The official news arm of the United Nations, UN News, applies radically different standards when reporting on civilian death tolls in Gaza than when reporting on civilian death tolls in Ukraine. Questions sent to UN News about their double standards had not been answered at the time of publication of this article.
This October 23rd UN News article about civilian deaths in Gaza had the headline “Israel-Palestine: Gaza death toll passes 5,000 with no ceasefire in sight.” But the categorical claim that, in fact, over 5,000 civilians have died is not supported by the text of the article, which stated:
“Latest media reports citing the Gaza Ministry of Health [MOH] indicate that the number of people killed in Gaza since 7 October has risen to 5,087.”
In other words, the UN has performed no independent assessment whether the claim is true or not, instead declaring in its headline the claims of the Hamas-controlled Gaza MOH to be factual.
This standard stands in sharp contrast the standard used in UN News’ reporting of civilian deaths in Ukraine (example), specifically Eastern Ukraine (the now Russian-controlled Donbass region). There, UN News relies on numbers from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
The OHCHR in its reports (example) says it “documents civilian casualties by consulting a broad range of sources and types of information, which are evaluated for credibility and reliability.” But not so in Gaza, where figures from the Hamas-controlled Gaza MOH are taken by UN News at face value rather than being “evaluated for credibility and reliability.” Are their figures accurate?
Al-Jazeera reports that the United Nations has said the figures provided by the Gaza MOH have proven “consistently credible in the past.” In contrast, Swedish Middle East expert Anders Persson at the Linné University told Swedish State Television that “the fact that most in the West do not see Israel as guilty of the hospital explosion has also increased mistrust of Hamas.”
There is further evidence of possible against Israel by the UN and its various arms. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) was referring to the Israel-Hamas conflict as the “Gaza Emergency” on its website last week. After we sent our inquiry to UN News asking why UNRWA uses that term with no mention of it being an emergency in Israel as well, and expecting them to tell us to ask UNRWA that question, UNRWA quietly changed the term “Gaza Emergency” to “the War in Gaza.”
However, their website’s source code still has traces of the term “Gaza Emergency” being used by UNRWA. As shown below.
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