Israel Accepts Gaza Health Ministry's Death Toll Estimate

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have reportedly accepted the Gaza Health Ministry's estimate that over 70,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's war on Gaza.

The Details: The news was reported by several Israeli news outlets, including Haaretz (Lean Left bias) and The Times of Israel (Center). The Gaza ministry's current toll is 71,667 and does not distinguish between civilian and militant deaths. The toll does not include bodies buried under the rubble, which the IDF says it estimates to be about 10,000. 

For Context: Throughout the war, Israel had questioned the ministry's accuracy and rejected its death toll estimates, claiming they were exaggerated by Hamas. In 2024, the House passed a bipartisan bill that banned the Department of State from citing the Gaza Health Ministry's death toll estimates. Shortly before the ceasefire, the IDF claimed it killed at least 22,000 militants. Since the ceasefire, around 450 Palestinians have been killed.

How The Media Covered It: The only outlets from the right AllSides found coverage from were Washington Examiner (Lean Right) and The Telegraph (Lean Right). Qatari outlet Al Jazeera (Lean Left) highlighted that many Western media outlets, including CNN (Lean Left), The New York Times (Lean Left), BBC News (Center), and Fox News (Right), always described the ministry as being "Hamas-run" or "Hamas-controlled." It also noted that President Joe Biden said he had "no confidence" in the ministry's estimates. In a separate piece, Al Jazeera wrote, "Israel has frequently denied narratives of killings its forces have perpetrated, despite evidence to the contrary, only to later grudgingly acknowledge what happened – often when the facts became impossible to deny."

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