With every update on the Israel-Hamas war, Western news outlets cite unverified figures about Palestinian casualties, although they have at least begun to caveat that these statistics are produced by the terrorist group’s own health ministry. These numbers remain the main source for the claims (which the numbers alone would not substantiate even if they were accurate) that the IDF needs to exercise more restraint, or that it is committing “war crimes” and “atrocities.” Lenny Ben-David carefully exposes the holes in the data presented by Hamas:

Hamas claimed in 2023, as of [November 30], that 15,000 Gazans were killed: 6,150 (41 percent) were children, and 4,000 were women (26 percent). The press, editorial writers, and government officials worldwide have reported and repeated these figures as gospel. Hamas claimed that the remaining 5,000 (33 percent) dead were men—both combatants and civilians.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant stated that 4,000 Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters died in the fighting as of November 16. That number shakes the Hamas ministry’s current statistics to the core. Israel repeatedly warned Gazan residents of north Gaza to evacuate their homes. Leaflets were dropped in their neighborhoods, and even private phone calls were made by IDF Arabic-speaking soldiers. An estimated one million Gazans took the warnings seriously and avoided Hamas attempts to keep them in the north as human shields. Lower casualty rates of women and children should have reflected their leaving the north.

That the figures show combatant casualties to be a small minority of the total dead, rather than the majority, makes them very difficult to believe. Ben-David presents other evidence, as does Salo Aizenberg in this even more detailed breakdown, where he shows that the statistics literally fail to add up.

Addressing a recent meeting of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Central Committee, Mahmoud Abbas criticized Hamas more sharply than he has previously (at least in public), calling them “sons of dogs.” The eighty-nine-year-old Palestinian Authority president urged the terrorist group to “stop the war of extermination in Gaza” and “hand over the American hostages.” The editors of the New York Sun comment:

Mr. Abbas has long been at odds with Hamas, which violently ousted his Fatah party from Gaza in 2007. The tone of today’s outburst, though, is new. Comparing rivals to canines, which Arabs consider dirty, is startling. Its motivation, though, was unrelated to the plight of the 59 remaining hostages, including 23 living ones. Instead, it was an attempt to use an opportune moment for reviving Abbas’s receding clout.

[W]hile Hamas’s popularity among Palestinians soared after its orgy of killing on October 7, 2023, it is now sinking. The terrorists are hoarding Gaza aid caches that Israel declines to replenish. As the war drags on, anti-Hamas protests rage across the Strip. Polls show that Hamas’s previously elevated support among West Bank Arabs is also down. Striking the iron while it’s hot, Abbas apparently longs to retake center stage. Can he?

Diminishing support for Hamas is yet to match the contempt Arabs feel toward Abbas himself. Hamas considers him irrelevant for what it calls “the resistance.”

[Meanwhile], Abbas is yet to condemn Hamas’s October 7 massacre. His recent announcement of ending alms for terror is a ruse.

Abbas, it’s worth noting, hasn’t saved all his epithets for Hamas. He also twice said of the Americans, “may their fathers be cursed.” Of course, after a long career of anti-Semitic incitement, Abbas can’t be expected to have a moral awakening. Nor is there much incentive for him to fake one. But, like the protests in Gaza, Abbas’s recent diatribe is a sign that Hamas is perceived as weak and that its stock is sinking.