Whether Hamas's official death toll is correct or not, it is not evidence of Israeli war crimes

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Late last week, numerous media outlets reported that an unnamed Israeli “security official” conceded that the Israel Defence Forces believes the death toll in Gaza to be around 70,000, which is in line with the number reported by the Gaza Health Ministry. Israel’s enemies predictably seized on the reports as proof that a “genocide” has been taking place, but that is simply not the case.

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Throughout the war, numerousindependentresearchers have found serious discrepancies in the numbers put out by the Hamas-run Health Ministry, but whether this was evidence of a deliberate attempt to mislead or simply a function of trying to keep statistics in an active war zone was never clear.

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We still don’t know for sure: shortly after the briefing was given to local media, an IDF spokesperson cast doubt on the reports, saying that, “The details published do not reflect official IDF data,” and that, “Any publication or report on this matter will be released through official and orderly channels.”

But even if the figures put out by the Health Ministry, which claims that 71,667 people have died since the start of the war, are generally accurate, it is only evidence that this has been a brutal and punishing war —........

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