How is it possible that Hamas combatants never die?

Day after day, night after night for the last 13 months the news media be it ABC, SBS (Australia.) BBC or CNN, and other news publications as well as some academics inform us that the Israeli military has killed at least 44,000 or more Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children.  These figures are provided by the Hamas-run Government Health Information Office in Gaza.  Is it even conceivable that 44,000 dead are all civilians and that not even one single fatality is a Hamas fighter?  This is, apart from Ismail Haniyeh who served as the chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau and Yahya Sinwar who served as the de facto leader of Hamas as well as one or two other Hamas leaders.

Rationally this makes absolutely no sense.  How can it be that not one Hamas combatant has been  killed and only civilians met that fate?  Similarly, how can it be that the majority (70%) were women and children?  Where are the men?  If you follow other news media as well as the Israeli one, it has been acknowledged that as of November 2024, over 1,700 Israeli have been reported as killed in the current war.  Over 740 soldiers are victims of the fighting which included not only Jewish Israeli soldiers but also Israeli Arabs, Israeli Druze and Israeli Bedouins.  As well, over 4,895 Israeli soldiers are badly wounded with some soldiers suffering not only war wounds but also PTSD.  This is apart from the victims of October 7 brutal massacre and the hostage taking.

It would be foolish to suggest that people do not die in wars or that Israel does not make mistakes.  But it is equally foolish to pretend that Hamas combatants never die  and that only civilians mostly women and children are killed.  It is neither logical nor statistically plausible as it is generally acknowledged that Hamas had between 20.000 and 25.000 active combatants and many more sympathisers.  If the news media was guided by honesty and not ideological motives, they would report and acknowledge that possibly up to 18,00 Gazans killed were in fact Hamas combatants.  Combatants by definition are people engaged in fighting during a war.  And who knows how many of the wounded are infract Hamas operative too.  Although hard to verify, it is also worth noting that officials close to Hamas organisation have admitted that close to 80% of the 42,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza during the war have been Hamas operatives and their family members.

The role of the news media in modern democracies is to present the facts or as close to it as possible.  The influence of news media on society is important and has a significant impact on personal opinions and beliefs which are often shaped by the news.  The rise of recent anti-Jewish anti-Israel hostility in the Western world is without doubt the result of the lack of honesty in reporting the death tolls in Gaza as well as ignoring historic facts.  Historic facts such as the five times Israel agreed to a peace treaty and the formation of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital twice, rejected each time by the Palestinian leadership.  Facts that almost a million Jews who fled or were driven out of Arab countries after the establishment of Israel and the fact that most Arab countries are “Judenrein”.  Or that Israel left Gaza in 2005 which resulted in thousands of fire incendiaries and rockets directed at Israel over the following years.  Or that Egypt which also has a border with Gaza refused passage to Palestinians over the years and that this border remains mostly close right through the current war.  It amazing how many people  who should know better dispute the existence of this border.  It all seems to be a deliberate mental amnesia by those who should know better the facts especially the media.

While the situation in Gaza is terrible, accepting data from an organisation which we know to have invented data before does not enhance Western news media’s trustworthiness.  On the contrary, to accept only Hamas figures and in turn ignore the data Israel provides does not boost claims of impartiality and fairness by news media. In fact, a recent investigative report about the Israel-Hamas war highlighted the BBC’s “widespread anti-Israel bias” breaching its own editorial guidelines 1,500 times.  It seems that an ideologically driven media reporting cannot be fully trusted.  In Fact, a major Middle East presenter at the BBC had this to say to a group of trainee journalists about the report. “It is aimed to slander the BBC”.  He also lauded Hamas  and suggested the figures were accurate.  How can he present the current situation without at least some bias?

Interestingly, even the United Nation’s figures they presented to the world has had to change because the data based on the Gaza health Ministry did not make any real sense.  On 6^th of May, 2024, the UN reported that 70% of those who were killed in Gaza were women and children.  This raised two questions.  Where were the men and why were there so low male fatalities?  Two days later, the United Nations changed the figure to 52%.  Recently the Gaza health ministry controlled by Hamas once again has suggested that 70% of fatalities were women and children as reported by the BBC with no explanation. Yes, people die in Gaza and in many other wars.  For example, this year alone more than 75,000 men, women and children died from violence and hunger in South Sudan, with many of the women raped first.  An event barely mentioned in the news media.

It is important that the “news” in the news media should only use reliable sources, checking and rechecking the facts which should not be either trivialised or sensationalised.  Unquestionably accepting and publishing figures from Hamas aimed to create emotive responses should not be the role of the news media.  The role of the news media is to inform as widely and as truthfully as possible.  It is not possible that only civilians have died in Gaza and no Hamas combatant.  It defies logic.