#gaza health ministry

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Sanjana Karanth at HuffPost:

For the past 14 months, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya has faced Israel’s war on Gaza’s health care system head-on, documenting to the world his fight as a physician to treat patients and keep his hospital in the north afloat despite constant bombardment, depleted humanitarian aid, a painful shrapnel injury and the killing of his own son.

On Friday, the Israel Defense Forces arrested him. After nearly three months of daily Israeli attacks, soldiers stormed Kamal Adwan Hospital, killing dozens of people and detaining more than 240 others, including patients and medics. Captives were forced to strip and wait outside in winter temperatures before soldiers took them to Israeli prisons and interrogation centers, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Among them was Abu Safiya, a pediatrician and hospital director and Gaza’s lead physician for the U.S.-based medical aid group MedGlobal. Kamal Adwan was the last functioning hospital in North Gaza, as Israel continues to wall the region off from the rest of the Palestinian territory and from any kind of outside humanitarian assistance. Still, despite the resulting lack of resources and the increasing casualties, Abu Safiya managed to keep the hospital in Beit Lahia at least partially running ― expanding its bed capacity from 120 to 200, and regularly posting updates online to show the world what Kamal Adwan, its patients and its staff were enduring at the hands of the Israeli military. [...]

“The IDF entered the hospital over the past year four times, and they interrogated [Abu Safiya] four times, and they searched every place in the hospital. So if there’s anything that could have been suspicious, they would have found it a long time ago,” Sahloul said. “So all of these talks about being [a] Hamas center and things like that is nonsense. No one believes these things anymore.” Despite soldiers telling Abu Safiya that he was free to leave, the doctor reportedly refused to abandon his medical team at the hospital. “He took all of us and wanted to get us out at night, but they yelled at him and arrested him,” nurse Waleed Al-Boudi told Middle East Eye, adding that Abu Safiya was taken captive at Al-Fakhoura School. Israeli army footage of the arrest shows what appears to be the last time Abu Safiya was seen before his detention, with soldiers shaking his hand, addressing him as “Doctor” and having him enter their tank with them. Abu Safiya, still wearing his white coat, can be seen telling the soldiers that there is no one left inside Kamal Adwan Hospital. Sahloul said the IDF would not confirm Abu Safiya’s whereabouts with MedGlobal, but that family and eyewitnesses said he was in Ofer prison with dozens of fellow medical workers before getting transferred to the notoriously brutal Sde Teiman prison. HuffPost could not independently verify Abu Safiya’s location.

[...] Groups like the World Health Organization, Amnesty International and the Council on American-Islamic Relations have demanded that Israeli forces release Abu Safiya from captivity and stop targeting Gaza’s hospitals and health care workers. Sahloul said that he and Abu Safiya’s family have asked U.S. President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and President-elect Donald Trump to pressure the Israeli government to release the hospital director and his colleagues. The State Department is “aware of reports and still gathering information,” a spokesperson told HuffPost on Monday, adding that claims of Hamas operating in hospitals present Israel with “an unusual burden” but that Israel should do more to curb civilian casualties. The agency did not say whether it would pressure Israel to release Abu Safiya.

Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya took a stand against Israel Apartheid State’s war crime attacks on hospitals in Gaza, and he was arrested by the terrorist Israel Occupation Forces for his efforts.

[ahmadahmadallouh32]

Verifying people's data was part of my work as a lawyer before the war. In this context, I found a problem facing friends of Palestine in verifying the identities of the people of Gaza because there are some fraudsters who exploit our suffering in this war. Therefore, I suggest that you use this application. The Palestinian Civil Registry contains data on the residents of the Gaza Strip. You can request the ID number from any person and verify his credibility.

http://zezsoft.wuaze.com/?i=1

Donate and share the pain if you can🍉🇵🇸

Gofundme link here

[alwaysbewoke]

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Deirdre Bardolf

Published: Dec 14, 2024

Civilian death counts in the Israel-Hamas war have been inflated and distorted to portray Israel as deliberately targeting innocent civilians, a new study found.

The report from the UK-based Henry Jackson Society found that news outlets failed to distinguish between civilian and combatant casualties and relied on manipulated statistics from the Hamas-run Health Ministry when reporting on the war.

Gaza officials claim more than 44,700 people have been killed following the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks on Israel, but does not acknowledge that upwards of 17,000 were Hamas terrorists — a fact the media often omits, the study found, citing Israeli and US military and intelligence reports for its data.

The “Questionable Counting” study, published on Saturday, charged that the ministry overstated casualty data by including natural deaths and over-reporting the numbers of women and children killed.

Men were included on lists of women killed in the conflict, while adults were included on counts of child deaths, researchers found.

“This misclassification contributes to the narrative that civilian populations, particularly women and children, bear the brunt of the conflict, potentially influencing sentiment and media coverage,” said Andrew Fox, the study’s author.

Around 5,000 natural deaths appear to have been added to the list of casualties, including cancer patients who later appeared on lists of those still receiving treatment, researchers said.

The errors have “led to a narrative where the Israel Defense Forces are portrayed as disproportionately targeting civilians,” the report states.

The investigation looked at all articles with Gaza fatality statistics published from February through May 2024 across eight major outlets: CNN, BBC News, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Associated Press, Reuters and the Australian ABC.

==

yOU'rE kIDDiNG!! hOW cOuLD tHiS hAVe hAppENeD?!?

The only thing shocking is how low the combatant to civilian rate is. And that's entirely due to the skill of the IDF.

[eretzyisrael]

by Aaron Bandler

“The whole idea that they’re using the Gaza ‘Health Ministry,’ that’s synonymous to Hamas,” Romirowsky said. “So basically you’re saying that you’re relying on the Hamas narrative to describe what is happening, which is totally detached from reality. Hamas has its own interests as far as aggrandizing everything … they’re looking to create a sense to put pressure on Israel by aggrandizing the numbers when they themselves are responsible for the devastation in Gaza. It’s all Hamas. Let’s be clear: This is part of the Hamas strategy.”

Editors who contended that the use of “massacre” violated Wikipedia’s neutral point of view (NPOV) policy were outnumbered, and the verdict was consensus to rename the article “Nuseirat rescue and massacre.”

“This is part of a concerted campaign to manipulate the narrative and thus rewrite history,” one Wikipedia editor told me. “The day of the rescue operation — they couldn’t simply let that be the story that four hostages were rescued so they had to rebrand it as a massacre in the refugee camp … and their main focus was butchering as many people as possible. They just happened to rescue four hostages. If Entebbe happened today, it would probably also be called ‘Entebbe airport massacre.’ Their MO is to deny that injustices occurred to us, but then take these said same incidents and repurpose it for themselves and their own narrative.”

An editor who grew disillusioned with Wikipedia after making thousands of edits told me that “even if some high-quality sources said a massacre happened, that still wouldn’t make it the COMMONNAME. Once upon a time, something like this would be called ‘Nuseirat operation’ or something neutral like that, it would describe the rescue and allegations of a massacre. But since experienced editors know very few people read beyond the title and lead, these guys are using their numbers to corrupt them both.”

Another editor told me that “a ‘massacre,’ by definition, is not a scientific classification. There are obviously many cases in which the term may be applied unambiguously, but that is not the situation here, nor in many of these contentious article title debates. All we are witnessing is subjective determination wholly driven by the politics and bias of the invoking party, specifically around what they wish to emphasize and ignore. The two sides doing their best to stack the optics deck with charged language to vilify the other side and win some endless PR war. They know that these article search results populate at the top of Google, and are widely cited and quoted by journalists and on social media. They so desperately want their authorship and preferred terminology to enter into common parlance and usage before everyday people have even had a second to think about whether the designation is true, or even appropriate to talk about it in that way. In the case of Nuseirat, what we know is that there was a rescue operation, as well as a reportedly sizable civilian casualty rate. I’m not sure if calling it ‘Nuseirat rescue and massacre’ is appropriate, and I don’t think most of the people who participated in the RM cared about finding the most appropriate solution as well. What we have now is a weird ‘Frankenstein’ result that only highlights the schism and unhealthy detente between sides with profoundly differing perspectives and agendas.” The editor contended that Wikipedia’s manual of style should be revised so the word “massacre” is “removed from general use in article titles when there is any ambiguity or intractable debate, or subject to far stricter criteria.”

One editor told me that the arguments put forward by those who wanted “massacre” in the title were “a stretch but it almost doesn’t matter because so many people bought it,” as there were “4-5 more supporters than opposers … the supporters of that name were particularly unified in their support — in fact, unusually so, so much so that they even carried a name that wasn’t even the one proposed. Which is possible to do but unusual.” The editor believes that the discussion had “all the hallmarks of canvassing and coordination, which we know they are doing on Discord.”

[palestinesposts]

Gaza Health: The occupying forces carried out 3 massacres against families in the Gaza Strip, including 27 martyrs and 149 injured who reached hospitals within 24 hours. Since October 7, 2023, 45,541 martyrs and 108,338 have been injured in Israeli aggression.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

The Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health said on April 6 that it had “incomplete data” for 11,371 of the 33,091 Palestinian fatalities it claims to have documented. In a statistical report, the ministry notes that it considers an individual record to be incomplete if it is missing any of the following key data points: identity number, full name, date of birth, or date of death. The health ministry also released a report on April 3 that acknowledged the presence of incomplete data but did not define what it meant by “incomplete.” In that earlier report, the ministry acknowledged the incompleteness of 12,263 records. It is unclear why, after just three more days, the number fell to 11,371 — a decrease of more than 900 records.

Prior to its admissions of incomplete data, the health ministry asserted that the information in more than 15,000 fatality records had stemmed from “reliable media sources.” However, the ministry never identified the sources in question and Gaza has no independent media.

Expert Analysis

“The sudden shifts in the ministry’s reporting methods suggest it is scrambling to prevent exposure of its shoddy work. For months, U.S. media have taken for granted that the ministry’s top-line figure for casualties was reliable enough to include in daily updates on the war. Even President Biden has cited its numbers. Now we’re seeing that a third or more of the ministry’s data may be incomplete at best — and fictional at worst.” — David Adesnik, Senior Fellow and Director of Research

“It is important to recognize that Hamas is deeply invested in shaping the narrative that emerges from Gaza, particularly regarding the number of casualties in the war. Moreover, this control of data extends beyond the statistics provided by the Hamas-controlled health ministry, as there is also a deliberate effort to downplay the number of terrorists who have been killed by Israel in the war, potentially numbering more than 10,000.” — Joe Truzman, Senior Research Analyst at FDD’s Long War Journal

[nigesakis]

via nowinpalestine on IG & Al Jazeera

[vyorei]

Live coverage of the 22nd of November 2023 has resumed

Here are the latest updates, oldest at the top, most recent at the bottom

[girlactionfigure]

[its-zaina]

This truck was supposed to be used by Gazans to put bags of flour on it, But the Israeli army had a different opinion. Where this truck returned loaded with bodies!

The terrorist Israeli occupation army opens fire on Palestinians waiting for the arrival of flour trucks in the northern Gaza Strip, killing more than 109 martyrs and wounding others..

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[nothingelsetobe]

'We used men's razor blades for surgery': Doctor witnesses collapse of a...

Please watch this in full. Please repost, reblog, share, spread, etc. Anything you can do helps.

[workersolidarity]

🇵🇸 🚨 GAZA'S MINISTRY OF HEALTH SOUNDING ALARMS OVER THE CONDITIONS FOR PREGNANT WOMEN IN GAZA

🚑🏥 Health Ministry of Gaza:

50,000 pregnant women are in shelter centers without food, water or health care, with approximately 180 women giving birth every day in unsafe and inhumane conditions.

Via@PalestineTV

#source

@WorkerSolidarityNews

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Source:

https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-215

Disclaimer: The UN has so far not been able to produce independent, comprehensive, and verified casualty figures; the current numbers have been provided by the Ministry of Health or the Government Media Office in Gaza and the Israeli authorities and await further verification. Other yet-to-be verified figures are also sourced.

--

By: M.J. Koch

Published: May 10, 2024

The United Nations is reporting lower revised figures on the confirmed number of Palestinian Arab deaths in the Israel-Hamas war, calling into question the death toll that has been provided by the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry.

In March, the director of the United Nations Children’s Fund, Catherine Russell, cited data from the Hamas-run health ministry when she said that more than 13,000 children have died since October 7, “an astronomically horrifying number.”

On Thursday, though, the UN released new figures, noting a difference between the total deaths “reported” by the health ministry in Gaza and a lower number of fatalities that had been “identified.” 

The difference between the numbers is attributed in the report to the fact that some Gazans have been reported missing or are buried under debris of buildings damaged during the war and unable to be accounted for.

The new data show that 7,797 children have been “identified” as having died in Gaza since the war began, substantially lower than the “reported” number of deaths. Neither the UN report, though, nor the Gaza Health Ministry specifies what age is considered the cutoff between children and adults in their death counts.

Out of the more than 34,000 “reported fatalities” — a figure that has been repeated across numerous press outlets, including in the New York Times on Friday — the UN Office for the Coordination of Human Affairs asserts as of May 8 that 24,686 are “identified.” 

Of those 24,686 identified as having died, the UN reports, 10,006 were men, 4,959 were women, 1,924 were elderly, and the remainder were children. The report notes that the tally does not include “more than 10,000 reported missing or under the rubble.” 

Asked by a reporter on Friday how the death numbers were revised, the deputy spokesman for the UN secretary-general, Farhan Haq, said, “In the fog of war, it’s difficult to come up with numbers. We get numbers from different sources on the ground, and then we try to crosscheck them. As we crosscheck them, we update the numbers, and we’ll continue to do that as that progresses.” 

The UN report includes a disclaimer that the agency “has so far not been able to produce independent, comprehensive, and verified casualty figures.”

The global body added that “the current numbers have been provided by the Ministry of Health or the Government Media Office in Gaza and the Israeli authorities and await further verification.”

Gaza’s health ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count. It has repeated that women and children have made up about two-thirds of those killed. The Israeli military said in February it has killed more than 10,000 Hamas terrorists through air strikes and ground operations launched in response to October 7. 

The new fatality figures are about one-third lower than what was initially reported by the UN, yet Mr. Haq said that people “can consider them reliable from the fact that we’re continually checking them.” 

Mr. Haq added that “numbers get adjusted many times over the course of a conflict. Once a conflict is done, we’ll have the most accurate figures. But we’re just going with what we can absolutely confirm, which will always be the low end of what the numbers are.”

Critics of the death statistics put forward by the UN and Gaza Health ministry, noting the lack of specifics on the age cutoff between child and adult fatalities, suspect that some young men in their late teens, many of whom are active Hamas combatants, could be among those counted as child deaths in reports.

The UN’s press office did not immediately respond to the Sun’s request for comment on the matter. 

==

Who would have thought that the numbers from a literal Islamic terrorist organization would be unreliable propaganda? It truly is shocking.

Note carefully that point about children. When it says "7,797 children (32%)," what they're actually saying is "Hamas uses child soldiers."

[eretzyisrael]

Source

[alwaysbewoke]