News - Middle East: A UK-based organization bankrolled by the Zionist lobby has come under blistering fire for its recent report claiming that the death toll from the ongoing genocide in Gaza has been “inflated to vilify Israel.”

The Henry Jackson Society (HJS), a notorious right-wing, Islamophobic and Zionist think tank, advocating for military intervention policies, alleged that the Gaza Ministry of Health is overstating casualty figures resulting from the Israeli genocidal war that has been raging for the past 439 days.

According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, more than 45,000 Palestinians have been killed since the Tel Aviv regime launched its all-out genocidal war against the besieged territory on October 7, 2023.

More than 9,000 massacres have been committed during this 14-month period. Human rights groups estimate the death toll to be much higher as tens of thousands remain trapped under the rubble.

However, disputing the data provided by the Gaza authorities, HJS claimed that the Gaza ministry is “operating under Hamas, failing to distinguish between civilian and combatant deaths, over-reporting fatalities among women and children and even including individuals who died before the conflict began.”

Field observers and various human rights groups assert that the claim not only disregards the catastrophic impact of Israel’s genocidal war on the people of Gaza but also serves to absolve the Zionist regime of its responsibility for perpetrating the modern era’s greatest humanitarian catastrophe.

Claims made by HJS

The new report released by HJS earlier this week, subsequently published by The Telegraph newspaper, claims that fatality figures released by Gaza’s Ministry of Health are “riddled with statistical anomalies and methodological flaws.”

“Men have been repeatedly misclassified as women, adults have been recorded as children, and deaths unrelated to Israel Defense Forces action – such as natural deaths or fatalities from misfired rockets – have been included,” claims the report, without providing any evidence to prove otherwise.

It attempted to cook up a false narrative, saying these “errors” would “systematically inflate” the civilian death toll and “obscure the distinction between combatants and non-combatants.”

In a new fabrication to whitewash Zionist war crimes, the agency said “The majority of those killed are fighting-age men,” insinuating that many of the fatalities were likely combatants.

It also claimed that approximately 17,000 of the reported fatalities in Gaza were Hamas fighters.

HJS criticized Western media outlets including the BBC, The New York Times and CNN for citing fatality figures from “Hamas-controlled sources” without critical scrutiny.

It accused authorities in Gaza of “manipulating the figures” for “propaganda purposes.”

The author of the report, according to the HJS meeting, Andrew Fox had previously served in the British Army between 2005 and 2021, including three stints in Afghanistan.

In Afghanistan, he was attached to the US Army Special Forces, who have beenBacklash over HJS report
HJS’s claims regarding the Gaza death toll have been met with significant backlash.
Activists argue that these assertions, which question the accuracy of casualty figures provided by the Gaza Ministry of Health, aim to distort the global understanding of Israel’s genocidal actions in Gaza.
“Amid moral bankruptcy and the inability of Israel’s supporters to conceal its brutality and crimes in Gaza, they have resorted to an unreliable right-wing think tank to question the numbers of civilian casualties resulting from the genocide in Gaza,” Abdu wrote on X.
Abdu also slammed the British Daily Telegraph, for its decision to publish the controversial research by HJS which he said is “infamous for its misinformation and falsifications.”
A human rights advocate, writing under the pseudonym “DutchieVs” wrote on X that HJS report is “worthless, biased and not based on fact.”
“Hamas has not inflated the death toll. If anything the number is smaller than the real total. The IDF systemically uses bulldozers to bury the dead. Be it combatants, or civilians killed by bombs, tanks or snipers,” DutchieVs added.
Laurence “Larry” Boorstein, a Project Manager, criticized HJS’s claims that the Gaza death toll is inflated, referring to them as “garbage” in a post on X.
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