A nonpartisan watchdog group sent a letter to top Pentagon officials this week requesting all information that led to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin‘s recent public claim that “over 25,000” Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip since Oct. 7 — a figure based on data supplied by the Hamas militant group.
In the letter, Center to Advance Security in America (CASA) Director James Fitzpatrick questions whether publicly reciting those numbers — which the Pentagon later admitted came from Hamas data, and which can’t be independently confirmed by U.S. analysts — may have aided the group the U.S. and Israel consider a terrorist organization in pushing its public narrative that Israel is indiscriminately murdering scores of innocent civilians in Gaza.
The Washington Times is the first media outlet to report on the letter, which was delivered to Chris Meagher, assistant to the secretary of defense for public affairs, and the Defense Department’s inspector general on Tuesday.
The Pentagon quickly clarified Mr. Austin‘s Feb. 29 comments before the House Armed Services Committee and acknowledged that the 25,000 number has not been independently confirmed. Officials also said the figure applied to all Palestinians, not just women and children, as Mr. Austin originally stated.
But Mr. Fitzpatrick argues there are still significant questions that must be answered about those numbers, including whether the Pentagon has any other internal data or intelligence estimates on the civilian casualty count in Gaza.
“The Center to Advance Security in America is formally requesting that all relevant information used by the DoD to support its recent statements concerning the Palestinian death toll be made public. Doing so would restore confidence that Secretary Austin and senior DoD officials have not used taxpayer resources and their positions of authority to advance disinformation originating from a terrorist organization and its likely nation-state affiliates,” he wrote in the letter.
DOCUMENT: Letter to top Pentagon officials
A defense official told The Times that the Pentagon will “respond appropriately” to the letter.
“Regarding the [House] hearing on Feb. 29, Secretary Austin was asked how many women and children have died in Gaza. To clarify, the Secretary’s answer was citing an estimate from the Hamas-controlled health ministry that more than 25,000 total Palestinians have been killed in Gaza,” the official said.
The uproar over Mr. Austin’s public comments on Palestinian deaths underscores just how difficult it is to get accurate information out of the Gaza Strip at a time when Israel is under growing international pressure to ease up its campaign in the Gaza enclave to break the power of Hamas. With Hamas‘ numbers unable to be independently confirmed, it’s possible that the death and casualty counts could be even higher, though some specialists stress that’s highly unlikely.
Israel has been battling Hamas in the Palestinian enclave since last October, shortly after Hamas launched an Oct. 7 rampage across southern Israel that killed more than 1,200 Israelis and resulted in the taking of more than 250 hostages. More than 100 of those hostages reportedly remain in the hands of Hamas.
The Palestinian death toll has become a key aspect of an anti-Israel narrative pushed by Hamas, its allies such as Iran, Israel critics, and even some media outlets. Even the United Nations itself on Wednesday published a news story on its website that seemed to rely on data from the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza to condemn the number of Palestinian children killed. It said that “at least 12,300 youngsters have died in the enclave in the last four months, compared with 12,193 globally between 2019 and 2022.”
President Biden also has publicly cited death and casualty figures released by Hamas officials, as recently as last week’s State of the Union address.
“More than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed,” Mr. Biden told a joint session of Congress, without citing his source, “most of whom are not Hamas.”
In all, 31,184 Palestinians have been killed and 72,889 have been wounded in Gaza since Oct. 7, according to the latest Hamas-controlled Health Ministry numbers. But, as outlets such as the Times of Israel noted in citing those numbers: “The terror group’s figures are unverified, don’t differentiate between civilians and combatants, and list all the fatalities as caused by Israel — even those believed to have been caused by hundreds of misfired rockets or otherwise by Palestinian fire.”
Israel says it has killed more than 13,000 Hamas members since beginning its operation in Gaza, according to Israeli media, also a figure that cannot be confirmed by outside groups.
A controversial claim
Questions about the accuracy of Hamas death toll figures had been swirling for months by the time Mr. Austin testified before the House Armed Services Committee on Feb. 29. During his testimony, he asked about the number of deaths in Gaza.
“Mr. Secretary, about how many Palestinian women and children have been killed by Israel since Oct. 7?” asked Rep. Ro Khanna, California Democrat.
“It’s over 25,000,” Mr. Austin replied.
Within hours, the Defense Department tried to carefully walk back the statement.
“His answer was citing an estimate from the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry that more than 25,000 total Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, and as you know and as you’ve heard us say, we can’t independently verify that these numbers are accurate. We can’t independently verify Gaza casualty figures,” Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, Pentagon spokesman, told reporters later on the very day Mr. Austin testified.
“And so we’ve talked about this before, that we’re dependent on open-source information like many of you,” he continued. “We’re, you know, certain that thousands of people have been killed. But as for the specific numbers, again, we cannot verify those specific statistics.”
Pressed on the issue, Gen. Ryder continued: “We’re fairly confident that thousands of civilians have been killed,” he said. “And one innocent civilian being killed is too many. So again, it just underscores the tragic situation that’s there.”
In its letter, CASA cites an analysis by Abraham J. Wyner, a professor of statistics and data science at the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School, who said that the daily Hamas casualty counts since Oct. 7 fall within a narrow band, averaging 270 plus or minus just 15% each day.
“This is strikingly little variation,” he wrote in a recent piece for the online magazine Tablet. “There should be days with twice the average or more and others with half or less. Perhaps what is happening is the Gaza ministry is releasing fake daily numbers that vary too little because they do not have a clear understanding of the behavior of naturally occurring numbers. Unfortunately, verified control data is not available to formally test this conclusion, but the details of the daily counts render the numbers suspicious.”
The numbers could have major geopolitical ramifications. Mr. Fitzpatrick, the CASA director, wrote in his letter that “Hamas is arguably providing this false information in a broader attempt to build public support for a cease-fire so it can gain a tactical military advantage over Israel, an ally of the United States.”
Indeed, the civilian suffering in Gaza is a key reason why the U.S. and its European allies have become much more vocal in recent weeks about the need for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza, even as Israel gears up for a major campaign targeting the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians have taken refuge.
CASA describes itself as “a non-partisan, unincorporated association dedicated to educating and informing the American public about the actions of their government and its officials, particularly those actions which may impact their safety, peace and security, democratic government, civil rights, and privacy.”
The organization would not disclose its donors when asked by The Times.
• Ben Wolfgang can be reached at bwolfgang@washingtontimes.com.