After faulting ‘fog of war’ for cloudy Hamas casualty numbers, U.N.’s new stats still don’t appear to add up

"A day after a U.N. spokesman attributed a nearly 100% overcounting of Gazan women and children casualties to ‘the fog of war,’ the global body now says that the overall death toll in Gaza due to the war remains the same...

The numbers don’t appear to add up.

U.N. Office of the Coordinator of Humanitarian Affairs cited Hamas figures when it reported on May 6 that there have been 34,735 fatalities, including more than 9,500 women and more than 14,500 children.

Two days later, OCHA cited the same Hamas figures and reported that of 34,844 casualties, 24,686 were ‘identified,’ including 4,959 ‘identified’ women and 7,797 ‘identified’ children. Taken together, the May 6 and May 8 OCHA announcements suggest that there are at least 4,541 ‘unidentified’ women and at least 6,703 ‘unidentified’ children—or at least 11,244 ‘unidentified’ women and children combined.

‘This isn’t math’

But how could there be both 11,244 ‘unidentified’ women and children and, per OCHA’s May 6 figures—24,686 ‘identified’ deaths out of 34,844, presumably the rest ‘unidentified’—10,158 ‘unidentified’ deaths?

According to those figures, that would mean there are no ‘unidentified’ male fatalities.

Hamas claims that adult males make up 40% of all the ‘identified’ casualties. It would also mean that there would be no ‘unidentified’ casualties among the elderly—a category Hamas claims makes up 8% of all ‘identified’ casualties.

Anne Bayefsky, director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, and president of Human Rights Voices, told JNS that the United Nations has ‘systematically blasted false numbers of Palestinian casualties across the globe since Oct. 8.’

‘Their source has always been Hamas knowing full well that Hamas has a vested interest in lying about the numbers,’ she said. ‘They run civilian and combatant casualty figures together knowing full well that it is legal to kill Hamas combatants and the lawfulness of civilian casualties depends on entirely different standards. Which they misrepresent, too.’

The global body’s ‘so-called ‘humanitarian’ figures count the Israeli humanitarian need at zero,’ she added. ‘This isn’t math. It’s antisemitism.’..."