Hamas' claim that women, kids are 70% of those killed in Gaza is 'demonstrably false': report
Claims that 70% of the casualties in Israel's ongoing war with the Hamas terror group are women and children in Gaza do not appear to be factual and are propagated to craft a narrative that the Israeli military is indiscriminately targeting civilians, according to researchers.
In a paper published by the foreign policy think tank Henry Jackson Society last month, Professors Lewis Stone of the mathematical sciences department at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia, and Gregory Rose of the University of Wollongong in Australia accused Hamas' Government Media Office of distorting the data presented by the Gaza Ministry of Health.
The ministry, which Hamas also controls, has produced casualty data throughout the war in Gaza, which began after Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack in southern Israel killed about 1,200 people. The data is often cited in media reports without much questioning of its validity.
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The Gaza Health Ministry published a list in March 2025 of 50,021 fatalities during the war, a figure that the professors noted was inconsistent with Gaza hospital records. According to the researchers, the real proportion of women and children killed during the war is just under 51%.
While the professors stated that they do not doubt that a large number of civilians have tragically lost their lives throughout the war, the researchers questioned the integrity of Hamas' data due to many anomalies, such as the inclusion of living people on the list of reported casualties.
Many Hamas leaders were also not included on the list of casualties, such as the family members of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who initially appeared on the list before they were removed. If a large number of Hamas combatants were not included on the list, then the estimates on the proportion of women and children killed were actually lower, according to Rose and Stone.
"Approximately 45% of all Gazan deaths were legal fighting-age males (18 ≤ M ≤ 59) but a significant additional component as child casualties were male underage combatants. These statistics signal that, over the whole war across all Gaza, the IDF sought to avoid civilians and that harm to civilians was far less than Hamas alleged publicly," the report stated.
The report also illustrated the Israel Defense Forces' operation in Khan Younis from January to May 2024, identifying 2,154 fatalities, with adult men over the age of 18 accounting for 65.5% of deaths. Stone and Rose also highlighted the number of child fatalities during the Khan Younis operation, of which 188 were female, compared to 278 male child fatalities.
According to the professors, the higher death rates for boys in their late teens than for girls "suggests that a substantial proportion of boys under the age of 18 were engaged in combat."
Rose and Stone also assessed the rate of fatalities throughout the war, finding that the percentage of women and children killed in October 2023 (62%) dropped to 45% in January 2024.
"This is a strong signal that IDF ground troops were attempting to target combatants despite the difficulties of conditions of urban warfare," the researchers concluded.
In a statement summarizing the results of their research, the professors stressed that Hamas' military strategy involved sacrificing civilians to construct a narrative that Israel is guilty of war atrocities.
"The Ministry's messaging was definite and consistent in alleging genocide, and it was internationally persuasive," the joint statement reads. "Although acceptance of the narrative was likely aided by hostility to the existence of Israel in significant parts of the world, Hamas's successful practices demonstrated how disinformation can seize strategic victory from military defeat in asymmetrical armed conflict."
Experts and advocacy groups have questioned the validity of the data presented by Hamas throughout the ongoing war in Gaza.
Earlier this year, Salo Aizenberg, a board member at the U.S.-based organization HonestReporting, revealed that more than 3,400 previously reported deaths have been erased from Hamas' official lists.
Earlier this month, the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Activities appeared to have reduced the number of women and children included in its death toll estimates without much explanation for why it did so. On May 6, the agency released data suggesting that 34,735 people have been killed in Gaza, including over 9,500 women and over 14,500 children. But on May 8, the agency published more data showing 34,844 people had reportedly been killed, including 4,959 women and 7,797 children, The Jerusalem Post reported Sunday.
The U.N.'s May 6 release is based on data from the Government Media Office, while the May 8 data is consistent with a May 2 report from the Gaza Ministry of Health, the think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies notes.
"This change may signal that the UN has finally recognized the lack of evidence behind Hamas's original claims that more than 14,000 children and 9,000 women have been killed in Gaza," David Adesnik, Foundation for the Defense of Democracies director of research, said in a statement. "If so, the UN should state clearly that it has lost confidence in sources whose credibility it has affirmed for months. While this change may only reflect the conclusion of one UN office out of the many operating in Gaza, it is a clear step forward."
Samantha Kamman is a reporter for The Christian Post. She can be reached at: [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter: @Samantha_Kamman
