Renowned statistics professor explains how Hamas exaggerates, distorts civilian death toll in Gaza

The terrorist organization Hamas is deliberately exaggerating and even distorting the death toll in the Gaza Strip, a prominent statistics expert from the University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School argued.

Prof. Abraham Wyner of UPenn Wharton's Department of Statistics and Data Science recently published an article in the Tablet Magazine stating that the Hamas-led Gaza Health Ministry is fabricating the number of Palestinian civilian deaths in an effort increase international political pressure on the Jewish state to end the war.

In his article, How the Gaza Ministry of Health Fakes Casualty Numbers, Wyner analyzes the statistics that Hamas publishes and notes that the reported number of deaths, increasing with a suspicious regularity of 15% virtually every day. The professor emphasized that this outcome is statistically impossible.

"There should be days with twice the average or more and others with half or less," Wyner assessed.

"The graph of total deaths by date is increasing with almost 'metronomical' linearity," he added, meaning that the number increases at an unrealistically regular rate like a metronome.

Hamas claims that 70% of the 30,000 reported Gaza fatalities are registered as the deaths of women and children. However, the professor argues the number contradicts Hamas' admission that it had lost some 6,000 fighters, representing at least 20% of the total Gaza fatalities. Hamas is therefore pushing for an unrealistic media narrative that virtually all non-combatant fatalities are either women or children but virtually no civilian men.

Given Hamas had about 30,000 operatives at the start of the war - out of Gaza's population of over two million - the absence of male civilian fatalities in official Hamas statistics raises suspicion. This observation implies a potential manipulation or misrepresentation of casualty figures by Hamas.

In his article, Wyner highlights additional inconsistencies in Hamas' reported death toll figures. The Israeli military initially stated in early February that over 10,000 Hamas terrorists had been neutralized, a figure that rose to 13,000 by March. When factoring in the additional 1,000 Hamas terrorists eliminated within Israel during the Oct. 7 invasion and brutal attack, this accounts for nearly half of Hamas' officially reported fatalities in Gaza.

Because children tend to be with their mothers, the professor argued that there should be a correlation between the number of women’s deaths and child deaths.

"Consequently, on the days with many women casualties, there should be large numbers of children casualties, and on the days when just a few women are reported to have been killed, just a few children should be reported," the statistics professor wrote.

While the United States and other nations have admitted that the reliability of the Gaza Health Ministry statistics is questionable, it nevertheless cites the figures - along with international media - and uses the unverified information to pressure Israel to agree to a ceasefire.

In February, the U.S. Pentagon inflated the Hamas numbers by initially claiming that 25,000 women and children had been killed in Gaza since the beginning of the war, representing an unrealistic 83% of all fatalities. A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Defense later walked back the numbers, however, there is, nonetheless, a widespread perception from the international community that most Gazan fatalities are women and children.

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris recently called for an immediate ceasefire, noting the “immense scale of suffering in Gaza.”

“Given the immense scale of suffering in Gaza, there must be an immediate ceasefire, at least for the next six weeks,” Harris said, appearing to indirectly blame Israel for defending itself against the terror organization, despite the terror groups

Earlier this week, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu condemned the mounting criticism being leveled at Israel during a televised speech to AIPAC delegates gathered in Washington.

“You cannot say you support Israel's goal of destroying Hamas and then oppose Israel when it takes the actions necessary to achieve that goal. You cannot say that you oppose Hamas's strategy of using civilians as human shields and then blame Israel for the civilian casualties that result from this Hamas cynical strategy,” Netanyahu said.