Last Monday, NBC News ran a story on an Israeli airstrike in Khan Younis, under the headline: Women and Children Killed in Israeli Airstrikes on Gaza Shelters. It reported that the attack “helped push the death toll in Gaza beyond 45,000, most of them women and children, according to Palestinian health officials.”

The idea that most of the dead in the Israel-Hamas war are women and children is often heard in western media, which has been uncritically regurgitating Hamas talking points since the start of the war, furthering the narrative that Israel is using disproportionate force and perhaps even committing a “genocide.” Could this possibly be true?