On May 3, the UN OCHA announced that the number of missing persons in Gaza jumped from 7,000 to 10,000, quoting Hamas.
As I showed then, the number had been exactly 7,000 for five months.
The number of people said to be missing under the rubble remained at 10,000 for the past six months according to Hamas and therefore according to UN-OCHA.
Could 10,000 people really be buried under the rubble for six months? None of them have been dug out by their families?
This week, Hamas apparently decided that this statistic was getting old. In its latest dump of made-up statistics, it now claims 11,000 people missing in Gaza under the rubble.
In general, Gazans are no longer in buildings. No on is being buried under rubble nowadays, except perhaps in tunnels. Israel has not been doing massive airstrikes on buildings for many months. There is no way the number of missing is increasing.
The previously made-up 10,000 number has been repeated mindlessly as fact by Turkish news agencies, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Amnesty International (saying they were "presumed dead,") Yahoo News ("according to health authorities,") the Washington Post ("local authorities estimate") and WHO (no caveats).
Once again, there is no source for these numbers. None. No one even knows how these numbers are estimated.
Hamas literally makes then up. And the media and NGOs treat them as if they have legitimacy, even when they pretend to be objective by adding "according to authorities."
