David Adesnik
On May 6, a U.N. office reported that more than 9,500 women and 14,500 children had been killed so far in Gaza. The office had been reporting similar figures for nearly two months. Yet on May 8, the reported numbers fell to fewer than 5,000 women and 8,000 children—a reduction of more than 11,000 fatalities over all.
The U.N. did not call attention to the change, which was buried in the fine print of one of its numerous updates on Gaza. But a handful of journalists noticed. The first wave of headlines put the U.N. on the defensive: "United Nations halves estimate of women and children killed in Gaza", "UN revises Gaza death toll," and more along those lines.
Had the U.N. quietly admitted that its casualty estimates were wildly off the mark? Was it absolving Israel of responsibility for 11,000 deaths that may not have happened?
The U.N. rejected such claims. Farhan Haq, a spokesman for the Secretary-General, insisted that nothing of significance had changed. There had been no reduction, he said, in the total number of dead or in the number of women and children who had lost their lives. Rather, the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) had just chosen to present the data in a new and more accurate way.
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