The Gaza conflict which was started when Hamas invaded Israel on October 7 has continued for over 6 weeks. It was clear to Hamas that its barbaric and savage killing spree of over 1,200 innocent civilians including babies, children, women and the elderly including Holocaust survivors would force Israel to retaliate with enormous power. The Hamas terrorists were fully aware that the kidnapping of over 200 civilians including babies, kids, women and the elderly would without doubt initiate a ground offensive by Israel in an attempt to find and rescue the hostages.
The Hamas leaders that initiated the barbaric events on October 7 had no doubt that any military action taken by Israel would endanger the civilians in Gaza but they did not care. Hamas terrorists knew that Israel makes every effort to undertake precautions and measures to minimise civilian casualties and so Hamas deliberately used buildings such as hospitals, schools, mosques and other civilian infrastructure for military activities so that any Israeli action would be directed against these targets in order to eliminate Hamas’s fighting capability thus resulting in civilian casualties. Furthermore, Hamas has prevented civilians from leaving these buildings and areas so that innocent civilians in Gaza would be in the line of fire as Israel attempted to defend itself.
As the conflict has continued, the number of civilian casualties in Gaza grows and increases. As I am writing this article, the number of civilian casualties in Gaza has been declared at over 13,000 deaths with more than 5,500 of these being children.
But how many people understand that these numbers are provided by the Palestinian Ministry of Health, (PMH), in the Gaza Strip and this organisation, like any other institution in Gaza, is tightly controlled and operated by Hamas. Furthermore, the PMH reports on Palestinian casualties attribute all these casualties exclusively to the IDF. The reports do not reflect any casualties that Hamas may have caused as people were trying to flee to the south of Gaza. These reports do not highlight any casualties that have resulted from misfired rockets from the Gaza Strip that land short and kill citizens of Gaza. It is estimated that one third of rockets fired by Islamic Jihad do not reach their targets but instead land in Gaza causing civilian casualties.
All PMH reports for some strange reason do not mention any casualties of Hamas fighters. Hamas has maintained a policy of not divulging details about its own and the other terrorist organisations’ operatives killed. It provides generalised lists with a minimum number of details, creating the impression that all those killed were civilians. In fact, since the outbreak of the war, neither the PMH nor the Hamas leadership have reported a single casualty among Hamas forces although Israel has reported that the IDF has killed thousands of terrorists. The PMH defines them as innocent civilians.
With regards to the verification of the facts as reported by the PMH, does any media outlet, human rights activists or international aid organisation make even a token effort to check the age distribution of the thousands of children who have been reported dead and injured? According to the definitions of the UN and others, anyone under the age of 17 or 18 is categorised as a minor. It is well known that Hamas corrupts the minds of children from preschool age, provides them with military training in summer camps, and recruits kids aged 13-18 to be terrorists. Thus a 17 or 18 year old youth who is killed whilst carrying a Kalashnikov to kill Israelis is counted as a ‘child’.
It is clear that Hamas has a strong propaganda incentive to inflate civilian casualties as much as possible. One cannot dispute that many civilian deaths have occurred, but the extent of the death toll is completely unverifiable. The process for tracking casualties in Gaza is undertaken by people who are probably not able to do so freely. It is most likely that health officials stepping out of line and not giving the death tolls that Hamas wants reported to journalists risk serious punishment.
As the war has progressed and as the number of civilian casualties in Gaza increase, the world shouts more loudly for an immediate cease-fire.
But the number of casualties that are announced by the PMH is a pure fiction and the international media is complicit in this deception. The credibility that the media and the international community is prepared to attribute to the reporting by the PMH testifies to the depth of the bias and even hostility in the mainstream media’s global coverage of the War in Gaza.
This deception reaches extreme levels as it is well understood that Hamas controls all government ministries and institutions, especially UNRWA, with its majority of employees known to be Hamas loyalists. This includes amongst others, the chairman of the UNRWA employees’ organisation, Dr. Sohail Alhindi, who is a member of Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip.
It would seem reasonable to assume therefore that any report by the Palestinian Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip is by definition a Hamas report. This supports Hamas’ strategy of deception warfare which seeks to establish and shape the conflict around the image of Palestinian victimhood. This strategy exploits the media, international diplomacy, civil society, and international human rights groups by enabling Hamas to mobilise these bodies to actively pressure the State of Israel to stop its defensive military operations.
A perfect example of the Hamas deception and the gullibility of the western media when it comes to the reporting of casualties was the instantaneous and misleading report from Hamas that accused Israel of bombing the al-Ahli Hospital on October 17. Only minutes after the Palestine Islamic Jihad’s misfired rocket landed in the hospital’s parking lot, the Hamas Ministry of Health reported that the IDF were responsible for the hospital bombing with a death toll of over 500. It was later proven that the hospital was hit by a failed rocket fired by Islamic Jihad which landed in the hospital parking lot. Israeli and United States intelligence both subsequently confirmed this fact, leading to a public statement by President Joe Biden. It also became apparent that the actual death toll probably did not exceed 40. Quite some distance from the 500 that the PMH had initially reported. As of this moment, the Palestinian Ministry of Health has not corrected the false report regarding the cause of this event nor the actual casualty count which is still included in their number of killed civilians.
Earlier his week in Holyrood, our First Minister and the SNP demanded an immediate cease-fire. Ninety MSPs were led by the nose and brainlessly supported this call for a cease-fire. But does Humza Yousaf not realise that there was a cease-fire in place before October 7. This cease-fire was breached by Hamas when its barbarians invaded Israel and deliberately slaughtered and butchered innocent babies, children, women and the elderly. Does the First Minister not know that a cease-fire will provide Hamas with an opportunity to re-organise re-arm and re-group in order to breach the cease-fire that he is demanding as he continues to be deceived by Hamas, an internationally proscribed terrorist organisation determined to destroy the State of Israel whilst not caring at all for the people of Gaza.
