (the only body with the ability to verify numbers since Israel has kept out international groups and journalists) functions under a government administered by Hamas, they would falsify or exaggerate numbers. The US House of Representatives even voted to bar the State Department from citing the Gaza Health Ministry’s death toll statistics. It is unclear what the purpose of false claims by the ministry would be, since there is seemingly no action or death toll that would lead to major international intervention.
Eventually, in March 2024, experts came out with studies showing that all available evidence, including the accuracy of the death toll in previous wars in Gaza, suggested that the numbers from Gaza were as accurate as possible under the circumstances, and likely represented a significant undercount due to the number of missing people and those buried under rubble. Further, many deaths due to lack of medical infrastructure as a result of the destruction of health, water, and electricity resources and the killing of hundreds of health workers may go unreported as connected to the war.
Recognizing Mortality Beyond the Bombing
This is the other primary issue regarding the Palestinian death toll in Gaza—aside from the current number itself, it is vital to recognize that even if there were a ceasefire immediately, the death toll from the lack of healthcare and other critical civilian infrastructure will continue for years, if not lifetimes. Nearly a year without adequate medical care, with health challenges brought by displacement, and the mental trauma of a year of living under near-constant threats to life are sure to produce conditions that threaten Palestinians’ lives.
In July 2024, three scholars published a commentary in The Lancet that immediately made global headlines. Using the estimate that about 37,000 had been killed in Gaza by that point, the authors argue, based on the evidence from previous wars that there are at least 3-15 times the number of deaths from indirect causes as to direct causes, that, “it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186,000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza.” This number was misinterpreted by many to mean that this was the current, accurate death toll in Gaza; while it very well could be in the near future, current scenario-based projections based on mortality assessments put the death toll by August 6 as between 48,210 and 72,210.
These two assessments use different methods and have different purposes. Yet what they both bring into the conversation is that there are multiple ways for people in Gaza today to die that have nothing to do with bombs or snipers. The projections study, for example, considered traumatic injuries (by far the largest contributor to mortality in all scenarios except for a ceasefire), but also endemic and epidemic infectious diseases, maternal and neonatal health, and non-communicable diseases in its calculations. It also included scenarios of epidemic outbreaks of cholera, polio, measles, and meningitis—and a few cases of polio were reported in Gaza in mid-August. The humanitarian sector mobilized a massive vaccination campaign to quell the spread of the highly infectious and potentially fatal virus, which early reports indicate have been successful.
Yet polio is just one of the many threats to life in Gaza, especially for those most vulnerable—such as infants and children, pregnant women, people with chronic illnesses and disabilities, and the elderly. A person who dies in Gaza today for lack of cancer treatment, does not have electricity for dialysis, insulin for diabetes, and antibiotics for an infection, is indeed dying because of the war. This does not even include people who would be otherwise healthy if they had adequate access to food and water, in a time when famine is being reported along with severe water shortages.
There is only one reason to downplay harm done to civilians in war; so that perpetrators can continue doing it with impunity.
For many, there remains a highly uncertain future. Nearly 2 million people—more than 90 percent of the small territory’s population—are displaced. Tens of thousands of orphaned children are at risk because they have no dedicated caregivers; thousands of women have been widowed and have suddenly become the only caregiver and breadwinner of their families. Excess mortality in these populations will last, especially with hundreds of thousands of people with no home left or necessary infrastructure near their residence. The risks of death and disability increase significantly with such threats to basic health and security, but these risks to life are much less considered in international assessments of death tolls.
Who Is Mourned, and Who Is Expected to Die?
For decades, the Palestinian story has been one of countless individual and collective tragedies. Palestinians have made myriad efforts to humanize themselves in the eyes of the world, and to share their story; through art and culture, politics, academia, and every other sector. Despite it all, during what will eventually be remembered as a tragedy on par with the 1948 Nakba, they have been maligned as terrorists, even “human animals.” Even in their death, they have been questioned and mocked.
The playbook is consistent: first, deny the numbers, or claim they are mostly combatants. When the images of dead and starving children become too overwhelming, claim the images are fabricated. When that is ineffective or proven to be false, remind the world that ultimately, this population asked for tragedy, and is deserving. The reasoning is, war is ugly, of course, and this collective punishment is just an unavoidable consequence.
One of the other ten steps of genocide, aside from denial, is dehumanization. Genocide Watch states that “Dehumanization overcomes the normal human revulsion against murder… [Perpetrators] are indoctrinated to believe that ‘We are better off without them.’” On September 4, hosts of a popular English-language podcast in Israel told their audience, “If you gave me a button to just erase Gaza, every single living being in Gaza would no longer be living tomorrow. I would press it in a second.” While many dismissed the podcasters as fringe figures not representative of Israelis, a Pew Research survey released within the same week found that 70 percent of Jewish Israelis thought that social media should censor “posts that show sympathy for civilians in Gaza.”
There is only one reason to downplay harm done to civilians in war; so that perpetrators can continue doing it with impunity. It has become clear over the past eight decades, and past eleven months, that Palestinian death is expected.
There is only one reason to downplay harm done to civilians in war; so that perpetrators can continue doing it with impunity. It has become clear over the past eight decades, and past eleven months, that Palestinian death is expected—it may occasionally be condemned, but it will not be stopped, and all measures to stop it will be stymied. The attacks by Palestinian militants on October 7 have been used as a justification for every harm done to Palestinians since—both in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, and to Palestinians and their supporters elsewhere in the world who have been fired, harassed, and physically harmed for speaking out about what is obvious to almost anyone paying attention. As the ultimate indignity, even the efforts by Palestinians to count their dead have been questioned by the most powerful country in the world, the United States, the country supplying many of the weapons used to keep the death toll rising.
The views expressed in this publication are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the position of Arab Center Washington DC, its staff, or its Board of Directors.
