In this case, the additional 3,000 was laundered through a circuitous route.
Tuesday, June 04, 2024
- Tuesday, June 04, 2024
- Elder of Ziyon
Besides the daily, quite exact-sounding casualty numbers, Hamas also regularly releases other Gaza statistics.
Keep in mind that there is no mechanism for reporting missing people. Yet Hamas claimed that from December to March 70% of the missing were women and children. If they know that detail, that means they should know the exact count
In this case, the additional 3,000 was laundered through a circuitous route.
One of them is the number of people missing, presumably under rubble.
In November, the number rose from 6,500 to 7,000. It briefly spiked to 7,500 before settling in at exactly 7,000 in every single report from December to the end of April. Then, days later, it jumped up another 3,000 to 10,000, where it has stayed since then.
Here's the chart.
Hamas dropped that 70% claim in April but then decided that the 7,000 number was getting old and chose to add a few thousand more, even though there were no major air raids with hundreds of people stranded under rubble in that timeframe.
The UN's OCHA dutifully transcribed Hamas' made up numbers, showing the rise from 7,000 to 10,000 missing between May 1 and May 3.
In this case, the additional 3,000 was laundered through a circuitous route.
OCHA is quoting the GMO (Gaza Media Office) and PC (Protection Cluster.)
The Protection Cluster sounds like a legitimate UN organization, so what was its source? It was OCHA again! OCHA on May 1 quoted Palestinian Civil Defense that 10,000 were suddenly missing - which is, of course, Hamas!
So the UN OCHA quoted another UN agency, which got the numbers from OCHA itself, which got them from Hamas. But this way it sounds like they got them from a reliable source.
It is not the first time we've seen the UN play this particular game.