Through state televisionon April 16, the Acting President Delcy Rodríguez made the announcement, affirming that the country is normalizing “all processes involving rights and responsibilities in the body.”

The announcement coincided with the promulgation of the Venezuelan Organic Mining Law, marking a significant step towards economic recovery and international reintegration for the South American nation.

Acting President Delcy Rodriguez highlighted the return to the IFM as a shifting geopolitical landscape and a major diplomatic victory for Venezuela, dismantling the opposition’s lobbying efforts.

“It is a very important step for the Venezuelan economy, but also what Venezuela means for our region. It has been a great achievement of Venezuelan diplomacy”, Rodríguez declared, extending gratitude to those who facilitated the process, including U.S. President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and their respective teams, alongside the United Arab Emirates, Brazil and Qatar.

“Venezuela has been part of this body since 1946”, recalled Rodríguez. “We are normalizing all processes that involve Venezuela’s rights in the organization”, she stated, emphasizing the country’s significance for the region.

“It was not a formal gesture. It was the map of a negotiation that took months to settle and which the Venezuelan far-right tried to sabotage without success”, she stressed.

“It is very unfortunate that Venezuelan political extremism has taken on the task of visiting capitals in Europe and other countries to try to prevent this step so important for our economy”, she added, denouncing the efforts for boycotting the agreement.

Guided by the views of IMF members representing a majority of total voting power, and consistent with long‑standing practice, the Fund announced that it is resuming dealings with Venezuela’s authorities, paused since 2019 due to recognition issues. https://t.co/rIRKs6s4M2

— IMF (@IMFNews) April 17, 2026

For her part, IMF Managing Director, Kristalina Georgieva, formally confirmed today the resumption of relations with Venezuela through an official statement.

“In accordance with the opinion of the member countries of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that represent a majority of the total voting power of the IMF, and in line with long-standing practice, the IMF has resumed its relations with the Government of Venezuela, under the administration of interim President Delcy Rodriguez”, specified the communiqué. This technical formulation carries significant political weight, indicating the international community’s recognition of the current Venezuelan Government as a legitimate interlocutor.

I welcome the decision to resume IMF dealings with Venezuela. This important step, guided by the views of our members, allows the Fund to re‑engage in a way that can ultimately benefit the Venezuelan people. https://t.co/YH1ZCX8tAU https://t.co/lwHYEHcyml

— Kristalina Georgieva (@KGeorgieva) April 17, 2026

In a related development, the World Bank (WB) also announced the resumption of its relations with Caracas, following the outcome of the IMF voting process. This synchronized reintegration into major international financial institutions signifies a crucial turning point for Venezuelan economic prospects and its standing on the global stage.

Over $5 Billion To Be Unlocked

The suspension of relations between IMF and Venezuela dated back to March 2019, when the lending organization recognized illegally the parliamentary far-right opposition as the illegitimate and imposed Government from abroad, aligning with the sanctions campaign then promoted by Washington.

Since then, Venezuela had been excluded from Article IV consultations and its reserves remained frozen. These include approximately 3.568 billion in Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), equivalent to about 5.1 billion U.S. dollars. About that, Acting President Delcy Rodríguez clarified that the unfreezing of these substantial funds is expected to be earmarked for the recovery of public services, meanwhile she reaffirmed the Government’s commitment to work for a national consensus for peace and the definitive lifting of the U.S. sanctions that still weigh against the Nation.

Previously, on April 14, the U.S. OFAC had eased sanctions on Venezuelan Central Bank and three other state financial institutions, allowing them to operate in the U.S. financial system for the first time since 2017, as part of the re-established diplomatic and consular relations with the United States on March 5.

The IMF decision is also a consequence of the Bolivarian Government’s efforts to normalize diplomatic relations and end unilateral economic sanctions, after the U.S. attack against the country on January 3, which resulted with the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, the First Combatant Cilia Flores, prisoners still in a jail in New York, waiting for trial.

Author: Laura V. Mor

Source: VTV/ IMF

IN THIS ARTICLE

In a recent interview with the former Israeli government minister and now ambassador to the United Kingdom, Tzipora ‘Tzipi’ Hotovely, combative British journalist Piers Morgan asked repeatedly whether she knew the number of children that had been killed in Gaza since 7 October 2023. Morgan pointed out that the ambassador’s firm estimate of 30,000 ‘Hamas terrorists’ killed during the conflict contrasted starkly with her apparent ignorance of the number of dead and injured Palestinian children. Clearly frustrated, Morgan kept repeating the same question, but to no avail. Towards the end of what was a protracted and often terse exchange, a clearly discomforted ambassador (at one stage accusing Morgan of ‘blood libel’), dismissed the figures of civilian casualties produced by Gaza’s Ministry of Health—figures which over many years have been regarded as reliable by numerous media and aid organisations.

Ambassador Hotovely responded by saying that she would never believe any information coming from what she considered to be Hamas-influenced sources. Morgan ended the interview visibly frustrated, referring to many of the ambassador’s claims as ‘bullshit’. He was especially perplexed when she claimed that the IDF did not target or kill children and that, indeed, Israel’s military forces are among the most disciplined, orderly and moral in the world—an assertion strongly contested by Morgan who opined that since no journalists are allowed into Gaza (apart from ’embedded’ ones) none of the Israeli military’s claims could be independently investigated.

Hotovely is one of a number of diplomats and official spokespeople who over the course of the latest conflict, have defended Israel’s ‘right to defend itself’ and who vigorously justify almost all of the IDF’s actions, though sometimes admitting that ‘mistakes’ have been made. Without exception, they deny that a genocide is occurring in Gaza, that the IDF has committed war crimes or that it has violated international humanitarian law. They also assert that the United Nations, humans rights groups and other international agencies are either in league with Hamas and/or act as their proxies and mouthpieces. One of the more prominent of these spokespersons, David Mencer, a political communications expert and representative of Israel’s National Public Diplomacy Directorate, has also stated his support for Donald Trump’s ‘Riviera’ solution, denying that this is tantamount to ethnic cleansing and claiming that all migrations would be ‘voluntary’. The tone adopted by Mencer and others is at once defensive and aggressive, with frequent accusations that the journalists interviewing them are either ‘antisemitic’, and/or in league with Hamas, or simply ill-informed.  

Their supportive dispositions reflect years of alignment with the Israel’s policies, with many currently of formerly serving as members of the IDF, and/or in diplomat and government positions. Some have backgrounds in broadcasting, strategic and political communications. In addition to Mesner, the most well-known of this group are IDF spokesperson, Brigadier General Efi Derin (who in April replaced Daniel Hagari); former Australian-Israeli diplomat and advisor to the prime minister’s office, Mark Regev, Oxford-educated and pugilistic media frontman, Eylon Levy; and the prime minister’s spokesperson, Avi Hyman.

THE MUZZLING OF DISSENTING VOICES

Among the more vocal and forceful unofficial defenders of Israel’s actions in Gaza are Rabbi  Shmuley Boteach and former deputy mayor of Jerusalem, Moshe Lion, both of whom have clashed regularly with pro-Palestinian advocates on Piers Morgan Uncensored. The usual approach of these two staunch advocates of Israel’s current and past incursions into Gaza and the West Bank are unapologetic, combative and often shrill. They variously accuse their opponents of being antisemitic and biased, or Hamas sympathisers.

When it comes to body counts, both official and unofficial Israeli spokespeople have either no idea of the number of civilians killed, deny the Gazan Ministry of Health’s figures, argue that civilian’s deaths result from Hamas being embedded among civilians, often using civilians as ‘human shields’, or that the rate of killing is commensurate with (or less than) other conflicts, particularly those conducted in densely built-up urban areas. Some spokespeople like to invoke the allied bombings of Hamburg, Dresden, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki as examples of mass killing by supposedly decent, law-abiding nations—an interesting comparison given that the legality and moral rectitude of such actions has long been questioned.

These sorts of legitimations are of course part of a wider agenda of state-sponsored Hasbara or ‘explaining’, as occurs through the IDF’s Operations Directorate and the muzzling of dissenting voices. In addition to an increasingly concentrated private media ownership and sustained government pressure to privatize the Israel Public Broadcasting Corporation, there is a long record of media control in Israel, with government permits for pro-Palestinian outlets disproportionality rejected and military censorship of articles deemed a ‘threat to national security’. Since the Hamas-led attacks on 7 October 2023, both Israeli and foreign journalists regarded as anti-Israel or overly sympathetic to the Palestinian cause have faced violence and intimidation by right-wing groups, the Israeli military and police.

The Tel Aviv offices of Haaretz, described by The Jewish Chronicle as  a ‘left wing’ news outlet critical of the Israeli government, have been attacked, and two of its journalists assaulted by Israeli police. Under a 2024 Israeli law, the Qatar-based news agency Al Jazeera (which still reports from Gaza and the West Bank), has been banned from Israel because of its critical attacks on the government and judiciary. In Gaza itself, as of 8 June 2025, according to the International Federation of Journalists, 170 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed since October 2023, with many others injured or missing.

The net result of all this is a series of consequences: First, apart from some brave reportage from Al Jazeera and a small number of independent journalists, and insights gained ftom Gazans themselves via social media, there is restricted opportunity for a wholesale international assessment of how the IDF conducts its military operations in Gaza. Second, threats and intimidation of anti-Israel reporting have resulted in growing self-censorship among Israeli and other journalists. Put simply, they fear Israeli retaliation. Third, increasing restrictions on the press in Israel mean that the public is denied vital information on the conflict, which contributes, in part, to the skewed public view of the conflict, often ignoring the bloodletting and destruction of Gaza, and celebrating the heroism of the IDF forces. According to one poll conducted by Penn State University researchers in May of this year, the vast majority of 1,005 respondents surveyed across Israel supported the forced removal (ethnic cleansing) of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. Over 65 per cent believed in a modern-day incarnation of Amalek, with most supporting the biblical command to ‘erase Amalek’. Such views exist, as Professor Norman Finkelstein points out, despite the fact that online and other information sources are still readily accessible in Israel.

THE MINISTRY’S DATA

There are many reasons why body counts in times of war are—at best—tenuous, depending on prevailing circumstances of the given conflict, especially when seeking the verification of the numbers of dead and injured. In the densely populated urban confines of Gaza where there has been so much destruction (with over 60 per cent of buildings damaged or destroyed), accurate figures are hard to come by. The independent charity, Save the Children, estimates that there may be up to 20,000 children buried under 51 million tons of rubble. There are also countless unidentified bodies and missing persons. So relentless has been Israel’s bombardment that accessing corpses has been difficult, if not impossible.

The Gaza death toll figures cited by governments, mainstream media, numerous human rights, medical and aid organisations vary significantly. That said, the most frequently sourced data are provided by the Palestinian Ministry of Health which has long been regarded as among the most accurate of death count monitoring organisations in the region. As AP journalist Isabel Debre has pointed out in a detailed analysis of the Ministry’s methodology: ‘The United Nations and other international institutions and experts, as well as Palestinian authorities in the West Bank—rivals of Hamas—say the Gaza Ministry has long made a good-faith effort to account for the dead under the most difficult conditions.’ Debre quotes Michael Ryan, of the World Health Organization’s Health Emergencies Program as saying that, ‘they [the Ministry’s figures] largely reflect the level of death and injury’. Ryan also asserts that the Ministry’s data have been positively assessed by the UN independent investigators, and have even aligned with Israel’s own estimates.

Interestingly, as Debre points out in an article for The Independent in October 2023, in past Gazan conflicts the UN humanitarian office has conducted its own research into civilian deaths  which have largely accorded with figures produced by the Ministry. This was the case following the 2008 war after which the Ministry reported 1,440 Palestinians killed while the UN reported 1,385. In the 2014 war the respective figures were 2,310 and 2,251; and following the 2021 war, 260 and 256.

Despite the care and diligence applied to the collection of mortality data by the Palestinian authorities, Israeli officials and organisations continue to question their veracity. For example, on 13 May 2025 the Australia Israel and Jewish Affairs Council noted that, ‘there is no international law or standard practice governing how civilian death tolls in wars are counted or estimated’. Noting that Hamas has employed different methodologies to count the dead and injured, the AIJAC argues that, ‘Hamas refuses to differentiate between civilians and combatants’ and that ‘neither the United Nations nor other organisations have independently verified Hamas’ death toll’. The latter point is of course a smokescreen designed to draw attention away from the congruence of the Ministry’s data with other external data collection systems (including that used by the IDF itself).  Further, given Israel’s saturation bombardment and therefore destruction of almost every medical facility in the Strip, and not forgetting the absence of foreign journalists, it is nigh impossible for any organisation other than the Ministry to undertake such counts.

So how are the death toll figures arrived at? Debre says the methodological approach is as robust as it can be in catastrophic circumstances where hospitals and other medical facilities have been subject to regular and intense Israel attacks. Debre says that, ‘an office at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, al-Qidra receives a constant flow of data from every hospital in the Strip … Hospital administrators say they keep records of every wounded person occupying a bed and every dead body arriving at a morgue. They enter this data into a computerized system shared with al-Qidra and colleagues.’ From screenshots seen by AP journalists, ‘the system looks like a color-coded spreadsheet divided into categories: name, ID number, date of hospital entry, type of injury, condition’. Despite various practical problems associated with victim identification, including the absence of victims’ names, the data on the dead and the injured are double checked, and additional information is gathered from other sources like Palestinian Red Crescent.

Drawing on this data, the Ministry ‘releases casualty updates every few hours, providing the number of dead and wounded with a breakdown for men, women and minors’, says Debra. Names, ages or locations of those killed are not provided.  

THE NUMBERS

According to figures issued by the Ministry of Health in early May 2025, the official death toll in Gaza since 7 October 2023 was over 55,000, with more than half of the dead being women and children. Since then, of course, hundreds more Palestinians have been killed, many of them while seeking to access food aid supplied by a controversial US-backed organisation, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. The Ministry’s figures have found their way into most mainstream news outlets across the world, yet have been repeatedly questioned by Israeli authorities—often claiming that they are an exaggeration.

While widely regarded as credible estimates of Palestinians killed during the conflict, the Ministry’s data have also been questioned by an international team of epidemiological researchers who in February 2025 put the death toll in Gaza at 64 ,260. This figure was arrived at by drawing on ‘multiple data sources to estimate deaths due to traumatic injury in the Gaza Strip between October 7, 2023, and June 30, 2024’. Data was drawn from the hospital lists of the Ministry of Health, an online Ministry survey, and social media obituaries. ‘Alternative generalised linear models’ were used to calculate ‘the probability of being listed.’ This was then averaged out, ‘to estimate the true number of deaths in the analysis period’ which was compared to data for 2022.

Using this approach, the authors argued that, ‘the Palestinian Ministry of Health under-reported mortality by 41%. The annualised crude death rate was 39·3 per 1000 people (95% CI 35·7–49·4), representing a rate ratio of 14·0 (95% CI 12·8–17·6) compared with all-cause mortality in 2022, even when ignoring non-injury excess mortality.’ Women, children and older people accounted for just under 60 per cent of the 28 ,257 deaths ‘for which age and sex data were available’. The Lancet study concludes that: ‘Our findings show an exceptionally high mortality rate in the Gaza Strip during the period studied’. Importantly, the researchers argued that the actual death toll was likely much higher given the exclusion of non-trauma deaths resulting from the destruction of health care facilities, food insecurity, and lack water and sanitation.

Based on the Lancet study’s findings of the first nine months of the Israeli-imposed Gaza massacre, the projected death total by 25 April 2025 is 136,000 violent deaths after 15.5 months of killing. However, this analysis only goes so far. A more comprehensive picture of the death toll in Gaza since the start of the current conflict suggests it is necessary to estimate the number of non-violent deaths resulting from war-imposed deprivation.

IMPOSED DEPRIVATION AND GAZA’S DEATH TOLL

When deaths resulting from imposed deprivation (indirect deaths) are factored into mortality data, the total figures will be higher than those from only violent deaths (direct deaths). Eminent epidemiologist Professor Devi Sridhar (chair of Global Health, University of Edinburgh) reported in an article in The Guardian a ‘conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death’.  Assuming that deaths from deprivation were four times the violent deaths, then the 136,000 violent deaths after 15.5 months of killing (25 April 2025) would imply 544,000 Gaza deaths from imposed deprivation, and that the total Gazan death toll would accordingly be 136,000 violent deaths plus 544,000 from imposed deprivation, leading to a staggering total of 680,000 deaths by 25 April 2025. Most of these victims, as indicated in earlier counts by the Ministry of Health are women and children. 

Shocking in its enormity, the figure of 680,000 is derived from calculations based on other conflicts around the world. The UNHCR, Reword Global Law and Policy Database has found that the ratio of indirect deaths (non-violent deaths from imposed deprivation) to direct deaths (violent deaths) ranges from about two to 16 in a variety of wars in recent decades. Indeed, estimates of violent deaths and non-violent deaths from deprivation drawn from UN Population Division data, reveal direct deaths in the Iraq War (2003-2011) of 1.5 million and indirect deaths of 1.2 million, yielding a total of around 2.7 million deaths, a ratio of 1.5:1.2. The ratio of direct deaths/indirect deaths in the Afghan War (2001–2021) is estimated to be 0.4 million/6.4 million, that is deaths from deprivation 16 times the death toll of violent deaths.

The estimate of 680,000 Gazan deaths therefore is about 12 to 14 times greater than the death toll of about 50–55,000 presently reported by nearly all Western mainstream media.  Among the most ‘at risk’ people in violent conflicts are children—and Gaza is no exception.  Exhaustive analysis of avoidable deaths from deprivation in all countries from 1950 onwards reveals that under-five-year-old infant deaths make up about 70 per cent of avoidable deaths in impoverished countries. (In early May 2024 a joint study by the UN Development Programme and the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia reported that the poverty rate in Gaza—already chronic—surged to 58.4 per cent since the 7 October 2023. Since then, conditions have become much worse). As of Anzac Day 2025 (25 April), the 544,000 Gaza deaths from violent and imposed deprivation included about 380,000 under-five infant deaths. Infants are highly vulnerable—thus, for example, breast feeding would be highly problematic for highly traumatized Gaza mothers substantially denied water, food, shelter, hygiene, baby bottles, baby formula, electricity, sanitation and other life-sustaining requisites demanded of the occupying power, as stated in Articles 55 and 56 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Assuming that 33 per cent of the violent Gaza deaths were children, 21 per cent women and 46 per cent, men (according to the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor), and that the same proportions obtain for the deprivation-based deaths of non-infant children, women and men, then the 680,000 Gazans killed by violence and imposed deprivation by 25 April 2025 included about 380,000 under-five-year-old infants, 479,000 children in total, 63,000 women and 138,000 men.

QUESTIONING THE DATA

As noted, attempts have been made to discredit the Ministry’s figures. This came to a head in April of this year when numerous mainstream, mainly right-wing Western media outlets reported on alterations to the Ministry’s death tally. This was seized upon as evidence of disinformation on the part of the ‘Hamas-run’ health authority. The real reason for the data adjustment however, is far more complex. As reported by the BBC on 23 April of this year, the usual way of counting the dead in Gaza (up to January) was to record the deceased in hospitals. The collected data was then logged and placed into a computer system based at the al-Shifa hospital, with support from al-Rantissi hospital. As conditions rapidly deteriorated in Gaza after October 2023, and especially following the sustained bombing and destruction of hospitals and other medical centres, this method became increasingly untenable, so from the beginning of 2024 health authorities developed an online form which allowed relatives to report persons dead or missing. According to the Ministry of Health, the names that were removed from the official list in early 2025 were the result of the introduction of new verification systems. Names taken off the list, around 3,000, could be put back after checks were conducted.

Some of those on the list had in fact died of natural causes, not directly related to violent conflict (although this raises the question of avoidable deaths in such circumstances and particularly how the lack of adequate health care and immense trauma contributes to fatal illnesses). As the head of the statistical team overseeing the new methods of counting observed: deaths resulting from hypothermia, malnutrition and many other problems ‘are indirect and do not get added to the lists’.

In light of various accusations of misinformation, Professor Mike Spagat of Royal Holloway College, London and chair of Every Casualty Counts, commented: ‘We should have regarded the previous lists as a little bit more provisional than I had assumed’, adding that he saw no attempt to deceive or mislead, and that the data changes were, ‘a big clean-up operation’. In our view, the knee-jerk response to what are methodological changes discussed above, especially in the context of a highly destructive conflict is, at best, disingenuous—or worse, part of an ongoing attempt to discredit the huge levels of casualties in Gaza. The efforts by the Health Ministry to provide verifiable figures on the dead and injured warrants a considerable degree of respect and admiration. It is no surprise that its data are commonly cited by a host of media, aid organizations and governments. They warrant such attention.

Nonetheless, what becomes clear from the methodologies used by the Ministry is they present only a small part of the overall picture when it comes to Gaza’s death toll. There is, however, no clear evidence that this limited data has been deliberately distorted to suit a particular narrative. That said, American consumer advocate Ralph Nader has commented on what he considers to be the massive undercounting of the Gaza death toll in the following terms: ‘Hamas is vested in an undercount to temper accusations by their own people that it has not protected them. (Hamas badly under-estimated the total savagery of the Israeli response to its October 7 attack through a mysteriously collapsed multitiered Israeli border security complex.) The Israeli government also prefers an undercount to temper the rising level of international condemnation and boycotts.’

While the extent to which the Israeli state or Hamas have actively sought to downplay the official figures has not been fully established, the fact remains that the reported death rates exceed those of many other conflicts. For example, the death ratio of the occupied Palestinians and occupying Israelis on 7 October 2023 in Gaza is 680,000/1,139, that is 597 to 1, or (to put it into another historical perspective), 60 times greater than the reprisals ratio of 10 ordered by Hitler and immediately carried out in the Ardeatine cave massacre in Rome, 1944. Similar ratios apply to a multiplicity of war scenarios. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has determined that in the period covering 2008 to 7 October 2023 the occupied/occupier death ratio was ‘only’ 20 Palestinians for every Israeli killed. Such figures tell us a good deal about the extent of the carnage in Gaze since October 2023.

TRUMP’S ADMISSION

Data of this sort are unlikely to find their way into the mainstream media, however. The Australian media, in reporting 50,000-plus deaths in Gaza has seriously under-reported the toll by a factor of 14. Indeed, Australia’s’ only public broadcaster, the ABC, continues to under-report Gazan deaths, preferring at some points to allocate equal time each day to reporting a bizarre murder trial in Victoria (3 people allegedly murdered by poisonous mushrooms) as it does to the Gaza ‘genocide’—a word, incidentally, along with occupation and ethnic cleansing which reporters are forbidden to utter.

Confirmation of the horrific extent of the Gaza genocide has unwittingly come from none other than US President Donald Trump. In May of this year, with access to top intelligence, he referred to ‘1.7 million’ Gazans who he wants totally removed from Gaza to permit a Riviera-style resort development. Given that the pre-conflict Gazan population was around 2.4 million, this means, according to Trump’s own figures, that up to 700,000 Gazans have been disappeared. To press the point, it has been estimated that around a hundred thousand Gazans may have found refuge in Egypt, hence Trump has unwittingly conceded that about 0.6 million Gazans have been killed—a figure broadly consistent with our estimate above.  Canada’s CBC network reported this disclosure, quoting Professor Devi Sridhar as saying she would expect, ‘Trump has received the best intelligence on the matter, and the fact he has cited the number several times suggests it came from American or Israeli officials’.   Sridhar added, ‘I was just surprised that I saw that [figure], and no one even flinched. They were just like, ‘Oh, OK, 1.7 [million] left.’ And I’m like, ‘so where did the half a million or 400,000 people go.’

SKEWED BODY COUNTS AND THE SKEWERING OF HISTORY

Downplaying, ignoring, or disputing the accuracy of body counts is a common tactic in wartime, and in many retrospective narratives. According to Politics and International Relations academic at the University of Auckland, Thomas Gregory, who studied the ways in which body counts were employed by Coalition forces during the Afghanistan conflict (2008–14), these counts were integral to how conflict was perceived. In the case of Afghanistan, as Gregory writes in the 2022 journal of European Journal of International Security, body counts were ‘weaponised’ as a means of presenting the conflict in a certain light. Thus: ‘Rather than simply documenting the death and destruction, these counts were complicit in the violence experienced by Afghan civilians, helping to enable and enhance the effectiveness of military operations’. As such, Gregory concludes, ‘I argue that these counts failed to contest the violence of war or the continued dehumanization of Afghan civilians’. In his 2025 book Weaponizing Civilian Protection, Gregory argues that coalition forces used body counts so that many of the military’s monitoring activities could be framed as humanitarian efforts. Civilian deaths were tracked not necessarily to prevent them, but to manage perceptions and maintain legitimacy.

The massaging of death toll numbers for military and political purposes is certainly not usual. In the Sacking of Fallujah: A Peoples’ History, Ross Caputi, Richard Hil and Donna Mulhearn observed how ‘strategic communications’ were deployed by the US military to play down the extent of carnage in Iraq and instead to report the conflict in triumphalist terms, suitable for a domestic audience. The same could be said of how the allied forces in World War 2 privileged a triumphal narrative of victory over the deliberate bombing of civilian targets in places like Dresden and Hamburg. Minimizing the numbers of civilians killed and injured in conflicts, or undermining attempts to report on such, is a feature of the ways in which conquering powers have operated in war situations.

Colonial conquests are no different: the numbers of subject populations—almost invariably Indigenous peoples—murdered, dispossessed or violated through poverty and disease were of little consequence. That is, until revisionist histories began to emerge through the persistence of Indigenous voices and the work of academic historians. In dominant colonial narratives, scant attention is paid to deaths in general and even less to the number of lives lost due to imposed deprivation. It is as if those ‘conquered’, erased and harmed are reduced to unpeople, not even worthy of mention—abstracted from history. Modern conflicts, including in the case of the Gaza genocide, continue this practice of denial and obfuscation. Thus, we find in the official accounts of Israel or the US (or their complicit supporters in other Western countries), including Australia, no mention of civilian casualties, downplaying the extent of death and destruction, or simply, and deliberately, undermining methodologies and findings. Often, the intention is to convey the impression that death counts are too complex or contested, or methodically challenging, to attain universal credibility. At best, violent deaths per se might be reported, in effect ignoring fatalities resulting from imposed deprivation – which would obviously inflate total numbers.

It is thus the case that the Western-imposed atrocity in Iraq between 1990-2011 resulted not in the tens of thousands claimed by mainstream media, but up to 5 million people if imposed deprivations are taken into account. Similar disparities exist in relation to what occurred in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2021, with around 6.8 million estimated deaths – well in excess of the violent death numbers trotted trotted out, if at all, by the Western media. Looking further back at atrocities overseen by western powers, it is estimated by Gideon Polya and others that during the “forgotten” Bengali famine of 1942-5, up to 7 million Indians were deliberately starved to death by the British, largely for strategic reasons. This holocaust has received scant attention in Western historical texts on the second world war—a form of erasure not uncommon in narrated official histories.  

Today, particularly in the US, we are also witnessing, the attempted erasure of histories that record the slaughter of indigenous peoples and the enslavement of Africans over the course of several centuries. Other attempted erasures are evidenced in settler colonial societies like Australia where the ‘black armband’ view of history has been the subject of great debate, as have current attempts to rewrite school curricula in favour of a more triumphalist, nationalistic story.

Much the same applies to Gaza where in 1948 the ‘catastrophe’ or Nakba, resulted in the forced expulsion of around 700,000 Palestinians—a historical reality that has only been fully exposed relatively recently in the West through books like Ilan Pappe’s The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine in which he writes:  ‘After the Holocaust, it has become almost impossible to conceal large-scale crimes against humanity … And yet, one such crime has been erased almost totally from the global public memory: the dispossession of the Palestinians in 1948 by Israel.’ Pappe’s seminal work was written, ‘with the deep conviction that the ethnic cleansing of Palestine must become rooted in our memory and consciousness as a crime against humanity …’.

The glossing over of mortality figures, or undermining attempts at recording them, should be considered in the context of efforts by the powerful to obscure realities on the ground. In the case of Gaza, these efforts have been deployed to subdue growing public criticism in respect of war crimes and crimes against humanity—documented claims which suggest that the IDF may not be the most “moral army in the world”.

For the sake of the Palestinians who have thus far perished in the latest conflict—and indeed for all those killed since the Nakba—we must tell the full, heartbreaking extent of their suffering.

About the authors

Richard Hil

Dr Richard Hil is Adjunct Professor in the School of Human Services and Social Work at Griffith University, Gold Coast, Adjunct Professor at Southern Cross University and Convenor of the Ngara Institute. Richard is the author of numerous books, the latest being The Sacking of Fallujah: A People’s History (with Ross Caputi and Donna Mulhearn).

More articles by Richard Hil

Gideon Polya

Dr Gideon Polya is a biochemist and taught science students at La Trobe University over 4 decades. His research was largely concerned with signal transduction in plants. He is the author of numerous scientific papers and a huge biochemical pharmacology text “Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds”. As a humanitarian concerned with reportage of avoidable mortality from deprivation and war, he has published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” and “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History”.

More articles by Gideon Polya