The Shocking Origins Of The Debunked Claim That The UN “Revised” Gaza Death Toll

Fox News published an article on May 13, which they have failed to retract and that ended up going viral on social media, falsely claiming that the United Nations had decreased its recorded Gaza death tolls by around 50%. Another claim has been that the death toll was revised down by 10,000. Both are blatant lies that have been spread across various corporate media websites.

The two key claims, manufactured by the corporate media and then pushed online by pro-Israeli social media personalities, are that both the Gaza death toll and the number of women and children killed, have been revised down by the United Nations (UN). The implication is that the Gaza Health Ministry’s (GHM) death toll statistics, which have been reviewed by independent human rights organizations, and the UN itself, are not trustworthy and that Hamas is artificially inflating the numbers in order to demonize Israel.

An Israeli-US Media Conspiracy?

The claim that the United Nations had revised its death toll dramatically went viral after Fox News published a story entitled ‘UN revises Gaza death toll, almost 50% less women and children killed than previously reported’. However, this is not where the story originated.

On May 10, at around 6pm, a piece was ran by The New York Sun, with a headline reading ‘United Nations Reports Lower ‘Identified’ Death Toll Among Palestinian Arabs, Noting Conflicting Numbers From Hamas-Run Health Ministry‘. This piece was written by none other than M. J. Koch, daughter of Julia Koch who is known as one of the richest women alive and of the notorious billionaire Koch family. While the piece falls short of the hyperbolic headlines in later articles contributing to this campaign of disinformation, it does serve as a master class in selective quoting and distortion/misreading of statistics.

The piece, written by M. J. Koch, cites two infographics released on the website of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA); one from May 6 and the other from May 8. The first infographic (May 6) lists the total death toll as 34,735, listing the female death toll as 9,500 and the child toll as 14,500.

The second infographic (May 8) lists the total death toll as 34,844, but in its breakdown of the casualties it uses another statistic, which is where Koch began her misinterpretations.

In the May 8 infographic, its breakdown of casualties is based upon the April 30 statistic of 24,686 Palestinian who have been identified after being discovered versus the 10,158 who had not yet been identified — the confirmed body count is unfortunately the same. The UNOCHA states clearly right above these statistics that the death toll is in fact 34,844. The only thing that changed is that between May 6 and May 8 another distinction within the total was made, namely whether the bodies were able to be identified or not — which sadly implies in some cases they were too mutilated to make an identification, yet the physical body is in their possession and the death is still confirmed by the GHM. The graphic also states below that this total does not include an estimated 10,000 or more buried under rubble, which if added would bring the total to 44,844 or more. While Koch’s article misinterprets or misrepresents these stats to argue there are contradicting death tolls, claiming the number of Palestinians killed is lower than what the GHM says, she also fails to bring up the fact that the 24,686 statistic of those identified also comes from the GHM. This key piece of information alone, which is absent from The New York Sun piece, instantly debunks the arguments being constructed in the piece.

Some three and half hours later, an article is then produced by The Times of Israel, in which it is argued that the UN has revised its women and children death tolls down to reflect a 17% decrease in the total percentage of the deaths recorded, which is false. It cites the two exact same infographics as did M. J. Koch in her piece, without citing her article. The following is the crux of the argument that The Times of Israel made:

“The infographic issued on Wednesday [May 8] places the total broader Gaza war toll at 34,844 with 7,797 (32%) of the casualties being children and 4,959 (20%) of them being women. In the previous infographic released by OCHA two days earlier [May 6], the broader death toll was 34,735 with over 9,500 (27%) of them being women and over 14,500 (42%) being children… That would suggest that the number of women and children killed dropped from 69% to 52% in just two days.”

This argument acknowledges the UNOCHA website lists the total death toll as being 34,844 on May 8, while completely ignoring that the children and women listed as killed are from the 24,686 figure of those they are able to identify.

It wasn’t until May 13, however, when Fox News published their piece on the issue, that the story really went viral and would give birth to the separate claim that 10,000 less deaths were alleged by the UNOCHA website. The Fox News article would make the claim that the UN had lowered both the women and children death tolls in Gaza by 50% and again cited the exact same misrepresentation of the two graphics from May 6 and May 8. What is interesting here, is that despite The Times Of Israel and The New York Sun both having cited the two exact same infographics in order to premise their separate arguments about the UN’s alleged changes to its death toll data, Fox News cited neither of them. The fact that none of these three articles bothered citing each other, could in and of itself be telling, as all of them use the exact same infographics to draw separate false conclusions.

Another important fact to point out is that the woman who wrote the Fox News article is a British-Israeli named Ruth Marks Eglash, who had previously worked for the Jerusalem Post for 15 years. After becoming an Israel-based correspondent for the Washington Post, she also accompanied Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, “several times on high-level trips to Washington and to Africa“. Eglash also moved to the United States in 2020, in order to “assist Israel’s Ambassador to the United States and the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, with his English-language media outreach. In addition to working with American journalists, I advised the Ambassador on a broad range of current affairs and communications matters, helped prepare him for American media interviews, wrote his opeds, speeches and social media posts.”

The Fox News piece was then boosted by the New York Post that re-published the article on their website, but decided to give it an even more outrageous headline, reading: “UN admits Gaza death toll wrong, with almost 50% fewer women, children killed than previously reported”. This ended up stirring up a debate online, with pro-Israeli social media accounts using these articles on which to premise their arguments that the death toll in Gaza is much lower, that the United Nations is lying, and that the Gaza Health Ministry is a Hamas propaganda operation.

The false allegations about the UN changing its figures spread like wildfire; take the example of the following piece written by Canadian state-media, CBC, which was entitled “Why the UN changed its death tolls of Palestinian women and children killed in Gaza“. The CBC piece begins by stating that the United Nations “is facing scrutiny after lowering its counts of Palestinian women and children killed”, which gives the sense that not only is the allegation proven true, but that there is some kind of legitimate fury over this. At this point, the UN had not yet responded and there had been no comment from any government officials, NGO’s or anyone beyond social media commentary. Yet, the CBC decided to write its story in such a way that works to suggest that the facts surrounding the story have already been substantiated and that they are simply providing an objective account of what just happened.

After the massive media stir, the United Nations finally commented on the issue and confirmed what both their infographics state clearly, that their death toll statistics had not been revised. French state-run France 24 News, even ran its own segment on the issue, where they clearly show that the entire controversy is conclusively bogus.

UN spokesman debunks the lie about the Gaza death toll being “halved”. This easily verifiable lie went viral due to countless influential corporate “journalists” and nearly every major Israel supporter either lying or failing to do basic due diligence. pic.twitter.com/2jJMOwMMmX

— The Last American Vagabond (@TLAVagabond) May 14, 2024

There is simply no question that the claims made, regarding the UN revising its Gaza death toll, are false. Yet, despite this, these news outlets have not retracted their various pieces or even bothered to amend them and apologize.

Under normal circumstances it could be plausibly argued that a genuine mistake was made in the interpretation of data by a media outlet, however, there is no room for doubt in this case. As demonstrated in this article, separate news outlets used the exact same two infographics and came out with their own separate and equally false narratives that all worked to undermine the legitimacy of the UN’s Gaza death toll, without even citing each other. In order to believe that this was all a mistake, then you would have to believe that not only the journalists who wrote the three original stories, but their editors too, were so incredibly incompetent that they all looked at the UNOCHA graphics and failed to catch their mistakes prior to publishing their articles. You would also have to believe that The Times of Israel, The New York Sun and Fox News didn’t see each other’s stories as well. Even if this was the unlikely case, why haven’t any of them written retractions, taken down their articles, or apologized yet?

What is truly worrying, is that such a large number of media outlets, online pundits, and social media influencers took these claims seriously (many standing by these false allegations to this very moment) when debunking the allegations was as easy as simply clicking onto the hyperlinks and reading the infographics. These are not complex infographics either, the key points are color coded and written in bold, so that even a child could comprehend them.

It appears as if the goal was to create an artificially manufactured media stir about the official Gaza death toll statistics and purposefully attempt to shed doubt upon the information presented by the United Nations. Then, just one day later, the Israeli government decided to publish its own Gaza civilian death toll for the first time and ridiculously claims to have only killed 16,000 civilians.

Why would Israel feel the need to do this now? It is likely that following a viral exchange between British TV-show host, Piers Morgan, and Israeli spokesperson, Avi Hyman, the Israeli government felt the need to act. During the interview, Piers Morgan asks Avi Hyman repeatedly about the number of civilians killed in Gaza, to which he has no response but to claim that the UN’s figures are wrong and come from Hamas. The Israeli spokesperson comes off looking guilty and it became clear that if any other Israeli spokesperson was pressed on this question again, they would also be trapped.

Israel is ramping up its attacks in Gaza and is on the cusp of a major invasion of the city of Rafah, after having blocked the crossing point for humanitarian aid between Egypt and the Palestinian coastal territory. This campaign was designed to belittle the suffering in the Gaza Strip as these operations only seem to increase. This entire facade should go down in history as an example of how the media helped aid Israel in committing a genocide, and as one of the clearest examples to date of either a shocking level of corporate media incompetence, or a scandalous level of complicity — possibly both.

– Pourquoi êtes-vous autorisé à me donner le nombre de terroristes que vous avez tués mais pas le nombre de civils ?

💥👉Incroyable silence de plusieurs secondes après lequel @piersmorgan continue d’interroger le porte-parole du gouvernement 🇮🇱 Avi Hyman :

– Piers, je suis venu… pic.twitter.com/JbqQL0XBPP

— Tema l’info👀 (@Tema_Linfo) May 8, 2024