Key Takeaways:

• Hamas’ own casualty figures show that less than half of the casualties are women and children, contradicting the “majority” claim outlets like the Washington Post are still repeating.
• Hamas has also abused children by recruiting them as child soldiers, accounting for a portion of child casualties.
• The use of the term “genocide” has outlived both the war’s casualty patterns and the ceasefire itself, signalling that the word is functioning as rhetoric, not an accurate description of the IDF’s conduct.
• In early July, the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry released new casualty figures, broken down by age and gender.

According to these latest numbers, which were republished by Drop Site News – an outlet with a history of acting as a mouthpiece for terrorist organizations – 73,066 Palestinians have been killed, including around 21,000 children and 11,000 women.

The numbers themselves have changed significantly throughout the war and now Hamas’ own accounting puts women and children at roughly 32,000 of 73,066 – well under half. The claim that Israel was deliberately targeting women and children was never supported by the numbers that Hamas is continuing to release.