Similarly, UN Women's latest article on Gaza says "over 10,000 women have been killed, among them an estimated 6,000 mothers, leaving 19,000 children orphaned."
But the Ministry of Health has walked back those statistics, which came from Hamas. It currently says roughly half those number of children and women have been killed. UN-OCHA updated its statistics to reflect those changes weeks ago, albeit in small print.
But the Ministry of Health has walked back those statistics, which came from Hamas. It currently says roughly half those number of children and women have been killed. UN-OCHA updated its statistics to reflect those changes weeks ago, albeit in small print.
So why do UNICEF and UN Women still report the Hamas-created lies as truth, more than a month after even other UN agencies reluctantly admit that the numbers are wrong?
It is clear that the truth doesn't matter to these UN agencies. They want to make Israel look as monstrous as possible, and if that means relying on a terror group that murders women and children in cold blood, that is fine.
Today, AP made a tentative step to correct the record. The article is far from perfect and doesn't note that the health ministry is parroting unsourced Hamas claims of women and children killed. But hopefully other media will do their own analyses of the data and finally admit what we've known all along - their claims of civilian deaths in Gaza come from Hamas propaganda and not from any actual counting of victims.
Will the UN and NGOs then correct their own reporting? It seems highly unlikely. UN Women and UNICEF need the higher numbers to justify their fundraising and public relations, so they have strong incentive to pretend the Hamss numbers are the real ones.
Both these agencies are making a huge mistake. While much of the UN is obviously politicized against Israel, agencies dedicated to protecting children and women have been assumed to be more honest and less political because of their humanitarian objectives. Every day they refuse to correct their own increasingly obvious errors, they risk appearing to care more about demonizing Israel than protecting children and women.
And then it will be the women and children themselves who be hurt by their loss of credibility.
