Israel’s official and unofficial spokespeople are in damage control mode after a senior military official admitted last week that Israel accepts the death toll published by Gaza’s health ministry, which currently stands at more than 70,000. This comes after two years in which Israel and its supporters took every opportunity to disparage and dismiss the health ministry’s figures, arguing that they were overblown or fabricated by Hamas.
That prestigious list of repudiators, to name just a few, includes spokespeople for Israel’s government and military, then-US president Joe Biden, US Congress, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) chief Jonathan Greenblatt, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) and any number of talking heads at influential thinktanks and policy centres. Adding credibility to their denials were prominent media outlets around the world that often described Gaza’s health ministry as “Hamas-run”, thereby encouraging readers and viewers to treat the death toll with suspicion.
