Israel’s Military Now Accepts 70,000 Killed in Gaza – But Why Did Our Media Let Them Get Away With Denying It for So Long?
I have spent the past two years debating the credibility of the Gaza Health Ministry’s numbers with supporters of Israel. It turns out the Israeli military agrees with me, not them.
Less than three minutes into my November 2023 interview with Mark Regev, then spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on MSNBC’s Peacock streaming service, he became agitated and began interrupting me.
“The ‘Hamas-controlled’ Ministry of Health,” he interjected, after I cited figures from the Gaza Health Ministry on the number of Palestinians killed since Oct 7. “No, you can’t say that. You have to say the ‘Hamas-controlled’ Health Ministry… Please, tell the viewers the truth. That information is provided by Hamas.”
Every time I tried to mention that 11,000 Palestinians had been killed in Gaza according to the Ministry of Health, Regev shouted back: “Hamas’s numbers! Hamas’s numbers!”
At one point, I noted how in two previous Israeli attacks on Gaza, in 2009 and 2014, “the Israeli military’s death tolls matched Hamas’s Health Ministry death toll, and the UN, human rights groups, all agree that those numbers are credible.”
“Those numbers are provided by Hamas,” the dead-eyed Regev replied. “There is no independent verification.”
That interview happened to be the first time I came up against this particular Israeli defense of their mass slaughter in Gaza: You can’t trust the Ministry of Health’s casualty figures because it is Hamas-controlled… it is Hamas-run… it is Hamas!
Nor, of course, would it be the last. Over the course of this genocide, I have debated supporters of Israel on cable news, on YouTube, on social media, and at live events. Former Israeli government spokesman Eylon Levy. Ex-Israeli military spokesman Jonathan Conricus. Retired US Army Major John Spencer. Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz.
Each and every one of them has pushed this line about the ‘Hamas-run’ Health Ministry in Gaza being unreliable, untrustworthy, unbelievable. Each and every one of them questioned, doubted, even dismissed the number of dead confirmed by the Health Ministry.
It was all a lie. A performance. Propaganda, plain and simple.
We now know that the casualty figures from the Gaza Ministry of Health are not just reliable, credible, and accurate – but that even the Israeli military agrees that they are.
Don’t take my word for it. Earlier this week, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported: