Drawing on GPS information released with the study, DellaPergola and Zlochin said interview areas overlapped in some locations rather than remaining distinct.

By Vered Weiss, World Israel News

Two researchers have challenged the findings of a widely cited study on deaths in Gaza, arguing in a newly published correspondence in The Lancet Global Health that weaknesses in the survey’s design and execution may have distorted estimates of conflict-related fatalities.

The correspondence, authored by Professor Emeritus Sergio DellaPergola of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and independent researcher Mark Zlochin, focuses on a Gaza Mortality Survey that estimated approximately 75,200 violent deaths during the Israel-Hamas conflict.

After reviewing the survey’s publicly released data, the researchers concluded that several aspects of the methodology warrant closer scrutiny.

Rather than disputing a single element of the study, DellaPergola and Zlochin point to a series of concerns that they say collectively raise doubts about whether the survey accurately reflected Gaza’s broader population.

Their analysis highlights uneven results among interviewer teams, inconsistencies in sampling patterns and discrepancies between the survey’s findings and external demographic data.

One of the issues identified in the correspondence involves the distribution of reported fatalities among survey teams.

The researchers found that a single interviewer group accounted for roughly one-quarter of all violent deaths recorded in the survey despite covering only a limited portion of sampled households.

They also reported demographic patterns among some interviewers’ results that differed markedly from those recorded elsewhere in the study.

The correspondence further questions whether fieldwork followed the sampling procedures described by the survey’s authors.

Drawing on GPS information released with the study, DellaPergola and Zlochin said interview areas overlapped in some locations rather than remaining distinct.

They also argued that interviewers covered only small sections of their assigned zones, potentially limiting the survey’s ability to capture population variation across Gaza.

Additional concerns involved the possibility of duplicate reporting of deaths among families displaced by the war and differences between the survey’s estimates of imprisoned Gazans and independently reported detention figures.

The researchers also noted that information on causes of death was collected but not included in the published results.

“Population-level mortality estimates are only as reliable as the representativeness of the underlying sample,” DellaPergola said. “Our analysis raises important questions regarding whether the survey achieved the level of representativeness necessary to support its national mortality estimates.”

The publication adds to an ongoing debate among researchers over how casualty figures are measured and evaluated in active conflict zones.

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Prominently placing the imaginary casualty figure of 186,000 implies Israel was responsible for these deaths.

By Vered Weiss, World Israel News

One of the world’s top medical journals is pushing claims that close to 200,000 civilians have died in the Gaza Strip, significantly exceeding even Hamas’ own estimates of the death toll.

In a letter published in the prominent medical journal The Lancet, authors argued that “indirect” deaths in Gaza may be as high as 186,000, before claiming that their statement was simply meant to illustrate a point.

The wildly exaggerated 186,000 figure was circulated on social media and shared by many anti-Israel voices, including United Nations Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, who has a history of making false and defamatory statements against Israel.

The letter’s authors were Rasha Khatib, Martin McKee and Salim Yusuf.

Rasha Khatib has often praised Palestinian terrorism and called Hamas’s brutal acts an “inevitable response to the occupation.”

The letter was titled, “Counting the dead in Gaza: difficult but essential,” and began with the Hamas Health Ministry number of 37,396 casualties. This figure has been reported often in the media but never independently verified.

The letter then asserts that the real number of Gazan casualties is 15 times higher than 37,396 because they insist on counting “indirect deaths.”

It continues, “It is not implausible to estimate that up to 186,000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza.”

“Using the 2022 Gaza Strip population estimate of 2,375,259, this would translate to 7·9% of the total population in the Gaza Strip,” the letter concludes.

Prominently placing the figure 186,000 in the letter implies that Israel was responsible for these deaths, although they were mere speculation and not real casualty numbers.

In addition, as pointed out by Honest Reporting, the “indirect deaths” are due to conditions created by the war and not by actual aggression or killing by the other side.

Several days after the letter was shared on social media, one of the authors, Martin McKee, wrote that he intended the figures to be “purely illustrative” and that “our piece has been greatly misquoted and misinterpreted.”

However, none of the authors have retracted the piece or the figures quoted.

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