Reports in the Western media on the war in Gaza have routinely cited the casualty figures provide by Hamas, regardless of the growing evidence of their unreliability. Journalists and opinion writers have even adduced various arguments in favor of believing these numbers. Among these dubious proofs was that the Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Activities (OCHA) and other UN agencies relied on them.

But sometime between May 6 and May 8, OCHA, without explanation, revised its figures, cutting the numbers of women and children killed by nearly 50 percent. Elliott Abrams comments:

The Hamas figures are not credible, and if OCHA has finally recognized this it is a positive step. But it ought to be acknowledged openly, not slipped into a longer report. OCHA is still using Hamas figures (i.e., those of the Gaza Ministry of Health) in giving total numbers for those killed, and should reflect on whether those numbers are any more reliable when they emerge from the same source: Hamas.

It is obvious that this war is a calamity for Gaza civilians and that thousands are dead and more are wounded. Hamas planned the war this way, placing its military resources in homes, schools, mosques, and hospitals and thus ensuring that once it started a war civilians would suffer greatly.

Hamas wants the world to believe that the main casualties and fatalities have been women and children, an argument almost universally accepted until very recently. Now even the UN, or one part of the UN, silently acknowledges that it blindly accepted Hamas numbers meant to mislead. Others who accepted the Hamas propaganda should do likewise, and all have an obligation to come clean—not least the media in the United States and elsewhere.

I await the stories in the New York Times, Washington Post, and NPR reporting on this, but the wait may be a long one.

If there is to be peace, Palestinians will have to unlearn the hatred of Israel they have imbibed during nearly two decades of Hamas rule. This will be a difficult task, but Cole Aronson argues, drawing on the experiences of World War II, that Israel has already gotten off to a strong start:

The population’s compliance can . . . be won by a new regime that satisfies its immediate material needs, even if that new regime is sponsored by a government until recently at war with the population’s former regime. Axis civilians were made needy through bombing. Peaceful compliance with the Allies became a good alternative to supporting violent resistance to the Allies.

Israel’s current campaign makes a moderate Gaza more likely, not less. Destroying Hamas not only deprives Islamists of the ability to rule—it proves the futility of armed resistance to Israel, a condition for peace. The destruction of buildings not only deprives Hamas of its hideouts. It also gives ordinary Palestinians strong reasons to shun groups planning to replicate Hamas’s behavior.