Washington, D.C. – The list of Palestinians killed in the war in Gaza stretches over more than 150 pages, sometimes listing dozens of people with the same last name: entire families were wiped out by Israeli air strikes.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza released the list on Thursday, documenting the deaths of more than 7,000 Palestinians, including nearly 3,000 children, since the war began on October 7.
Each name is linked to a government identification number – a move intended to signal transparency.
But less than 24 hours earlier, US President Joe Biden expressed doubts about the numbers, saying he had “no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using.”
“I have no idea that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are being killed,” Biden said Wednesday.
For Palestinian rights advocates, the US president’s comments are another episode in his administration’s effort to “dehumanize” Palestinians and dismiss their suffering while Washington continues to support Israel’s bombing campaign.
In addition, critics were quick to point out that human rights experts, including at the United Nations, have long considered the Palestinian Health Ministry’s data to be reliable.
Palestinian-American activist Zeina Ashrawi Hutchison said Biden’s comments appeared to question the humanity of Palestinians “even in death.”
“The president’s comments are outrageous, irresponsible and completely racist and anti-Palestinian,” she told Al Jazeera.
Nonprofit organization finds statistics “reliable”
Biden’s publicly expressed doubts come as the US continues to resist calls for a ceasefire, instead pledging continued military support to Israel.
Yara Asi, a Palestinian-American public health expert at the University of Central Florida, called the president’s comments “appalling.”
“Disputing these numbers really meant allying with Israel on this issue in yet another way that dehumanizes Palestinians,” Asi told Al Jazeera.
As Israel blocks foreign journalists or researchers from entering the Gaza Strip as the conflict worsens, the territory’s health ministry has become the go-to source when it comes to the Palestinian death toll.
Although it is difficult – if not impossible – to independently verify the numbers released from Gaza, Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch (HRW), said the ministry’s data often reflected the nonprofit’s own research .
Shakir said that when HRW previously conducted its own research into previous attacks on Palestinians, it found no major discrepancies between its findings and figures provided by the Health Ministry.
“Human Rights Watch has been working in the occupied Palestinian territories for three decades. “We have reported on rounds of escalation and hostilities and have always found the Ministry of Health numbers to be broadly reliable,” Shakir said.
Distinguishing the official figures released by the ministry from comments by individual health officials in Gaza, he said the ministry had access to data from hospitals and morgues, allowing it to more accurately estimate the death toll.
In fact, Thursday’s report said the current death toll does not include people who were killed but not taken to hospitals or registered at morgues.
Shakir also noted that the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) relied on the health agency’s data, which was also cited by the US State Department.
In the current war, the Israeli military says it has dropped thousands of bombs on Gaza, including 6,000 in the first six days alone.
“We looked at satellite images. We watched what happened. “The numbers coming from the ministry are not beyond doubt,” said Shakir. “They are in the range of what one would expect from airstrikes of this intensity.”
An OCHA spokesperson in the occupied Palestinian territories also told Al Jazeera on Thursday that the UN agency continues to use the ministry’s figures.
“The United Nations relies on the Ministry of Health in Gaza as a source for casualty figures in the area,” the spokesman said in an email.
“We continue to include their data in our reporting and it is clearly verifiable. It is currently almost impossible to carry out a day-to-day UN review.”
“How much lower?”
The Biden administration has not only expressed doubts about the Palestinian accounts, but has also consistently rejected any independent investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes, including by the International Criminal Court.
For example, US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said earlier this week that an international investigation into the explosion at Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, which killed hundreds of people in Gaza, was “not appropriate at this time.”
Instead, he cited Israeli evidence that the hospital explosion was caused by a misfired Palestinian rocket. Palestinian officials said the explosion was the result of an Israeli attack.
We are deeply disturbed and shocked by the dehumanizing comments @POTUS made about the nearly 7,000 Palestinians slaughtered by the Israeli government in the last two weeks. The Israeli government has openly admitted to targeting civilians, journalists have confirmed high numbers… https://t.co/dSn616CHcV
– CAIR National (@CAIRNational) October 25, 2023
Even when Israeli forces killed Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh last year, Israeli authorities initially claimed that the reporter had been shot dead by Palestinian gunmen. In turn, the Biden administration also rejected any formal, independent investigation into the incident.
Several Palestinian Americans told Al Jazeera that Biden’s statement about the Palestinian death toll only reinforces evidence that he is fully embracing the Israeli government’s narrative at the expense of Palestinian victims.
“As if the president wasn’t already complicit enough in the dehumanization of Palestinians, he now says he doesn’t trust us when we say we’re being murdered,” Palestinian-American activist and comedian Amer Zahr told Al Jazeera.
“How much lower could you stoop than to say we’re lying about dying?”
For her part, Asi, the public health expert, said the Biden administration understands that civilian casualties are “extremely unpopular.”
“So if you both have doubts about the Palestinian numbers but do not support investigations – not even the entry of foreign journalists into Gaza – what you are really saying is: the death toll doesn’t matter because we will support it anyway. We will find ways to justify this,” she said.
Dana El Kurd, a non-resident senior fellow at the Arab Center Washington DC, echoed Asi’s comments.
“This is incredibly inhumane and broadly inspires distrust of Palestinians,” El Kurd told Al Jazeera. “The assumption is that they are always lying and that they are always inaccurate narrators about what is happening to them.”